Lauren Mee is the CEO & Co-founder of Animal Advocacy Careers, an organisation that tries to match mission-aligned talent to opportunities that accelerate the end of factory farming.
Lauren offloads all she knows about the hiring landscape right now when it comes to careers in animal advocacy. She talks us through some best practices and common pitfalls in the hiring process as well as her take on some of the more strategic questions when it comes to career progression in this space.
Whether you are not yet working in the movement, a manager looking to hire or a mid-level employee looking to advance to something more senior, there is something for everyone in this episode.
Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:
If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!
Lauren Mee is the CEO & Co-founder of Animal Advocacy Careers, an organisation that tries to match mission-aligned talent to opportunities that accelerate the end of factory farming.
Lauren offloads all she knows about the hiring landscape right now when it comes to careers in animal advocacy. She talks us through some best practices and common pitfalls in the hiring process as well as her take on some of the more strategic questions when it comes to career progression in this space.
Whether you are not yet working in the movement, a manager looking to hire or a mid-level employee looking to advance to something more senior, there is something for everyone in this episode.
Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:
If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!
Lauren: Ultimately, AAC wants to not just attract, but also retain and nurture talent. And if the people that we're attracting are having a really bad experience when they're going through their recruitment process, they're going to leave the movement and they're never going to come back again. We spend a lot of money on attracting people in, so we want the organisations to look after them and give them a good experience.
Amy: And this is How I Learned to Love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. A very comprehensive episode this week on all things employment in the animal advocacy movement.
As we speak with Lauren May, co-founder and CEO of Animal Advocacy Careers, we deep-dive into bottlenecks, challenges in hiring, and some interesting survey feedback that has informed Lauren on why talented and passionate people might find coming into this movement more difficult than other opportunities available to them. I learnt loads in this episode and I think whether you're not yet in the movement, a manager looking to hire, a mid level employee looking to advance into something more senior, there's really something for everyone.
There's also tons of resources in the show notes that I recommend checking out, as well as the ever-important work of the Animal Advocacy Careers website which offers resources, trainings, and the one-to-one career advising service. Also, did you know that transcripts are now available via our website howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com.
If you do find it easier or more useful to read through the episode, they are now available. You can also use the chapter markers to skip through if you find certain sections more useful or you want to refer back to a specific section at a later date. And lastly, as Stien spoke about in a past episode, applications for the movement grants that Animal Charity Evaluators offer are now live and available to apply to, which we would encourage anyone looking for funding to do. You can find out more at their website, animalcharityvaluators.org.
We're joined today by Lauren Mee, CEO and co founder of Animal Advocacy Careers, an organisation that tries to match mission aligned talent to opportunities that accelerate the end of factory farming. Prior to Animal Advocacy Careers, Lauren worked as a consultant. She's also a mentor for Magnify Mentoring, a strategic advisor to Tälist, the AVA summit, and is on the board of EACN and the mission motor. Welcome Lauren!
Lauren: Thanks for having me on the podcast!
Amy: What is EACN the acronym for?
Lauren: That's for the Effective Altruism Consulting Network. So I think they're actually going to rebrand at some point, but at the moment, that is what it stands for.
Amy: Great job: so many mentoring and strategic advisor positions. Clearly a good use of your previous consultancy role in the movement, which is great to see.
Lauren: Thanks, Amy. I do try. I mean, I think that everyone has a limited amount of time, and it's always a trade-off between how much you're actually going to spend on your job versus other things. But I started off in the movement doing volunteering, and I still feel like it's a really important part of how I contribute to the movement. So I do want to keep that up.
Amy: Okay. I'd like to know from you: who is someone in the movement that people might not know about that you find particularly inspiring?
Lauren: It's a good question, and it's really hard because I think that our movement is genuinely filled with so many inspiring people. And you really notice that at conferences where you're just like: ‘wow, so many people are doing great things’. But maybe someone that not everyone knows, but I think both of you at least know, is Laila Kassam from Animal Think Tank and I just find her genuinely extremely inspiring from the way that she speaks about social movement ecology and from the way that – she's not just focused on what many organisations are focused on, which is like, how did their organisations do what they're set out to do? It's much more broad: how are we actually going to end factory farming? How are we going to liberate animals? And not many people talk about that. And I find it really inspiring. And I really enjoy the conversations that I have with her, whenever I am lucky enough to speak with Layla or hear a talk. So I really – if people don't know her, then I think, look her up, speak to her, and hopefully they'll get inspired, too.
James: There's some great talks by Laila online, I think, from previous conferences, so we'll maybe link one of those if people want to see one of the rousing speeches and also explanations of social movement ecology that you mentioned, Lauren. So we'll definitely link that for folks who are interested.
Yeah, Lauren. So we want to get into a big topic in the movement, which is about jobs, how to have a big impact with your career, all that kind of stuff. But I guess before we get into that, I'm kind of curious to hear about you and your journey into co founding Animal Advocacy Careers.
Lauren : Ironically, I think I'm kind of the living embodiment of what AAC tries to do. So I started in the for-profit sector, and I built up a lot of skills and I think then I made the, or tried to make the transition from the for-profit sector into the non-profit sector, and it took me about two or three years to do it. So I also really heavily can relate to people who are out there job-seeking and they're trying to really make their mark and enter into the movement. And it isn't really straightforward. And I think that's a really common thing that people think: ‘Oh, there's skill bottlenecks in the animal advocacy movement, so I should just be able to get a job’. And that's not really how it works.
And so for me, I think I got involved in animal advocacy in around 2016, and I started with street activism. And then I think at some point, somebody suggested to me, who was giving me career advice, said: ‘Hey, Lauren, I think the skills you have could actually be really useful to the animal advocacy movement’. So then I started doing skills volunteering for the Good Food Institute and the Humane League alongside my regular job. And I just really enjoyed it. I was like, I loved my job. I genuinely did, but I thought, this is way better. And then there was a difficult trade-off in terms of me being conscientious and trying to do my job well, but also wanting to do a lot for animals.
So it really was the pushing factor for me to think: ‘Okay, I would really like to do this full time’. And then, as I said, it took like, maybe two or three years of me applying to different roles until the Charity Entrepreneurship opportunity came up. And, yeah, I thought, I'll apply. I probably won't get in because I just didn't think I would be a founder. I just thought there's no chance. So it's fine for me to apply because it seems like a crazy programme and who wants to quit their job to start a charity? But there was also no previous success record, so they only had Fortify Health. So I was also on the first cohort, and it was such a high-risk career opportunity.
James: That's quite a big leap of faith. I mean, even doing it several years felt like a leap of faith. But being the first cohort, that seems particularly out there.
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I had my backup plan, so I made sure that as I applied, I told my boss that I was doing it. And I was like: ‘If it doesn't work out, can I come back?’ And he was like: ‘Of course, Lauren.’ And he was like: ‘you're probably going to be back. Yeah, that's fine.’ But it did work out. And I did co-found Animal Advocacy Careers. And, yeah, I think it was one of the best decisions I made. I think I've learned more in these four years of running an organisation than I did for most of the rest of my career. So I definitely don't regret it, but it certainly wasn't easy. And as I said, I really can relate to a lot of people who are doing the job searching at the moment.
Amy: Did you already know of Animal Advocacy Careers as a concept? Was that already one of the ideas from Charity Entrepreneurship? So you knew specifically you were going in to apply for that, or were you kind of open to… right across different cause areas, or was it always animals? What did that look like?
Lauren: So I think I actually really wanted to start Fish Welfare Initiative. That was my…[Laughing] I wanted to do that.
Amy: Ahhh, I see.
[Laughing]
Lauren: And I think, yes, I went onto the program wanting to either do a direct animal advocacy kind of charity or mental health. I was also really interested in mental health. And then the Charity Entrepreneurship just decided. I remember so vividly going into Joey's office, and he was like: ‘You are doing Animal Advocacy Careers.’ And I was like: ‘What?’ And he was like: ‘You're the best one for it on this program. I think that your skills are really aligned with it.’ And I was like: ‘But I really want to do the Fish Welfare Initiative.’ ‘No, Lauren, this is the one for you.’ And so I don't think I was even super passionate about Animal Advocacy Careers.
But as you get more into it and you learn more about the problem and you realise how big it is, then I think you become much more into it. And now I can't imagine starting any other charity. But it was certainly not the one that I came into with the idea of starting Animal Advocacy Careers. I really wanted to do Fish Welfare Initiative.
James: I can still sense the bitterness.
[Laughing]
Avid and Tom are doing a great job. You're doing a great job. Hopefully, animals are getting good things from you guys, so I think all is good. But actually, I think there's an interesting, almost, like, life lesson in there that I'm curious to get your thoughts on. It's like you kind of didn't end up doing what was really the most exciting for you or felt like your biggest passion, but something that you end up loving over time. And do you think that's something that is actually surprisingly, quite possible? That you can enter a job you don't feel super excited about, but you tend to love it. Or do you think you should really only go for stuff you love from the outset?
Lauren: Yeah, I mean, this is the traditional career advice versus what actual psychology tells you is good for your job. And, yeah, I think there's so many books on this and 80,000 hours also speak a lot about it; that actually, the thing that makes job satisfaction and actually makes you have an enjoyable job is doing something that you're good at and you enjoy. So that's slightly different to passion. And I think that this was kind of where Joey kind of was like: ‘You're good at this, you will be good at this.’ And he could see this kind of, like – he match-made me basically to the opportunity in CE and was like: ‘I think that you will really excel in this area. I enjoyed it, and I enjoy it more the more that I realise that I'm kind of good at it.
And I think that those kind of things just kind of trickle over. But I think that you have to at least have some enjoyment out of it. Otherwise, I mean, you don't want to just do a job because you're good at it if you're not getting any enjoyment, because then you'll end up leaving that job pretty soon afterwards as well.
Amy: Yeah, seems like a really necessary hybrid. And we've recently had an episode with Aaron Ross about longevity. And I think that's a really important way to make sure and ensure that people stay around for the long haul. You know, they're passionate about their job and that they want to go to work to support their own position in the movement and obviously support the animals. So, yeah, I think that's really interesting. Do you think then that was specific to Joey, identifying that match for you? Because I think sometimes people find it difficult to know what their skill-set is actually good for. Obviously, you had a great opportunity there to get advice from Joey, and he really saw that future for you. Is it easy enough to self identify in that way, do you think?
Lauren: I think some people do look to other people, and I often get it in career advising. They're like: ‘Lauren, what should I do?’
[Laughing]
James: ‘Just tell me.’ Yeah, yeah.
Lauren: I can't really make that decision for them, but I actually think that one of the best ways to work that out is by trying different things. And again, this is career advice, general career advice for people; that when you are starting off, specifically after you've just graduated, that it's a really good idea to try different things. Because very often the first thing that you think of is not going to be the thing that you actually end up being the best at. So it's worthwhile you trying lots of different things and working out, if you're good at it, how good you are versus other people and whether you enjoy it. And actually, before I made the jump to Charitary Entrepreneurship, I was considering being a researcher, and the thing that stopped me from doing that was working on the project with Jamie Harris, who then became my later co-founder, and realising how much better he was than me. [Laughing ] So I was like: ‘Ok, this is what an actual researcher is like. It's much better for people like them to be researchers than someone like me. So I need to find something else that I can do, like, at a really good level
James: I can attest, Jamie's a great researcher, also used to host a great podcast, Sentience Institute Podcast, another good one on animals, which will also link because there's some great episodes there.
Lauren: James, are you saying, I'm not a good researcher?
[Laughing ]
James: I've never seen your research, so I actually can't comment. [Laughing ] Very diplomatic.
How do you think you do those kind of small tests? You mentioned volunteering for someone is a way, but do you have any ideas about how else you can test if you actually enjoy something and you're good at something?
Lauren: So I guess that there is the two ways you could just do really small projects, like mini projects. So what I'm talking about here is I did a market report in the UK for the Good Food Institute with Jamie, and that was like a test of research. And it was kind of taking some of the skills that I had from consulting when I was developing reports for organisations and seeing if that was kind of applicable and how good I was. And as I said, I don't think that my research was bad, but it was just not as good as his. And I thought, okay, the movement needs more of you and less of me. I should find my thing that I'm good at. And I think that people can very easily do these small mini tests, and it doesn't always give you a proper flavour, but I think it can very quickly update you on whether you're on the right track or on the wrong track, I think.
James: Yeah, I think that's a good motto. Kind of like how actually Charity Entrepreneurship does its research, in terms of depth. So you'll do something for an hour, see if you like it, do something for 10 hours, see if you like it, and then you kind of keep going. So rather than maybe: ‘I want to be an investor, I should get a job investing’, actually maybe talk to someone a couple of times who's done that job. Maybe you try to do it on the side with your own money for a couple of hours. I guess that's the kind of idea, right? You kind of iteratively explore how much you like and how much you excel at something.
Lauren: I think that's also a really good idea to speak to other people in the movement and ask them what does the actual job look like to get a better understanding of it, because I think a lot of people actually just don't do that. They just go straight into a job and they try it out for like, two or three years, and then they realize this isn't the job for me. So then they have to try and find another job to take the place of that. And that's two or three years that you've basically wasted when you maybe could have just done a much smaller test and saved your time and then spent the time making an additional kind of career decision, I think.
Amy: Well, thanks for that, Lauren! That's a really interesting personal journey. I always really enjoy understanding how people came into the movement. I think it's always interesting.
Maybe for listeners who think that their skill-sets don't apply: I was in quite a similar position applying for my first kind of welfare movement job in corporate relations. I'd come from the property sector. I was like a disciplinary officer for students thinking like, I have no transferable skills. But then it turns out disciplining students about how they've been bad and corporate relations is actually pretty aligned. I'm just like going into an intense environment and having to be the one to be the bearer of bad news. So, yeah, it's always really interesting when there are ways in which actually you're just practising those same skill-sets that you can then put towards animals in some way.
So let's get into Animal Advocacy Careers then. I think another real plus from Charity Entrepreneurship is that you haven't had to come up with the idea yourself. All of those hours of research have gone into the actual intervention, so it's likely to be a success with the right co-founders behind it. What is the kind of top-line pitch for Animal Advocacy Careers and why, initially, did Charity Entrepreneurship assess that it was needed? And do you think that is still the same reason that it's needed today?
Lauren: It is hard for me to summarise what AAC does, but I will try and I think that really, we're trying to strengthen the movement by attracting and directing more talented, mission-aligned people into the movement, who wouldn't have got into the movement without AAC. I hope that kind of answers that part.
And then, yeah, I guess when the research that Charity Entrepreneurship did was – that’s actually they think it would be beneficial for somebody to be working on something that could basically help talented people come into the movement. And I think that our first job actually was to start doing more research into that.
So one of the first things I did was interview twelve executive directors who were top ACE-recommended charities and asked them a series of questions, just trying to really do a needs assessment, basically, of what it was that was the problem. And if talent really was a bottleneck, or if it was funding, or if it was something else, and if it was talent, what kind of talent specifically was it that was missing? So I think that basically the research was then the impetus of how we would move forward. But I think their general idea was that there should be some sort of capacity building organisation that really was focused on talent. And they advised us to experiment in different ways in which we could bring people into the movement, which is how we started off, basically.
James: I guess there was at least context from the Effective Altruism community that 80,000 hours had already been running for quite a few years; had done kind of programs that you might be considering. So there was some precedent for similar work. But I'm also wondering, what are the main programmes you guys offer now and what was the testing approach that led you to decide on these programmes?
Lauren: It's always actually very difficult – harder than we knew at the time – to test different programs for AAC. And part of the reason for that is a huge lag effect between people taking the program and making a career shift. So some of the programs now that we are running, we only really found out that they were cost-effective in the second year. So we just had some kind of earlier indicators, like lead indicators, that they seem to be slightly more cost-effective than the other ones. But the first three that we tried was management and leadership training (because management and leadership was a huge skill bottleneck in the animal advocacy movement), our online course and career advising. We've carried on with the online course and the career advising. And then actually, we just did the job board because it was part of our recruitment, our next programme recruitment. And it turned out to be one of the best programmes and it was also the one that everyone wanted us to do. So I think sometimes you kind of just have to go with how things are evolving. And for us in particular, the job board was one of those things that really kind of - it actually came more from funders. They were like: ‘We'd really like you to do a job board.’ And were like: ‘Okay, well, that does kind of fit in with our recruitment anyway.’ And it's turned out to be one of our best programmes. So that was an interesting thing on our side.
James: Yeah, I think it was an interesting; a whole difficult challenge you have in measuring your impact, because, yeah, I think now you have a fairly sophisticated tool that we don't have to dive into just yet or at all. Maybe it's a bit dry for the podcast, but I mean, it is hard to actually measure the effect you're having on people. If you're offering a training now, or they're doing the online course, or they see a job board and they take the job a year, two years later, and what percentage of that was you versus their friend and everything else. So I can imagine that's a whole complex issue. And to clarify that the programmes you guys are offering now, it's the job board, the online course, and career advising, cool. So it's those three things, right?
Lauren: Those three things are our main programs. We have another project, but it's kind of in pilot mode. And I would rather say that those are three programs that I feel quite confident that we will carry on with in the near future.
Amy: Just to clarify from the management training previously: that was to get people who were maybe mid to senior level, or is that training for managers to be able to recruit?
Lauren: It was, I guess, just a different way of looking at: ‘How do we fix the skill bottleneck.’ So one would be just bringing more people in, and the other was like: ‘How do you get people who don't have that skill to be more skilled?’ So that was kind of the idea of people who were in the movement who were either wanting to be managers or just didn't have much management experience, to do that management and leadership training. And I do think that it actually was relatively successful. It's just really hard to compare how much value that's bringing to just slightly upskill somebody versus bringing someone completely in from outside of us. And I think the thing that really made us not want to carry on with that is the fact that neither Jamie nor myself had that kind of experience.
And I think now there is other organisations like Scarlet Spark that offer that, where Tania just has huge amounts of management and leadership experience. And I think that's, again, getting back to the comparative advantage aspect of what AAC does. And I think that there are people that are better suited to doing that kind of thing than AAC.
Amy:You spoke about AAC bringing kind of mission aligned people across. I'm always interested to know how important that is in terms of actually bringing across the skill-set but perhaps they're not vegan. Perhaps they've never cared about animals in the past, but they're really good at their job. And I've always wondered, are we missing out on an opportunity here where someone with a great skill-set that we don't have in the movement could come across and work in here? You kno, in the corporate sector, it's the same: you could be working at a job and you don't agree with necessarily what you're doing. Obviously, I don't think it would be to that extent. But in what way do you think it's important that everybody you're bringing in is 100% mission-aligned?
Lauren: So that is a really good question and something I think I've actually updated on. So I think that at first I thought maybe it was less important that people are mission-aligned or vegan because they're already working in our movement. So if they're willing to do that, then they must be slightly mission-aligned. But I do actually think that it is a really core part of what makes up the best candidate. So I think the candidate needs to be really skilled, but they definitely need to have the right attitude, which I think is slightly different to mission alignment. And I think if that person doesn't have that right attitude, it means that it - I think it can cause risks in the team, but I also think that it means that they might make different decisions to the one that you would actually make. And I think when you have a team that you really trust; that you know is super aligned with you; that you can trust; that they would make those decisions without you… And so it might kind of lead to these very negative leadership styles where you're micro-managing people because you don't trust the decisions they're making. And I think that really, actually value alignment is a huge core component of making up the best candidate. Amy: I'll just come back to that. I wonder if then – because sometimes I think as well that the movement is – we're so mission-aligned and really led by the heart that perhaps we don't always make the most pragmatic decisions. So do you always think it's an issue? like you're saying they might make a different decision to you. But actually I think that could be a positive because they could just be looking at it from a pure business perspective. How do we just get to the end goal quicker and maybe that's more useful than us all saying like: ‘No, we want everyone to change and be vegan for the animals.’ Sometimes it's like non-negotiable that unless we're convincing the whole population to be vegan for the animals, we haven't done our job properly. Well, what if someone came in and was like:’You know what? To end this, it's going to have to be the health angle. We're going to have to put animals to the side, ignore all the terrible footage, and just really round down the health angle, and that's going to bring us the end.’ Do you think that is something to consider, or do you think that shifts us too far, where again, those rifts become irreparable and the movement kind of collapses?
Lauren: Overall, I think what you've touched on there is how important it is to have diversity in a team, which it absolutely is like. You want people that have different experience, you want people that have a different way of thinking. But I think that you all have to agree that the priority is ending factory farming. You don't want someone whose priority it is to end factory farming and someone's is to maximise profits or to do something else. Because then I think that you're going in two different directions. So I do think that having a diverse team is really important, but I think underlying that diversity, there has to definitely be this core agreement on alignment and an attitude to being conscientious or other things that maybe organisations want to hire for. And yeah, I think that both are really important. But I can agree with your point there that we definitely don't want to just hire the same types of people into all of our roles.
James: I'm curious what you mean by good attitude in that context. What does that mean besides value alignment or ‘you care about the same end goal’?
Lauren: When I think about my team, and I think what I mean by good attitude is that I want my team to be hardworking. I want them to be the kind of person that doesn't just drop their work if it isn't finished and go on holiday. I want them to really feel the kind of attitude that I have, the attitude that we really want to do this for animals, and it is okay to take care of yourself, but you also are a conscientious person that really cares about what you're doing. And I think sometimes there is the potential, and I think this is a risk; that people come into a role and they do it just for a paycheck. It's not very common in the animal advocacy movement because we're not super well paid. But I do think that sometimes people see it as just our job. And right now, I think our movement is so small that I think we can at least have that bar where it's like the people that are in the movement really care about what we're trying to do. And so they have that attitude of being really hardworking and are going to make that decision that's the best for the organisation, but the best for the movement as well. And they're not just kind of thinking about it from their own perspectives.
Amy : And so, what's been your recorded impact to date? Is there kind of a figure that you have of how many people you've placed in the movement? How are you measuring those – albeit difficult to measure – programmes?
Lauren: Since starting, we have tracked around 85 people who have engaged with our services and have subsequently changed jobs, and we have about eight pending interviews, so it could be potentially more than 85, but 85 is the number that we kind of go for. And then, how we actually track our impact is slightly different. So each one of our programmes has specific lead indicators that we kind of head towards, and when we achieve those, we're really happy.
James: Can you share some examples of lead indicators for one of those programmes?
Lauren: Yeah, sure! So for our online course, it's how many people have signed up to our online course, which I think is quite a common metric. But we also look how many people have completed our course and have also scored more than 90 points, I think, on the quiz that we have at the end. So that's the kind of like, breakdown of the metrics that we have for our online course. All of those programmes have their own specific lead indicators. And then at the end of that, it's how many people have kind of interacted with those services and changed jobs. And then we interview those people who we've seen have actually changed jobs and have interacted with our services. And at the interview stage, we're really trying to work out more about their role, so to understand what they actually do in their role. And the idea here is to try and get at the value of if it's the hardest to hire for a role or if it's just a role that organisations probably would have been able to fill for, otherwise. And then we also ask them questions on how likely they were to enter the movement if it wasn't for Animal Advocacy Careers in the next five years. And that's really how we end up measuring our impact; the number of placements versus the answers to all those questions, and then what's left at the very end, which we think is our impact, basically.
James: And do you have a really sexy name to this metric?
[Laughing]
Lauren: Yes, it's the Important and Counterfactually Adjusted Placements, but we call it ICAPs. And yeah, I think most people don't really care for understanding how we make ICAPs and I think they don't need to, but it's basically just how we really just try and make sure that the impact that we're having, or try as hard as we can to see the impact that we specifically are having on the movement that wouldn't have happened without AAC.
Amy: I think it's great. It's always been one of the organisations, I think, where so easily you could just be looking at job board hits, or you know: ‘Yes, people, obviously were know, everyone says that they were needed’ and that would be your metric, but actually you want to go much deeper than that. You want to understand the impact and really tracking those candidates. I think, yeah, probably as an organisation that is very meta, that sits outside of the actual implementation of a lot of this action – I think it's one of the organisations where you're really looking into that detail and something that I think a lot of other organisations could be doing more of to not just assume that because it's something that everybody wants and is needed, that means it's successful; there's other metrics in there that you could be using to just ensure that it is having its desired effect.
Lauren: Thanks, Amy! I really appreciate that. I do have some concerns about it that partially it's quite subjective. So one thing that we're trying to do this year is to standardise the scores that we have so that it has less room for subjectivity and is more standardised. But also sometimes I do worry because of the lag effect of our programme. So that's like if somebody took the online course or was career-advised by me today, that they might not change their roles for two or three years. And as we're bringing in new programmes, it's really hard for those programs to compete on an ICAP level within the first one or two years. So I think sometimes measurement can be really tricky and it can be difficult because we're just not really sure whether - how to compare new programmes versus old ones. And then we end up with just like cut-off points, basically, of whether this program seems like it could possibly hit the ICAP bar that the other ones that we know of are doing.
Amy: And do you think funders are open to that sense of needing a bit more of a runway to understand the programmes? Do you think you've been given enough leeway to fully assess that?
Lauren : For the first two years, we only really had one funder, and I think they were really behind this idea of experimentation. So we were extremely lucky with that. I think the other funders that we have had since, really are looking at results. So I don't think they are as keen with this kind of experimentation, which is really sad, actually, because I think we need more of it, not just for AAC, but also with other organisations in their recruitment processes. They really do seem to be quite heavily: ‘Okay, how many people have actually changed jobs because of this, though?’ It's interesting because I was actually speaking to 80,000 hours today, and they actually seemed to have the opposite problem. They were specifically telling me that they tell their funders their lead metrics and they don't care about their ‘dippies’, which is what they have. And I was like: ‘I really wish that our funders were the same. I wish that they were just happy with our lead metrics.’ [Laughing ] And then they weren't. So, yeah, really wanting us to have those results. And I'm not really sure why. Maybe the difference is, it could be, that 80,000 hours is just much better established than AAC. But for sure that was really interesting coming from another organisation telling me that: ‘Hey, Lauren, you need to worry about the results less and be more worried about the lead indicators increasing over time.
James: Yeah, I guess I wonder if this is – 80k has been around for so much longer. And I think they did quite a lot of experimentation early on. I think I remember in a reading I did a while ago, one of their reports saying they actually thought it was a concern that they had, like, four or five main programs quite early on and they kind of dropped things over time. But then, yeah, I guess it's easier to compare things one to one when it's all kind of going simultaneously rather than kind of dropping things or picking up things a bit more staggered. But, yeah, I don't know either why there's a difference in funder interest in those metrics.
Lauren: Yeah, I think also one thing that they were saying was that a lot of other surveys reference 80,000 hours and how important they've been for career changes. And AAC is just not at that point yet where other surveys are saying: ‘Hey, 20% of our candidates have come from AAC.’ And I think if that becomes the point and we are kind of, like, self-evident and it's ourself, then we can maybe relax a little bit on that and maybe do more longer-term measurement. But I think at the moment we're really not like that. And through doing this kind of rigorous monitoring that we do, we can see that some of our services are just orders of magnitude more impactful than other ones. And that's very reassuring that at least we're kind of going in the right direction.
Amy: Let's move on to the kind of state of the entire movement then. Not that I'm resting that on your shoulders to resolve, Lauren, but it's going to be good – as someone who is really heavily involved and obviously speaking to movement leaders all the time – to understand what you believe to be the biggest talent bottlenecks right now.
Lauren: So I want to firstly caveat that we are updating our research this year on the talent bottleneck. So the answer that I'm giving right now is based on our 2021 skill bottleneck survey and also just from working directly with organisations for their recruitment. And that survey said that the hardest to hire for roles are in policy and legal, in fundraising and in leadership. And I think that working directly with organisations and also just like through the job board yourself, you can really see those are the roles that are extremely difficult to hire for. And the evidence from that is just the roles going back on the job board or leaders reaching out like: ’Hey, Lauren, have you got any good candidates? Because we really need them.’ And those tend to be the ones.
I, to date, have not had any organisation coming to me going: ‘Hi, Lauren, have you got any good candidates for our more junior roles?’ So I think it's the more senior roles in those particular skill bottlenecks that really kind of come through the most. But one additional thing that I have noticed, at least in Europe, is campaigning roles. And I'm sure, Amy, you know about this, but I really believe that many organisations are really struggling to get good campaigners into their roles. And that's more like directly working with those organisations, rather than based on the research. But hopefully the research this year will show that is the case as well.
Amy: Can you speak specifically to those categories and assess or give your even personal opinion on why you think it is specifically for those?
Lauren: Well, I think in general, as a movement, we're not really investing enough in a pipeline of talent. So I think that people are really just expecting people to just turn up out of nowhere. And I think that is a really large problem. But I think also we're not having enough people going out and getting experience and coming back in. So, for example, in policy, I think that for a lot of the policy roles, they want people to have gone into government or have worked for an MP or to have that specific experience and understand the mechanisms of policy and to come back out with that experience and be a lobbyist. And I think as a movement, we're just not really old enough for that. And people haven't thought about working outside of the movement and coming back in.
So for things like that, I can really understand that we just need to kind of go back out and come back in.
And then I think with fundraising (it was also on another survey that we did): it's the highest turnover rate for fundraisers. So I think fundraisers are also burning out. So I think we struggle to get them in and then we struggle even more to retain them, to keep them. So it's like this constant thing that's going on. And I think when people are talking about fundraising specifically, they're really talking about major donor fundraising. That's the kind of key skill bottleneck. And I just don't think there's really much experience that people can have in this.
And I think that's a really – it's a missing part. I think more organisations should pay people to become junior in major donor developments who have the skill-set to become good fundraisers, introduce them to the donors so they can understand their organisation, they can understand how to fundraise, and that we can build up a pipeline of major donor fundraisers because, well, I just don't know how else we're going to do it, to be honest. Because it's not just having fundraising experience; people want them to be connected to the major donors in our movement or in a movement that connects well to our movement.
James: Yeah, I mean, that is a pretty niche skill. I think major donor fundraising is like, you don't go to university and you learn about major donor fundraising. You don't do it really in like a class. So I can imagine that's extremely hard thing to get experience in or to have a pipeline for.
Amy: So, yeah, I can imagine that's particularly tough in terms of the skill-set for that. Then at the baseline, it's talking to people, right? Convincing them of a good idea; convincing them to hand over that money. What do you think is the kind of – or do you have an opinion on the greatest sort of skill-set for that type of role?
Lauren:So we do have a fundraising skill profile on our website, Amy, that will tell you all the answers to that. But as far as…
James:And we'll link it below so people can read it as well, if they want to.
Lauren
[Laughing] Great!
We also did a fundraising work placement programme which was really specifically focused on bringing people outside that had those kind of skills for fundraising and placing them in an internship in organisations. And like 50% of those people are now working in fundraising roles in the movement. So I think it is possible that people have these kind of transferable skills. And the skills that we were looking for were slightly broader because it wasn't just major donor fundraising, it was more fundraising in general. But I think it's people that have good personal skills.
If it's grant writing, they need to be able to write compelling arguments, they need to be able to story-tell, have good people skills, maybe do a bit of research as well, because I think it's really helpful to be able to research the donor and understand what their interests are so you can have a really good conversation with them. I think, off the top of my head, those are some things, but they're not like really specific skills. I think a lot of people could have these skills. I think we just need to also create space in the movement for these people to grow and be connected to organisations, missions and their donors so they can form those relationships and then be the future. Kind of like a major donor fundraising talent pipeline
James: Do you have any thoughts on what a good talent pipeline looks like? Maybe from other movements or issues? Maybe for something like policy and legal or campaigning and how we can improve ours?
Lauren: Yes, I think when we had a recruiter working from us, it was actually her idea that we should do a work placement programme. And I think that she said it's just really common, particularly when they don't exist at all (the skills) you need to start building those skills up and you need to give them opportunities to work in the movement. So that's what we did with our fundraising work placement programme. I think quite a lot of organisations are cottoning onto this. They do paid internships, not always specifically to skill bottlenecks, which I think would be really useful. But there are more paid internships and I think that is just a really good way to up-skill people on the specific skill-sets that we want in our movement. So I think the options are either to do that or to get people who have those transferable skills and bring them directly into our movement.
James: I ask because this is very relevant to something I'm working on at work, which is: how do we get more people working in political roles, maybe potentially in the US? But I mean, some ideas we have are, yeah, just basically how do we get more people who are mission-driven, working in government, working for, in this case, people who work in Congress, senators, people representatives and I think some ideas we have is funnelling students, particularly kind of like third, fourth year people, to get congressional internships, get some experience, be a stacker for a bit, see how that goes, and then just actually helping them get their foot in the door, whether that's support with hiring – not exactly sure fleshing this out. Actually, do you have any thoughts on the political pipeline especially? That would be very useful to hear.
Lauren: We did. We also have a policy skill profile which I'm sure you can link at the bottom. So I think I can only really talk to – my knowledge is in UK and Germany and I think it really kind of depends on what they specifically want to do. If they want to go and work for an MP, they probably already need to be volunteering in that group. So if it's like in England, if it was Labour or Conservative, if you wanted to work for a conservative MP, then you need to already be working for the working group, the Conservative working group, and showing your party allegiance. And so I think that's something that they look for as like an indicator, and then grow up to.
But I think a lot of it, James, is just network as well. So I think that the more that they can get involved in that kind of volunteering in that kind of party, I think they're more likely to be networking with people, they'll be well known and then often I know some people actually work on MPs who are trying to get elected, so they do the campaigning for the MP, and then the MP gets elected, and they remember that person and they want to bring them onto their staff. So I think, yeah, just kind of placing people in all these different types of things, hopefully, will then eventually lead to some of them getting a position. But I think a lot of it is to do with network.
James: And my last point before I move on, on the pipeline thing is, I think probably one reason why things are weakened relative to maybe some years ago is there used to be lots of university campaigns at universities, particularly in the US. I think groups like Mercy for Animals and the Humane League had like fellowship programmes where they'd have kind of fellows who were doing campaigning on the campus and doing advocacy. And at least in this case, getting trained up in campaigning. And that meant there was a pretty good number of people who had campaigning skills because they'd done their local university Cage Free campaign, the Meatless Monday campaign, and they would slot quite nicely into jobs. But I think now we don't have as good university campaigning infrastructure. So I wonder if there's a gap in the market there to train up students. I guess in the UK there's Plant Based Universities.
So I think there's no way better to get experience at actually doing something, like you said before.
Lauren
I think, Amy, you probably know more about the campaigning kind of bottleneck than I do. As I said, because it's not been something that we have evidence to back, it's not something that we've looked into specifically enough yet. But maybe you have some thoughts on that.
Amy: Yeah, I think it's interesting. One challenge I see and hear from campaigners who were in the movement who've maybe burnt out or moved to a different place is also a sad kind of lack of autonomy and creativity right now. I think as a movement, as we grow and professionalise, and that's awesome, we're bringing so much more money through to help animals. But what that means is that the movement becomes quite homogeneous. And a lot of the times where: ‘Oh, that one thing was really successful, so let's all just do that all of the time.’ And it sort of just really takes out what that core campaigning role, the people that are passionate about that campaigning role, come into the movement for, which I think is that raw-idea generation; thinking of a mad idea that just gets attention and the sort of old school days of the movement where you're know, in your team, you're coming up with awesome ideas that then get press. And it's kind of a challenge, perhaps, of us being more EA-aligned, kind of worrying about measurements.
I think similarly to a lot of the challenges you face, Lauren, I think in campaigning it takes a while to understand what's been successful and what hasn't and what's kind of changing perceptions and what's having that impact. And without that kind of core sense of creativity and really coming up with something new, I think the roles are just less exciting for campaigners now because it's like: ‘Here's this carbon copy of thing that everybody else does. Do that, please, in your job. And actually here's five members of staff that you need to manage.’ And so actually, those real creatives in the movement are spending so much time on the bureaucratic workings of organisations, one-to-ones with their staff, that actually so little time is just spent on coming up with ideas and really pushing campaigning forward. So I think that's a real challenge right now, certainly from what I'm hearing.
Lauren
That's a shame. So you think that there’s this kind of similar thing for us: you need a funder that's okay with you experimenting, basically, as opposed to being very results-oriented?
Amy
Definitely.
I think there's also kind of an interesting quality that we've perhaps lost in the – we've professionalised; we've gone from really kind of scrappy grassroots and from a sustainability and development perspective, advancing in a lot of those areas is really positive. But actually perhaps in the image and kind of the look and feel of how the movement operates, we've maybe just lost a little bit of that core sense of: ‘I'm going to write on a placard and I'm going to take that because I'm passionate about it and the people around me are passionate about it.’ And we've gone to corporate billboards of like, everything's branded and really looks sharp. And I think sometimes it's quite sad that we've kind of lost some of that naivety from early on, where it's just the passion that's driving us and we're going with a great idea. And actually we start to look a bit like the corporates that we've kind of merged so far that actually it just looks like you've hired a load of people to go and stand outside McDonald's. It doesn't look know these people are – do you know what I mean? It's sort of like gone too far. So I think, yeah, there's a lot of challenge in that right now, I think.
James
I feel like there's a whole other episode in here.
Amy
Yeah, sorry. [Laughing]
James
No, this is good! That was a good little bit. I've never really thought about that in that much depth. So thank you, Amy. Maybe this will be the seed of another episode.
Amy
Sure.
Lauren
Yeah. I would certainly love to know more about it. It's really interesting.
James
Yeah.
To get back to our conversation, Lauren. So I guess you kind of spoke about the few main bottlenecks, particularly as policy, legal, fundraising, management, leadership and potentially campaigning (but, you know: ‘to be verified in your research’. I guess, what is AAC doing about these bottlenecks? And, yeah, how does that fit with your programmes?
Lauren
We did the fundraising work placement programme once, so we really tried to specifically target that. But I think now we are looking into specific things that we can do to focus on building talent pipelines in that, in a more cost-effective way than our fundraising work placement programme. So one thing we want to do this year is to create like a legal-specific series. It's kind of like an online course, but just for ‘legal’; and to create a series of events. And the idea, really, behind that is to get people who have the legal and law skill-set to be interested in animal advocacy. And so I think if that works well, and it probably will be cheaper than it was for the fundraising work placement programme, then that's something that we could try and replicate with all of our kind of skill bottlenecks.
So to really build up a much bigger – not just have one skill profile, but have something much more in depth for each one of our skill bottlenecks, that's one thing that we are thinking about doing. But I think that all of our work really is focused on this. Like James, our metric is really for the hardest hired for role. So really everything we're trying to do is to get the most of those roles possible, filled with AAC's work.
Amy
One thing I hear is that there's also a lack of diversity, particularly in maybe more leadership and management roles. Is that something you feel AAC is kind of equipped to address, or is that something that's in your bringing in of talent? Is it something that you think about?
Lauren
I think it is a big problem. Part of it, I think, is in how people enter the movement. So I think that a lot of people enter through volunteering, and we need volunteering as a movement. I'm not suggesting that we don't need volunteering, but only a specific demographic of people can volunteer. And I think a lot of people start off as volunteers and then they end up moving up the ladder. And so a lot of people in leadership are also people who were lucky or fortunate enough to be able to afford to volunteer. And another problem that we have is also in just the recruitment process itself. So a lot of people don't pay people at all throughout the recruitment process, and they're very long recruitment processes.
So that can also – there's a lot of small things that we're doing as a movement that I think really do prevent us from attracting more diverse people. And of course, the fact that our salaries are quite low also means that only a certain type of people can afford to work in the movement. So I'm not really sure if this is something that AAC can do, because I think it's a structural problem with the animal advocacy movement. But the thing that we try and do is be aware of them, share any information with people who are hiring, when they're hiring, and try and promote other types of volunteering, like paid internships as well. I don't know, you could do some sort of scholarship volunteering as well. So just like kind of making sure that there is entry points for people who aren't able to volunteer for free, I think would make a huge difference.
Amy
I think that's a really good point. And there's a question, actually, after Aaron's episode, that I wished I'd asked. I'm listening back through the episode thinking: ‘Oh, I should have said that.’ And one thing that I wish I'd addressed, that actually you've clarified, was the challenge of longevity in the movement. And what that means is the same people who've been here all the time have kind of worked their way up and really hold those positions in those top tier jobs. And perhaps that's stifling more diverse talent coming in, because if we all are pro-longevity, it's the same people that you see around; a very kind of privileged demographic. And so maybe actually that's a challenge.
But then what I'm hearing from you is that actually we have a management bottleneck there, so perhaps it's not a sense of those people holding that ground and staying there forever. So there's no way anyone can move up into management. From what I'm hearing from you, there is actually also jobs in that tier that new people could be coming in to fill, that are from more diverse backgrounds that could help the movement out in that way.
Lauren
Fauanalytics, I think, are going to do a study on this relatively soon again, a retention study. And just speaking, I think to Brooke the other day, she was telling me that anecdotally she knows of at least more than – on her hand she can count of how many executive directors have left their role in the last six months to a year. So I think we're also getting a really high turnover of executive directors. So I think there are some people who have been here from the start, but more and more, there is definitely this kind of turnover of leadership, as well as in fundraising.
But I think particularly in the last year or so, there's something happening in leadership, and I don't know the answer to that for you. Maybe the study will kind of clarify it, but it's certainly like a pattern that we've observed.
James
Do you have any speculation on why that might be the case? Because I'm actually quite interested, because I don't think I've heard of that hypothesis.
Lauren
I really mean, I guess that the movement seems to be more funding constraint than it was when I started AAC, because the very first thing that we did at AAC was ask organisations how much would one donation trade-off against a quality-adjusted person? And a lot of organisations said quality-adjusted person over donation. And I don't think that's the case anymore. Again, we're going to have to re-do the study, but I think that in the last couple of years, the funding in the movement has become much more tight. And I think that puts a lot of pressure on the executive directors because we are mostly the fundraisers. We don't have our major donor fundraisers as well.
So I think that there's a lot of weight on executive directors shoulders, and I wonder if part of that is actually them just taking over that fundraising role. And the high turnover that we're seeing in fundraising is now on the executive directors, and that could be one of the reasons. But I am just speculating and I look forward to the study, basically.
James
And is AAC doing anything on that management and leadership kind of bottleneck? And how are you addressing that?
Lauren
Basically, the answer is no. We're not specifically focused on management and leadership at the moment. But as with all the things that we're doing, they are trying to also focus on finding managers and leaders. And actually with our career advising service, a lot of the people who I advise in career advising are people who have the kind of experience to do something in leadership or those senior levels. And I think that's why in career advising, even though it's much smaller in number than the online course or the job board, a lot of people who come to us for career advising, who end up changing their career are going into those more senior roles, but they tend to have a lot of uncertainties that they want to talk through. And I think that's why it's really helpful to have the career advising session where we're just focused on what are your uncertainties, why you might be a really good fit and trying to find the right opportunity for them. So we have seen a lot of people get those senior roles through our career advising service.
James
And maybe just on that thread before moving on: if people do want career advising, how would they get that from you?
Lauren
So currently, the way that people can get career advising is through a form, and we can add that at the end of the show notes, I guess.
Amy
One thing I wonder is with this kind of bringing new people in – I think part of the challenge of the lack of diversity is you have identified non-paid test tasks, salaries being low, and a part of that issue of information capture is that you don't know who hasn't applied because of one of those barriers, right. It's sort of like you'll never hear from them. We'll never know that they didn't get that 50% of the way through the application process because of some barrier. Is there a way to find out who those people are and how to find out what was the reason that they didn't progress? And was it salary? Was it the big demand on the interview process? How do we sort of capture and understand why they haven't progressed in that process?
Lauren
Yeah, I think that would be really difficult, I think, for an organisation to do on an individual level. But we did actually do a survey, about this time last year, because we were doing an inclusive hiring workshop in collaboration with Scarlet Spark. So we wanted to get organisations some data on the candidate kind of experience. And I think that there was a lot of reasons, like: ‘Did you ever apply for a job and not follow through? What were the main reasons?’ And there's quite a lot of information on that survey that people can read and we can, again, link to that in the show notes.
Amy
One kind of side that's just a personal bugbear of mine is not putting salaries on job ads; not being transparent about salaries. It really winds me up. Just like: ‘Let's just guess how much you're going to give me for this job and whether I can afford to apply.’ Like, who knows? How do you feel about that? And is it something AAC encourages?
Lauren
I'm so glad you mentioned that, Amy! I think actually, so one thing that was really helpful about this survey was presenting the results back to the organisations and saying” ‘This is how many people you're actually putting off by doing the strange things that you do.’ I think that I get really annoyed about this because ultimately AAC wants to not just attract, but also retain and nurture talent. And if the people that we're attracting are having a really bad experience when they're going through their recruitment process, they're going to leave the movement and they're never going to come back again. We spend a lot of money on attracting people in, so we want the organisations to look after them and give them a good experience. And I think that this kind of – like not putting salary on is really unfair because people often actually only find out at the very end. So they might also have done a test task, they might already have done an interview, and they've spent like, maybe, I don't know, up to five or ten hours of unpaid work going through a job that at the very end they find out; ‘I could never afford that.’ And I think that it's not very fair and I don't think it's very good for the broader ecosystem of the animal advocacy movement. But I do understand why they do it, because they're like: ‘Oh, well, if we put the salary, maybe it'll put people off.’ But I think we need to be more transparent about these things. And I think ultimately, it will lead to us having a stronger movement.
Amy
Yeah, well said!
Lauren
Thank you!
James
Agreed, yes!
Also, my personal thing to say – my personal frustration: it makes me think the organisation is unserious. You can't even share how much you're going to pay for this job. It's like – anyway…
Lauren
We actually have on our job board now: if you don't put the salary then we don't put the job on the job board.
Amy
Oh, great!
James
Nice!
Amy
Yeah, that's really helpful.
Lauren
We are trying, Amy. [Laughing]
James
What are the other things that are top of the list in terms of really putting people off during the application process?
Lauren
Yeah, there's quite a few things. I think a lot of organisations – and I do understand why they do this – they're really specific on the job description. So they're like, I am looking for a person that has this and this. And there are so many studies that show that people, especially like non-white men, look at the job description and if they're not 100% fit for that job description, they don't apply. So by organisations doing that, we're putting off a load of people who might have been a really great fit for their organisation. And so I think that having a really specific job description is not necessary because the recruitment process itself should filter people out. You don't need to filter people out in the application process. Just try and attract as many people in as possible. So I think that's another really common mistake that people make and just being too specific about their job descriptions.
Amy
I really love Charity Entrepreneurship's approach to that and I've really updated my own exploration of careers based on that. They say: ‘Let the process decide whether you're suitable or not.’ Right? So at all costs, apply. If the salary is right and that's displayed, then great, apply and the process will whittle it down to who's included. Don't put yourself out of that role. Don't take yourself out of the race. The application process will do that for you. And I think that's great advice.
Lauren
I really agree with that. And I think they get so many more people because they say something like that. So, yeah, again, having something like that attracts way more people to your job that you can then filter through by a good recruitment process.
Other things might be something like the recruitment process being too long. So a lot of people will – they can't wait, especially if you're unemployed and you just need a job. And so you're like: ‘I really hope it's the animal advocacy one that would be my top one job.’ But if you're unemployed and the process is six months long. Are you just supposed to be unemployed for six months waiting for the role, or are you actually just going to have to get another job because you need another job? And I think that even if the recruitment process needs to be long, I think organisations could just be more transparent about how long the recruitment process is so that people can then kind of self-select whether they can actually afford to spend that time doing the recruitment process.
James
Again, I saw that AAC recently launched this initiative, I think it was called Giving For Animals, where you're actually kind of inviting people who have the potential to work in high-earning jobs or are working in high-earning jobs, to use some of that income to help animals. I'm curious to hear more from you: what's the thought behind that initiative and why do you think that's useful?
Lauren
Yeah, okay. So there's actually two different things here. One is like Earning to Give as a career path, and the other is the program that we're doing at the moment, which is Effective Giving. And I'll talk about each one. So the Earning to Give career path, I think, came from 80,000 Hours. And I think that it's because, particularly as AAC grows, we're getting a huge amount of diversity of talented people who are coming to us and asking like: ‘How can I help as many animals as possible?’ And there are some people who could add significantly more value to the animal advocacy movement if they were to take those skills and earn $200,000-300,000 a year and give 10% of their income. I mean, there are people who are earning that amount and giving 50% of their income. So those kind of people can prop up a lot of small organisations, whilst they might only be able to get a junior or average job in the animal advocacy movement. And I think that when we're giving people career advice, we really want to talk about, specifically for that person, how can that individual person add the most value for animals? And I think that Earning to Give can legitimately be one of the most impactful roles for certain people, under the caveats that that person is okay with not working in the movement. And some people need to work in the movement; it is much harder to be surrounded by people who aren't mission-aligned with you and it can be one of the main causes for people getting value drift. So I think there are a lot of caveats that we always add on the end of people doing the Earning to Give. But I think it is a legitimate career path for certain people who have a specific skill-set that would really lend themselves to having a lot of impact for animals like that.
James
Some people just have unique skills that are better placed in the for-profit. And I think a really good example is if you're like very quantitatively minded, you love software engineering and you want to be a trader, there isn't any intense roles like that in that whole movement. But there's plenty in hedge funds and as a quant trader. So I think that seems like one obvious fruit.
And I think the other benefit is the obvious one that the non-profit groups like you kind of mentioned, are propped up by people donating money. So it's essential. And if we're going to keep kind of complaining or being like: ‘Oh, we're so short on money’ and then are like: ‘Oh, people shouldn't go Earn to Give, they should work in the movement.’ There's a bit of a weird dynamic there where it's like: ‘How do we expect to grow?’
And I think of one example being the Effective Altruist movements; they pushed Earning to Give very early on to like 2011, and now they have lots of money able to be used for good causes. I think as like one kind of data point. I think they've done pretty well pushing this narrative and obviously they got some pushback, but I think overall, lots of good has been achieved using that kind of method.
Lauren
I think we just have to be careful. So I think the thing that I think they also admit as a mistake is we don't want to push everyone out of the movement saying: ‘You go out there and earn money because that's the best way that you can help animals.’ I don't think that's true. I think it's really specific to the person. And if you want to talk about it, I'm really happy to have a career advising call with anyone who wants to consider the trade-off between Earning to Give or like having a role in the animal advocacy movement, because I think it is worth having a conversation about.
And the other thing that you spoke about was our Effective Giving programme that we're doing. And again, this kind of comes down to the fact that there's an interesting irony in the movement where there is actually a lot of people who are interested in working in the movement and not enough roles for all of those people. And so I think that for some of those people, if they're not able to get a role or if they're in a job and they don't want to switch their career, another really easy way to help animals, if they can afford to do it, is to just give a certain percentage of their income to animals. And I think that this is something that we don't do enough of in the animal advocacy movement (and I'm not really sure why that is the case) but I really think that we could do, to have more people giving a certain percentage of their income to help animals, because it would just really help diversify our funding and make us more sustainable.
James
Yeah, I agree! And I think you're working with Giving What We Can right on that pledge, and the kind of standard one is 10%, I think. Yeah. And I took the pledge at the end of 2022; last year was my first full year. And yeah, I think it feels great to both be able to contribute to the movement. It's not like an either or. You don't work in the movement, or you donate, you can actually do both. And even if I sometimes think this, like, if my work is going bad, at the worst, my donations are doing good stuff, guaranteed, almost. So I feel good about that almost no matter what. So I think donating is a great way to help, no matter what, basically, yeah.
Lauren
And I also think it's like an easier ask or entry point as well for some people. As I said, not everyone wants to change their career, but I think a lot of people could donate and then they could get involved in the animal advocacy movement and see their donations that way. So I wonder if all of these things will kind of connect together and just basically bring more people in. But for the Effective Giving thing, it is more specific about, like, if you want to help animals and you haven't got a career yet, this is one thing that you can do that would derive a lot of value for us.
Amy
And how do you feel about the progression of the movement from that largely voluntary, everyone entering sort of grassroots level, doing some street activism, through to now: the injection of money over the last few years. So people are largely in paid positions now. Do you find that will or has had a significant impact on the movement in any way?
Lauren
Yes, I think it's a really good question, a very interesting one, and often people will talk about it. And I think volunteering is, as I said, a really important part of the animal advocacy movement. But for a lot of people, when they're volunteering, it's on side of their own job. So it's like a part time specialisation. And so for a lot of people who are volunteering, they're already working a 40 hours week or a 50 hours week, and then they're doing an additional ten or 20 hours. And I think that can really contribute to burnout in our movement. And I think that we don't have enough kind of things of this; looking after our volunteers.
And then when we look at how we're progressing now to more paid roles, then that means that those people are spending those 40 hours just focused on animals. So if we have 80,000 hours of our career, if more people can spend 80,000 hours or a larger part of it on helping animals, I really think that this is going to be one of those things that accelerates our ability to end factory farming sooner. So I think both are really important. And I think that having that paid role is just building that capacity for more people being able to spend more time, focus and energy on helping animals.
Amy
And it is about the long haul. You only need to attend a conference and look around to see that most people in the movement, the majority of people are still very young, still very early on in their careers, in those hours that they've racked up for the movement. So, yeah, just having that sort of protection, feeling like it is a place that you can stay for the long-term, I think has to be sort of exponentially impactful for the future in sustainability.
For people who did listen to the Aaron conversation, maybe there's some reference to there, because I guess the thing is, there's always kind of trade-offs. I think it's obviously good. But then Aaron was saying previously, the trade-offs are: maybe people just take it more as a job. They just clock in, clock out, and they're less kind of like really driven. And I guess they feel somewhat less motivated or they're easier to wind down and not think about work, which has benefits. But I guess it has negatives as well. I think his point was, I think at least one quote is: ‘Everything has trade-offs’, including this, even though the overall might be better for animals.
Lauren
Yeah, I think it's a really good point, and I can understand why that might be the case. But I think most people who are getting a paid role in the animal advocacy movement, particularly because we do this, like, attitude-checking and vetting, I think many organisations are either looking for you to have volunteered. So people have done that point, so it's not like they're just trying to get that really good salary because we're so well paid in the movement. Or they've been in the for-profit sector and they were earning like maybe two times or three times as much, and they're taking that salary cut to help animals. I don't think those are the kind of people that are just clocking in and clocking out. I think most people who are working in our sector really have at least had to demonstrate that kind of alignment when they're going through the organisation's recruitment processes.
James
I agree.
We're not going to solve this all today, so on that note, let's move on to the next section, which is, I think, hopefully nice and practical for people who are listening and interested in how to actually get a job in the space, or how to enter the space. I guess maybe, do you have any initial advice on people listening to the podcast not currently involved in the animal advocacy movement? You've kind of shared some hints, but I guess what would you recommend as kind of three relatively easy things people could do who just want to get more involved or potentially find a job?
Lauren
One thing that they can do is to do volunteering if they like to. I think it gives you a really good, nice flavour of what it's like to work in a movement, and I think it's also really motivating for people. If you want to know more about how the movement is and the kind of opportunities, you can take our online course. So I think this is a really good overview of the animal advocacy movement and the kind of career opportunities that are available for you. And you could also start off by doing a donation, so you could pledge a certain percentage of your money towards animals and see the direct effects already kind of coming in. So I guess that's something that people can start off as early as they want to, really.
Amy
What about for those at maybe kind of university level? We've talked about different career paths, so if you have a particular leaning towards policy or legal or campaigning, but also that kind of Earned to Give arm as well, do you think there's specific university courses or further education that really lines someone up in a really great position to eventually get a job in the animal movement? We've had guests on, talking about alternative proteins, so perhaps it's something like engineering or something. What do you think? Over the next kind of five to maybe ten years, those higher education pieces are going to be really integral into informing those positions?
Lauren
I think it's much clearer for alt protein. So I think they have very specific kind of skills that they need, to very technical related courses that people could get education on. I think it's much harder for the animal advocacy movement, for policy roles. It might be something like politics or economics or those kind of adjacent things that would really help them to do that.
But I think more generally it would be better for people to just focus on getting a degree that they're good at and that they enjoy, because then they'll get a good degree and they can kind of come out of that and then start experimenting in what type of roles they might want to try out with their career and maybe do volunteering on the side so that you can also get an earlier flavour of what type of things that you enjoy doing in a working context.
James
If your university has one, joining your local kind of like animal rights group or whatever vegan group, just to get a sense of it; whether it's campaigning, meeting people. I mean, that's how I kind of got involved in activism. I guess, Animal Policy was doing the VR headsets in my union. I was like: ‘Oh, this is cool. This could be fun.’ Something – things like that.
Lauren
Is it though? [Laughing]
Amy
That's what you thought; you put on the headset and you're: ‘Yes, this is fun!’ [Laughing]
James
No, the headset isn't fun. [Laughing] When you see two macho guys come over acting all cool, pull on the headset and leave, like, really quiet, you're like, that's right.
Anyway, so, yeah, university groups, if you have them, get involved, I think that's a good one. Also, I think something I didn't do enough – I think maybe you agree, Lauren – is like, using your summers for things like internships, if you can have them, or maybe for the volunteering aspects, because university is a time when you have lots of time. If you can use that to do that kind of activities that seems…yeah, I think, pretty useful.
Lauren
Yeah, totally agree with that.
James
You mentioned before that maybe it's actually useful for people to kind of not work in the movement directly after university and they kind of gain skills somewhere else. Do you think that is something you would recommend to people to kind of up-skill in a different field or in like a for-profit world before moving into the animal movement?
Lauren
I’m always very careful with this because I think that we don't want to push too many people out of the movement and for them to never come back. So I am always really careful. I don't want to, without a good mechanism, to look after the people who aren't working in the movement, to bring them back in, and to keep them in a community where they feel like they can share their values. I do feel it is like a bit of a strong statement to say that people need to go out to come back in.
But at the same time, I do think that you can get a lot of really great experience from working in the for-profit sector, mostly just because you get so much more access to things like the training that I received in the seven years of working in the for-profit sector is unparalleled to anything that I've seen in our movement. You just get so many more resources. You're surrounded by other people that also have had a lot of experience in their particular areas. And I do think that for certain things, like maybe management and leadership, it could be useful for people to go out to the for-profit sector and then come back into the non-profit sector. But again, I think it really depends on the individual and where they really want to go.
But I would be really worried about saying that everyone needs to leave and come back in, again, because I think that we still need people that come out of university and go straight into a job in animal advocacy. And there are a lot of roles where you really need to learn in a role in animal advocacy, and it wouldn't be super beneficial, I don't think to go into the for-profit space first and then come back.
James
I think context can be really useful. Just knowing about the movement, I think over the years I've been involved has helped so much. Just being able to know more people, background on the work and campaigns, or whatever. So I think that's a huge boost. And I think the other one is this idea people may have heard of, like Golden Handcuffs, like in consulting, it's quite popular. If you become a consultant, the money is really good. You go: ‘I'll just stick with it for a few more years, and I'll switch out.’ And then your lifestyle gets a bit nicer and more plush, and then your money goes up and it's like some never ending treadmill. So I think there's also that risk of saying you'll go back to the non-profit world, but you never really do. So I think that's a very valid point to make.
Amy
So what about people who want to further their career and take on those kind of more senior leadership roles? Perhaps they're already in the movement or entry level coming in, but at a more senior role: do you have any kind of specific recommendations for those candidates?
Lauren
Really easy thing to do, would just be to read more about leadership in general. There's, I think, some really good books that are out there on leadership, and I think when you become a leader, it's really hard to find the time to read a book on leadership. So if you can do that in advance, then that's really helpful.
I think also, not everyone needs to be a leader or a manager. And I think that, again, doing these kind of low-cost experiments might be helpful, like taking on more management responsibilities, overseeing a team, see if you actually enjoy doing that, and if you do, then it's a good sign that maybe that's something. And you can also put that in your CV, like: ‘I have management experience of running a team.’ Because a lot of people will require, to get a leadership role, that you have some track record of being able to lead other people.
So I think those would be like my main recommendations. There's also a lot of training out there on management and leadership. I haven't come across one that I think is absolute bold management and leadership. But I think for sure, there's some really good books out there on management and leadership stuff. And I think just taking on those responsibilities is probably a really good way to work out whether you're a good fit for it or not.
James
Lauren, what are those books that you'd recommend on management?
Lauren
So I think Tania Luna from Scarlet Spark has done some really good books, and also the Management Center, as well, has some really good resources, I think, for templates, specifically for how to run a good one-to-one. And I was recently doing a leadership training that was provided by Effective Altruism, and they gave a whole list, actually, of recommendations for leaders. And I'd be happy to share that Google Doc if I get the okay from them.
And the last one is actually a book that Laila recommended to me, and it's called No Rules Rules, about the Netflix work culture and really talks about the importance of having people that have the right attitudes and skills in an organisation, in order to be able to – they call it talent density. And I think it's just a really good way of talking about how we want things to be. Like, you need those people that you can really trust with your entire organisation, because then you'll just work much more efficiently and effective. So I also highly recommend that book that was recommended to me.
James
I also read that book recently. I also recommend No Rules Rules. Yeah, it's really good. And yeah, I think that the main thing is if you work in an area that has creativity or innovation at the heart of it, which I think campaigning does, and a lot of our work does, and you want people who are willing to take risks, be innovative: how do you create that culture? Yeah, there's lots of really good examples from Netflix, so I would also recommend that.
And one of the one I've read a summary of, which I think is Managing to Change the World, it's like non-profit, management focused. I think it's good. And it's a pretty short book. It's like the kind of book that's good because it can't be an article. It's just really dense and really practical. So I found it incredibly useful. So I would recommend it. And obviously, being a bit more non-profit focused is a bit nicer for people to actually get their grips around, get their head around.
Amy
So, yeah, so just to round off and say, thanks Lauren, that's been incredibly insightful. Some closing questions. So one piece of news that you're grateful for or particularly excited about at the moment.
Lauren
So actually it's on politics too, so you'll be excited. And I think recently in Germany, there was the new draft for the animal – I think it's called the Animal Welfare Bill or something like that. And a lot of it is heavily based on the Sentience Bill that came into the UK. And a lot of the things that they're recommending to do could have a huge impact for animals. But it's also the first time that this legislation has been updated in 20 years. And a reason why I'm really particularly happy about it is: one of the people that helped push this to be really focused on by the government is somebody that we career-advised into that position who was unlikely to be in that position otherwise. You really can make a big difference if you do decide to kind of be in those positions.
So I think that's really exciting. And I think that Germany is also considering a meat tax, which I feel could be really good if it's executed in the right way, and that it's on all animals, which I think is how it's considered at the moment. So I think Germany in the political space, I think, is really putting some inroads into making some huge changes for animals that I'm particularly excited about.
Amy
We did a study on the meat tax at Animal Ask. So anyone, any other organisations interested in it, I would recommend reading that report because it really has to be executed correctly, as you said, Lauren, to not avoid this small animal replacement problem. So, yeah, we'll also link that meat tax report. But that's exciting. Yeah, really great. And to have placed that person, I mean, that must account for a lot of AAC's impact too.
Lauren
I mean, it's hard to know at the time. I don't think we’re like: ‘Oh, this is only a small ICAP.’ But then, like years in, we're like: ‘Oh, actually this is quite a good’ – like, this person has actually done really meaningful things. So we might have to go back into our ICAPs and adjust this person upwards based on helping put this in.
James
Do you have any recommendations for listeners on any of the topics we spoke about, whether it's books, podcasts, blog posts, so on and so forth?
Lauren
The recommendations that I was most thinking about is Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You. And I think that really talks about this passion versus kind of like being-good-at trade-off in a lot more detail than I was able to explain today. And I think it’s really interesting on that.
There's also another book called Range that talks about, I think, the tagline which is something like why generalists trump specialists, which I think, again, is really apt for the animal advocacy space because I think we do tend to be made up out of generalists. And I think it's really interesting book for people to read.
I would also recommend Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. And that is, I think, really a very useful way to frame things. Like, it even tries to help you to re-frame rejection, to understand that it's fine to be rejected and to really just – the way that you frame things is just so incredibly powerful and I think can be really helpful for people when they're thinking about career knockbacks and setbacks and how we can really take these things and have a more positive way and be more robust as a movement. So I think those are my three kind of career related self-development recommendations.
Amy
That's great! I've not read any of those, so they're all added to my list as well. Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren
And then for podcasts, obviously, I would recommend this one. But then a kind of, like, obviously different podcast recommendation would be by Jack Kornfield. And it's called the Heart Wisdom podcast. And it's basically a podcast that really goes – I think they're Dharma talks, so a lot of them are just, like, recorded Dharma talks. I found it so helpful when I was in the consulting space to reconnect to myself by listening to this podcast. And I think that it's another kind of area that we didn't talk very much about today. But in general, I think we really need to be looking after ourselves as a movement and spreading that loving kindness. So I think that is a podcast that I just find keeps me grounded when things get really stressful and is just generally really lovely to listen to. It has a very soothing, calming voice.
Amy
And so how can people get more involved in your work, Lauren? Obviously, there's the job board, so they could be applying. There's the career consultation. But as Animal Advocacy Careers are you hiring at the moment? Do you need volunteers? Where can people find out more?
Lauren
Yeah, so we're not currently hiring for organisations. When we send the talent bottleneck survey around, I would really appreciate it if you would respond to the survey so we can have a better understanding of the talent bottlenecks for certain people who have actually engaged in our services. It would also be really great if, when we want to interview, if people could respond to the interviews so that we can kind of work out our actual impact. So those are like two things that we would really appreciate, to help us be more impactful.
But how people can get involved is most likely the online course. I really recommend that. Look out for – we're going to increase the number of blogs and kind of career advising articles that we publish on AAC's website in the upcoming year.
So hopefully some of those things will be really interesting for some people. And yeah, of course, please, if you feel like a career advising session would be helpful for you, then we are kind of reopening that form again and we can link that to the show notes. And of course, lastly, and not least, if you don't want to do a career but you are considering just trying to have impact for animals, then I would really encourage people to look into the Effective Giving pledge that we're kind of running with at the moment. Because again, I think that if we get a small number of people to even consider this kind of thing, we can prop up some smaller organisations and really improve the funding landscape for the movement.
Amy
Awesome! Well, thanks so much, Lauren. Great to chat; really interesting! You know, many different people will have got a lot from this episode, whether you're in the movement, wanting to get in. I think that's been really comprehensive. So thanks so much for your time and everything you're doing for the movement. And yeah, best of luck with all of the projects going forward!
Lauren
Thanks very much for having me!