This is an anonymous account (Ávila Carmesí is not a real person and is only a pseudonym).
I imagine if someone wanted to know my identity they could find out. But please don't try :)
Thank you for your advice! I will say that my part-time job was research, which is crucial if I want to get research positions or into PhD programs in the near future. The clubs I lead are also very relevant to the jobs I'm applying to, and I think they may be quite impactful (so I'm willing to do them even if they harm my own odds).
Regardless of my specific situation, I think EA orgs should conduct hiring under the assumption that a significant portion of their applicants don't have the time for multiple multi-hour work tests in early stages of the application process (where most will be weeded out).
This would definitely reduce the time cost.
I'd also worry, though, about the application having only certain kinds of questions which do not bring out the best in (some/many) people. I've definitely seen some applications where I thought I wasn't given the chance to show my worth, and others where I was. This app would have to be drafted with a lot of care.
Also thank you @elizabethcooper for taking initiative on this!
I just don't have the time. I'm often at absolute capacity with college assignments, clubs, work, etc.
Especially if many orgs decided to have longer work trials, I might be unable to apply to many or may end up submitting subpar work tests because of this.
Also, I'll point out that oftentimes EA orgs have *initial applications* that take 2-4 hours. This seems like clearly too much. I think a quick first round that verifies the following would be best:
Longer questions about career plans, work-trial-y questions, reasoning and IQ-test-y questions, research proposals, and everything else should belong in later stages, when you've already filtered out people that just really did not belong in the application process.
This is even more puzzling to me now, because I think I clearly satisfied all of these (I looked back over my responses, which I saved in a GDoc).
But thank you for the offer! If I get over my strong desire for anonymity I'll be sure to reach out.
Edit: I say "clearly" not to add emphasis to my response (I didn't mean for it to sound contrarian), but because these particular criteria seem easy to judge: they're mostly not "how good are you at X" but rather "have you done X."
I hadn't thought of this before, and it does make me reconsider the value of these types of questions early on -- even if it burdens applicants.