Effective careers

Ways in2 openings

This band is about where it leads. Internships, traineeships and paid programmes — fellowships, residencies, bootcamps — are rarely where you change the most, but they are often how people get into the teams where that happens. An internship with the directorate writing the national AI strategy is how people end up writing it later. Some programmes are held abroad. We list those when they are paid and last six months or less, because then you do not have to move for them.

Roles with leverage, here in the Netherlands4 roles

This tier is about leverage. Most of these employers — ministries, regulators, universities, banks — would not say they work on one of the world’s largest problems, and nobody has vetted them as a whole. What we look for is different: roles that let you point more at the problem than your own hours. That might be money, or rules that bind a whole sector, or the work of dozens of other people, or an idea that is free to copy afterwards. A credit analyst at an agricultural lender can matter more than a programme officer at a charity. That judgement is ours, made role by role, and we always write down the reason. Competition here is usually a good deal lighter.

What we mean by leverage