Career Advising Specialist

About the Role

The Career Advising Specialist helps value-aligned talent figure out where they can do the most good for animals, and then helps them design a plan on how to get there. You’ll run personalised 1:1 advising sessions with AAC applicants and connections, supporting them through career planning and into high impact positions in the animal advocacy sector.

A central part of this role is becoming a trusted talent scout for the movement. Over time you will develop sharp judgement about which people are genuinely ready for high impact roles, and you will surface those candidates for referral to the hiring organisations we partner with. You will treat every referral as a chance to test and sharpen that judgement, learning from what happens next so your calibration gets measurably better with each hiring round.

Alongside the 1:1 work, you’ll maintain deep expertise in the animal advocacy landscape, using what you learn from advisees and the sector itself to keep refining how we find, screen, and support the people most likely to move into high impact roles.

You’ll be trusted to adapt the programme itself, adjusting call frequency, duration, and the number of sessions per applicant as our goals evolve, while keeping rigorous records of your work so what you learn actually gets used to improve the service over time.

Are you considering applying but have questions about the role?

Join us for a live Q&A on the three roles we’re hiring for at AAC: Talent Sourcing Specialist, Career Advising Specialist, and Content & Communications Specialist. We’ll open with how AAC works as a team and what it’s like to work here, then take questions on each role in turn. Come with anything you want to know about the culture or the role itself.

Date and time: 17th of July, 5:00 PM CET

Register for the Q&A here.

How Will YOU Make a Difference?

1:1 advising and mentorship

• Deliver personalised 1:1 career advising sessions to AAC applicants and connections, assisting them in career planning and securing high-impact positions within the animal advocacy sector.
• Manage and expand the mentorship programme, ensuring a consistent and effective flow of mentors to support particularly impactful advisees.
• Maintain long-term relationships with past advisees, providing continuous support and guidance as they navigate their career paths.
• Adapt the advising programme based on evolving organisational goals, including adjusting call frequency, duration, and the number of sessions per applicant.

Talent identification and referral

• Build and maintain a clear, evolving picture of what a top candidate looks like for the roles our hiring partners are trying to fill.
• Identify the advisees and connections most ready for high-impact roles, and add them to our talent database with a concise, honest assessment of their strengths, gaps, and fit.
• Use the feedback we gather from hiring organisations on referred candidates to see how the people you’ve advised go on to perform, test your own judgement, and correct for any consistent bias in how you rate people.
• Feed what you learn back into screening and advising, so the quality and calibration of your assessments improve over time.

Outreach and engagement

• Represent AAC at conferences to provide career advice and establish strategic connections within the animal advocacy and effective altruism communities.
• Deliver workshops and presentations on career paths in animal advocacy, including travelling to EA chapters and groups as required.

Strategy, data, and research

• Maintain deep expertise in the animal advocacy landscape, identifying nonprofit talent bottlenecks and high-leverage opportunities in adjacent sectors.
• Analyse advisee data and industry trends to provide feedback and identify areas for service improvement.
• Refine candidate profiles by identifying the traits of candidates most likely to transition into high-impact roles, using these insights to improve the screening process.
• Maintain rigorous data records of all coaching interactions, ensuring information hygiene and identifying patterns that can further refine operational processes.

You’ll know you’re succeeding when:

• You’re on track to delivering at least 100 career advising calls a year with candidates assessed at 3.0+ on our scale, and contribute to accurately identifying which applicants are the strongest fit.
• You’re adding well-matched candidates to our talent database, and a growing share of the ones we refer from it progress to interview, offer, and hire.
• Your advising process is organised and well documented, and you can point to concrete improvements you’ve made based on data and outcomes.

About Animal Advocacy Careers

Animal Advocacy Careers connects experienced, mission-driven professionals with the roles where their skills will have the greatest impact on ending factory farming. We research where the movement’s talent bottlenecks are, and help people move into the roles where the need is greatest.

Why Join AAC

You’ll help decide which people move into the highest impact roles for animals, one advising call at a time. The people you advise could end up founding or leading organisations, shaping policy, or building the next generation of interventions for animals, and for many of them, your call could be the reason they took that path seriously.

Benefits to you

• An independent but supportive working culture where we value and encourage high agency and autonomy.
• Fully remote work environment and team.
• Generous and flexible self-managed time off policy, 20 days per year is the organisation's minimum.
• Closed-office periods from 21 December to 1 January each year, which doesn't count against your annual leave.
• Optional 2 days of direct volunteering work, e.g. at a sanctuary, protest, or self-care days.
• 1-month paid sabbatical after every 3 years.
• Encouragement and support to spend at least 5% of your paid time on learning and development, plus a $500 USD annual professional development budget.
• A home office equipment allowance of $1,000 USD every two years.
• A clear compensation policy with opportunities for progression.

A couple of things to know:

• You’ll be required to attend one in-person team retreat in Europe per year.
• We have collaboration hours every weekday from 14:00–16:30 CET, when you’re expected to be online, available for meetings and responsive to peers on Asana.

Ideal Candidate Profile

This role blends coaching, advanced sector knowledge, and strategic judgement, and we don’t expect equal strength in all three from day one. What matters most is the combination of advising craft and fluency in the animal advocacy space.

Required:

• Ability to deliver high-quality, individualised 1:1 career advising which enables professionals to make a successful transition into animal advocacy or other roles which have potential impact for animals.
• Excellent verbal communication and active listening. You build rapport quickly and adapt your approach depending on who's in front of you.
• Good judgement under real constraints. You can make and defend a prioritisation decision, for example who gets a limited call slot in a given month.
• Genuinely motivated by doing the most good for animals.
• A strong, accurate sense of how to match someone's skills and background to realistic paths, including ones they hadn't considered.
• Real fluency in the animal advocacy sector: the organisations, roles, hiring patterns, and where the talent bottlenecks are right now or a clear track record of getting up to speed quickly in a new field.
• High social budget, and desire to have multiple conversations with people in a day.
• Willing to travel occasionally within Europe for conferences and workshops.
• Strong, honest judgement about people, and the confidence to give candid assessments.

Desirable:

• Experience advising, coaching, recruiting, or mentoring people through career decisions, ideally in or near the nonprofit or animal advocacy world.
• Familiarity with effective altruism and how it approaches prioritising between causes and interventions.
• Background in or exposure to nonprofit, mission driven, or advocacy work.
• Familiarity with career paths outside traditional animal advocacy (e.g. corporate food roles, government and policy, journalism, finance, or academia) and how people in these roles can influence positive outcomes for animals.
• Comfort working with data to track outcomes over time and use it to refine a process.

Personal Attributes:

• You care about the outcome for animals, and it shows up as rigour in how you work.
• You are proactive and take initiative, constantly learning and improving the advising process.
• You treat feedback as data, and you give and take it straight.
• You make your work and your reasoning visible, documenting it so your manager and colleagues can see where things stand.
• You are comfortable holding a high volume of calls and moving between many relationships at once without losing the thread.
• You can work independently while still fully following AAC's standards, processes, and timelines.