I don’t think it’s obvious that would be the best approach.
This forum is as internal as it gets without asking potential candidates via email or in person.
Both approaches are valid, but they optimize to attract different people.
The gist that I get from this job ad is that they are looking for someone who is a good assistant while being passionate about effective altruism, willing to help indirectly rather than promote their own ego and eager to find creative ways to improve themselves and Bostrom’s workflow. My guess is that they would prefer someone less experienced to a person for whom this is just another assistant job, provided that the less experienced person views the role as a challenge to grow into.
If the thing that they are optimizing for is work experience/existing skills, I agree that it would be better to match the writing style to standardized assistant job ads. In that case, they might as well post it on the matching sites.
Best would be obviously to have someone who fills all the criteria perfectly, but it’s going to be hard to come by a person with extensive experience who does not already have a better project to work on or is willing to accept what I’m sure will be a very low salary.
The description as is was much more interesting to me than a standard job ad would have been. I don’t think I would have applied if it had read like the standard job ad. That said, I am not trying to argue the description is perfect, just that I prefer the type of description.
tl;dr: If you want excited people to apply, don’t post a boring job ad.
I don’t think it’s obvious that would be the best approach.
This forum is as internal as it gets without asking potential candidates via email or in person.
Both approaches are valid, but they optimize to attract different people. The gist that I get from this job ad is that they are looking for someone who is a good assistant while being passionate about effective altruism, willing to help indirectly rather than promote their own ego and eager to find creative ways to improve themselves and Bostrom’s workflow. My guess is that they would prefer someone less experienced to a person for whom this is just another assistant job, provided that the less experienced person views the role as a challenge to grow into. If the thing that they are optimizing for is work experience/existing skills, I agree that it would be better to match the writing style to standardized assistant job ads. In that case, they might as well post it on the matching sites. Best would be obviously to have someone who fills all the criteria perfectly, but it’s going to be hard to come by a person with extensive experience who does not already have a better project to work on or is willing to accept what I’m sure will be a very low salary.
The description as is was much more interesting to me than a standard job ad would have been. I don’t think I would have applied if it had read like the standard job ad. That said, I am not trying to argue the description is perfect, just that I prefer the type of description.
tl;dr: If you want excited people to apply, don’t post a boring job ad.
Facebook is not internal. Also LW is world-readable.
I think it’s perfectly fine not to care about the cultishness impression, by the way, just as long as you realize that is what you are doing.