If you’re fortunate enough to have a choice in what you do for work, your career can be an incredibly impactful way to help others. Maybe you’re searching for socially conscious companies to build your skills and career capital. Or maybe you’re just looking for a job you enjoy that helps others along the way.
It’s an admirable decision to consider your social impact as another important factor in your career decisions—alongside your own preferences and needs. However, it’s not obvious where to start looking for impactful job opportunities that align with the types of roles you’re looking for. Where do you start?
Before jumping to job boards and applications, it’s important to take a step back and strategize. Probably Good exists to help you find a career that’s both good for you and good for the world. Our career guide can walk you through the process of analyzing important cause areas, assessing potential impact, and investigating the best options for you. If you are ready to apply for more specific roles, we’ve compiled some resources to help you get started.
Finding jobs worth applying to
If you want to help improve the world, you may not find particularly promising jobs in a generic internet or LinkedIn search. In addition to our own job board, the job boards we’ve compiled are specifically focused on opportunities that could help others. We think they could provide a good jumping off point for exploring options, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that not all “social impact” jobs make a big impact in practice.
We can’t vet every opportunity listed on external job boards, so we recommend carefully analyzing the opportunities that interest you and assessing how much they could make a difference in the world. That said, even if a job isn’t the most impactful opportunity for you, it could serve as a valuable source of career capital to prepare for future career moves. Here are a few places to start exploring:
The Probably Good job board
Our job board curates opportunities from high-impact organizations around the world. We focus on jobs that have a high chance of making a significant positive impact in a wide range of cause areas—from climate change to global health & development to animal welfare, and more. You can also filter by experience, education, location, and skillset to find opportunities that suit your needs.
Go to the job boardImpact-focused job boards
- 80,000 Hours is another impact-centered career guidance organization (like us!) with a lot of helpful research and advice. Their content is primarily focused on careers that reduce the chances of existential risks, but their job board includes opportunities in a range of important cause areas.
- Global Jobs lists opportunities in NGOs, private sector companies, think tanks, and governments across major global cities.
- Idealist has an easily searchable, regularly updated job board for social impact & nonprofit jobs. It’s mostly focused on jobs in the U.S., but it includes some international opportunities as well.
- Jobnet lists global opportunities in civil service careers.
- Remote Impact provides a simple search tool for work-from-home based positions focused on social impact opportunities (especially climate, health, & poverty initiatives).
- Responsible Tech includes tech-focused jobs that “ensure technology is aligned with the public interest.”
Job boards by cause area
Global health & development
Climate change
Animal welfare
Region-specific job boards
- MoveMeBack – Africa
- NGO Jobs – Africa
- EthicalJobs – Australia
- Euro Brussels – Europe
- DevNet Jobs India – India
- Haces Falta – Latin America & Spain
- Work For Good – U.S.
- Public Affairs Council – U.S. based positions within public affairs
Resources within the Effective Altruism community
- The EA Opportunities board includes a range of job opportunities, temporary positions, internships, and volunteer opportunities (mostly geared towards junior positions)
- This Facebook page shares job opportunities specifically aligned with Effective Altruism ideas and/or the community
Where to go from here
Whether you’re looking for the best way you can improve the world, hunting for impactful remote roles, or searching for a dream job that happens to help others along the way—we hope these job boards could point you in the right direction.
Not sure how to prioritize between different options? Check out our career guide to learn more about assessing how much impact you might have in a specific role.
Still looking for the right career path for you? Check out our career path profiles to learn more about promising possibilities.
Want to talk to someone about your career plans? Apply for our free 1-on-1 advising services to chat with our team about your options.
Know of an impact-focused job board we should include? Get in touch at team@probablygood.org and let us know.
