Applications for our next round are open!

Apply by 11.59pm, Tuesday 21st January.

What the Career Planning Intensive involves

What is the Career Planning Intensive?

If you’re looking to carve out some time to focus on career planning and want to get feedback from others on your plans, then this programme could be a great fit.  

The Career Planning Intensive is a 6-week programme, involving weekly 2-hour sessions with 3-4 other participants. It is meant to provide value in three ways:

  • Providing you with a space and a social circle to focus on building an actionable, high-impact career plan;

  • Introducing concepts that are important in increasing the impact of one's career;

  • Mentorship to help you devise plans, consider a larger option space, and take action on those plans.

The first five sessions will take place in consecutive weeks, while the final session will be a review session 1 month later. In between sessions, participants will investigate the career-related uncertainties they have identified so that they can discuss what they have learnt and update their plans the following week.

Who is it aimed at?

It’s aimed at individuals who've already spent some time thinking about which problems they should work on, and are familiar with core EA concepts. An example could be someone who's completed the In-Depth Fellowship, who has been involved in the EA community for over a year, or who has attended EA Global or an EAGx.

What are the requirements?

The programme runs for 6 weeks. To take part, you should be

  • Willing to spend 2-3 hours each week investigating the career-related uncertainties you have identified —so that they can discuss what you have learnt and update plans the following week;

  • Committed to attending all 6 sessions (unless unforeseen circumstances arise);

  • Excited about making a positive impact;

  • Open to changing your mind.

If you have any more questions, please contact info@eacambridge.org or antonio@meridiancambridge.org.

The curriculum.

  • Week 1: Impact and Careers

    The world has so many problems, and they’re huge! How do we evaluate our impact, and choose what to work on? What does it mean to be satisfied with my career? This week is meant to provide you with resources to explore these questions.

  • Week 2: Long-term and Personal Fit

    Later in our careers, we are more skilled and in better positions to make impactful decisions. How do we take that into account when planning our careers?

    Furthermore, this week explores tools and exercises to consider one’s unique strengths and positioning in the world.

  • Week 3: Strategy Setting

    Alright, time to put ideas into practice! This week’s session refines our answers to previously explored question about impact in order to set up an initial career strategy plan.

    Your plan will involve answering questions like: What career capital would most help you advance in your top longer-term paths? What tests could you do that might let you eliminate each of your longer-term path ideas as a promising option?

  • Week 4: Building Back-up Plans

    Given deep uncertainties about our strengths, the available roles in the future, and what will happen, this week is about being ready for the unexpected.

    We will work on setting up plans A, B, and Z, mapping out what are the most uncertain aspects about them and starting to go in-depth about making them robust to failure modes.

  • Week 5: Resolving Uncertainties

    With our plans designed, this week is focused on exploring the most uncertain premises and conclusions revolving around these plans. We will explore tools to acquire information about one’s strengths, and help ensure the plans we have actually do lead to impact.

  • Week 6: Check-in

    It's now been roughly a month since session 5, and you’ve started taking steps to explore your career options, improve your career capital, and obtain more information about your fit. This session is meant to help you deal with this new information: should you update your plans in light of it? Are there any new options you hadn’t previously considered?

Apply by 11.59pm, Tuesday 21st January