This is from my blog Said Twice where I write advice that I've said twice. 

Do you want to find something to spend your professional development time on or improve your chances of getting a job? Look for cheap tests that tell you what it’s like doing the skill you’re practicing and expensive signals that demonstrate you have that skill.

A cheap test is something that doesn’t cost too much in time or money and provides information about what it’s like doing something and whether you enjoy doing it.

An expensive signal is a piece of strong evidence to your manager or a future employer that you have the skill or experience that they’re looking for. A cheap signal is saying “I’m good at X”, while an expensive signal is saying “Here’s a concrete example of me doing X and here’s enough information for you to validate whether I’m good at it”.

Cheap tests and expensive signals is a type of heuristic I use to help me identify areas to improve or focus on and methods to do so. Here are the three steps I use:

Step 1: Decide on an area or skill to focus on

Here are some prompts for identifying potential candidates for areas to focus on:

• What feedback have you received recently? What did your last performance review say?
  • If you don’t have this already, consider asking your colleagues, manager, or friends for ideas of areas to improve on.
• What is something you think you’re good at, but haven’t been able to demonstrate to others that you can do?
• What is a recurring skill in the job openings you’re interested in?
• Which of your current areas of responsibilities do you have the most potential to grow in?
• What type of work do you want to be able to do more of in your current role or in a future role?
• What’s a type of task you struggled with in the last work test you did as part of a hiring process?

Step 2: Generate cheap tests

Here are some examples:

• One-off project for an organisation
• One-off project at your organisation
• Personal one-off project
• Online course that’s practical or has a lot of exercises you can go through
• Applying to a job and getting to the work test stage
• Internship or volunteer role
• Conversations with people in the positions you’re curious about

Step 3: Generate expensive signals 

Here are some examples:

• Good stories in a cover letter or interview
• Responses to work tests that show you’ve done the type of work before
• Connections to and, better yet, endorsements from relevant people in the field
• Strong experiences on your CV
• Concrete products that you can easily share that demonstrate your skill

Examples of cheap tests and expensive signals

Let organisations know that you’re available to help with one-off projects, listing the type of areas you can help with.

Worst case, the organisation knows you’re after this type of work, and may mention your name if some other organisation needs help. 

Best case, you get some work experience, connections and ideally endorsements from people in the field, and a good story to tell in an interview.

Personal example: I had additional time at Forethought and was able to take on a project of 50% for a couple months. I let a few organisations know that I could potentially have time to help out with operations, recruiting, and project management. This led to me supporting 80,000 Hours’ CEO search in late 2023. It was a 2-3 month project where I got experience with executive hiring (which I had little experience in) and hiring in general (which I have a fair amount of experience in). 

Spend your professional development time producing an end product.

You want to be able to show the fact that you have a skill in a way that your manager or future employer can validate the quality of themselves. 

This should be something you could provide as a work sample in a hiring process or something you can link to in a performance review when listing the type of work you have done and can do. 

Personal example: I wanted to improve my ability to provide advice on external communications. To do so, I asked a few communications professionals for tips and read up on best practices. Based on that, I drafted a list of organisation-wide heuristics for external communications, which I asked our executive to review. Once we agreed on a set of heuristics, I turned that into a communications checklist we could use when considering whether to e.g. respond to a request or take advantage of an opportunity. I’ve later shared the list of heuristics and checklist as a work sample when being assessed in a hiring process.

Take a course or read a book in the area you want to improve on, and then practice those skills.

A cheap signal is having read a book on something, an expensive signal is deliberately practicing what you’ve learned.  

Personal example: When I was Executive Director of EA Norway I wanted to improve my management and coaching skills. It was my first time having employees and we also wanted to start providing career coaching for our members. My Assistant Director and I read the books Quiet Leadership and Messages, both of which have concrete exercises we could do. We did about one exercise per week, which often included practicing a technique in e.g. a career coaching session. This was hugely useful, and still influences my management and coaching methods today. I’ve both used this as an example of my management experience in a job interview, and I’m confident it’s improved my performance on related work tests.