I applied for a role ~2 months ago and got fairly far along. Having a call today with one of the cofounders to get feedback
The role was “Head of Operations/Founding Generalist” at an AI Safety field-building org

My model

The process went something like this:
1. Application → CV, application questions
2. Interview with co-founder A
  - Part 1 → auditing/improving their application system
  - Part 2 → a written communication task
3. 2 hour work trial
4. Interview with co-founder B
They liked me a lot! (They said this)
The given reason they didn’t choose me in the end was that I had less “AI operations” experience than the other final candidates

What I don’t know

I did a ~2 hour work trial for them and I didn’t get any clear feedback about it, other than the second cofounder in my second interview saying that he’d have done task 1 differently and was somewhat surprised by my approach
- ❓What did you think of my “task 1”?
- ❓What did you think of my “task 2”?
I’ve just revisited my work trial doc to see what I did. Will ask how they would have expected!

They said “however, we’d love to pass along your info to other orgs who might be hiring in our network” → what does this look like on their end? At first I found this reassuring (cool, this could still lead to a job!), now I feel skeptical
- ❓ Is there any way that I can proactively reach out to orgs and say “[org] think I’m good, and have recommended I reach out?”

I’m tempted to do some kind of lateral thing where I stop applying for stuff via 80,000 Hours (too competitive!) and instead get experience somewhere else
Advice/thoughts from this cofounder, given his part. What skills helped him land this role?
❓The “we didn’t hire you b/c you don’t have enough AI ops experience” is a chicken-and-egg problem. So, what skills do they have, what skills did other applicants have, that I could gain?
❓Model of what great operators/cofounders do - what is the skillset, what stuff is vs isn’t table-stakes?
- This is what I was asking senior ops people at EAG