Deadline: 4th May 2025, 23:59 BST

About Open Cages

We are an organisation fighting animal suffering. We are part of an international organisation, Anima International, and since 2018, we oppose animal cruelty in the UK. To achieve our goal we use scientific evidence, careful reasoning, and draw upon decades of collective experience. Just in the last few years, we have successfully helped improve the lives of hundreds of millions of farmed animals in the UK.

We are impact-oriented and use a wide array of tools to make the world a better place. Our current toolkit includes:

• Investigations which reveal the reality hidden behind the walls of factory farms
• Negotiations with companies to encourage them to eliminate cruel practices from their policies
• Advocacy to secure legal milestones for animals

At Open Cages we won’t stop until we end animal suffering. We would like to invite you to join us and help us achieve this goal.

What do you gain by working at Open Cages?

• Meaningful work – you will help build a world free from animal suffering.
• Time – you will be able to focus full-time on helping animals.
• High degree of flexibility – the work is almost totally remote and you will organise your working hours and workflow yourself.
• Trust – we expect you to make mistakes as a given and learn from them.
• Autonomy – you will experience freedom and independence in your decision-making.
• Transparency – you will have access to the work and decisions of others.
• Honest work culture – you will know what your colleagues are doing and what they really think.
• Knowledge – you will learn and receive support from people who have been fighting for animals for many years.
• Opportunity to grow – you will learn every day and be encouraged to experiment beyond your skill set.
• Ability to influence the organisation – we encourage our people to openly speak their mind and thus you will be able to impact what kind of organisation we are.
• A laugh – animal advocacy can be dark at times, we think that having a fun atmosphere is key to balance this.
• Transparently set compensation – Our salaries are not negotiable and are based on a transparent algorithm that is the same for each role.

Following a 3-month probation period, you will transition to a fixed-term contract. Upon successful completion of this term, you will be offered a full-time employment contract. A minimum salary of £39,695.24 gross (our salary base for people resident in the UK) will apply from the beginning of the probationary period. The salary base may change due to your previous experience related to the position, or your experience in animal advocacy (+3% for each year). In addition, the salary increases with your seniority in Open Cages according to the following model:

+ 7% – for every year worked at Open Cages during the first 5 years of work

+ 5% – for every year worked at Open Cages during the next 5 years of work

+ 3% – for every year worked atOpen Cages during the next 5 years of work

+ 2% – for every year worked at Open Cages during the next years of work

About your role

We are a small and ambitious early-stage organisation with two full-time team members. Our current objective: to help the 1 billion chickens raised annually in the UK. By joining us as a campaigner you will be both strategising and spending time on the frontlines, by talking to the biggest companies, producing investigative reports and giving media interviews. Your first task will be to help us convince the UK’s largest food businesses to improve their chicken welfare policies through public and behind-the-scenes advocacy. While this may sound challenging, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a historic change for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Someone has to pick up the fight, and we hope it will be You.

We can accommodate to you

Due to the broad scope of our work, there is no simple description of the perfect campaigner. There may also be certain areas where you are stronger than others, and we are open to fitting the role around you. We are looking for a generalist rather than a specialist. However, you do need to have some particular strengths such as resilience, persistence, creativity, and critical thinking. Ideally, some day, you will be able to lead a big team and transfer your knowledge to them.

No previous experience is required for this role. While experience will be valued (and reflected in the salary), we welcome applications from both seasoned professionals and passionate newcomers who align with our organisational culture.

What do we require from you?

• Strong belief in the mission of our organisation. Working for us should not be thought of as a ‘career step’. We want people who are motivated by our mission above all.
• Flexible availability. We think of ourselves as a small startup. The fate of the organisation rests on a handful of highly motivated advocates who want to do something ambitious with their lives. We want to maintain the intensity of our current operating culture, so you should expect to work the occasional weekends and late evenings.
• Not being an asshole. We expect you to treat others with respect, decency and compassion – even the occasional adversaries.
• A preference for hard work. Activism is our passion and one of the main motivations in life. To fit our culture, you have to be a person that is proactive and enjoys work.
• Growth mindset. Nobody knows how to fix the world, so we need you to keep learning. We constantly strive to be better at our activism, but also as people.
• Strong interest in a high-feedback culture. We have a culture of honest and direct communication. We talk openly about our strengths and weaknesses on a daily basis because we want to be the best. You will know what your colleagues really think of you and be encouraged to speak your mind.
• Ability to reason and communicate your thinking, especially in a written form. In order to thrive in our organisation you must be able to think carefully, try to back up your ideas with reasonable evidence, and above all be open to being proven wrong and changing your mind.
• Fluency in English. You will be working in a UK-based organisation which will require constant communication with English speakers.
• Ability to work in the UK. This offer is open to candidates who are either currently UK-based, or are willing to move to the UK for the job. We are happy to do whatever we can to help you in relocating, depending on your needs and our ability. If you have any questions about what we can help with, don’t hesitate to write to us!

You do not need to be vegan or vegetarian. While all of our events provide only plant-based meals, we are open to anyone who wants to fight for a world that is free from animal suffering. We won’t turn down any help. 

What will you do?

• Build culture – you will help build and reinforce our culture, so we never lose what makes up the strength of Open Cages.
• Embrace reality – you will make it your mission to understand the world as it is rather than as you would like it to be.
• Manage activists – you will manage and work with teams of both employed and voluntary activists.
• Experience frustration – you will feel frustrated about things you could do better or things that are not working in the organisation or your team, and use this frustration as an opportunity to refine and elevate our organisation.
• Question ideas – you will question common knowledge, especially your own ideas, so that our results are always as good as they can be.
• Optimise your performance – you will continuously deepen your knowledge – both about particular areas of animal advocacy and about how the world works – and enjoy this process.
• Prioritise action – you will act even when there is not sufficient data.
• Abandon projects – you will change your objectives when it makes sense, no matter the time already invested.
• Respect and trust others – you will be there for others and trust their intentions. You will support them when they succeed and when they fail.
• Seek information independently – you will be responsible for acting very independently which will require you to obtain and verify data.
• Make mistakes – you will embrace your mistakes without being ashamed with the desire to learn from them.
• Try again and again and again – the decision makers we want to reach often don’t want to improve animal welfare, others may simply not have time for you. In this role you will need extreme persistence in order to gain traction with companies.
• Build relationships – you will need social competence as you try to build trust and work with company executives to make progress for animals.
• Strategise – it is not easy to change the world. As a campaigner you will ask yourself endless questions. You will be responsible for campaign strategy which requires careful planning and the ability to think ahead.
• Take risks – negotiating in a high stakes meeting, attending a farming conference, organising a protest, taking 500 videos of a retailer’s chicken products for a BBC story (yes, we did this!) – in this role you will need to be comfortable with stepping out of your comfort zone.
• Conduct research – you will spend many hours online gathering information, working with investigators and lawyers, or delivering 50 chicken products to a lab in Germany (we did this too). 🙂
• Create engaging content – you will produce emotive graphics and videos for social media, factual reports and data-driven briefings for journalists and politicians.
• Work with the media – you will engage with journalists, write press releases, and give the odd interview.
• Mobilise advocates – you will write emails to our supporters and motivate them to take action with us. You will also organise and run street actions like protests and stunts.
  

Do you think this role is too challenging and you’re not fit for it?

You may be thinking that this role would be interesting for you, but you won’t make the cut. 

We encourage you not to worry and fill out the application nonetheless, especially if you meet our requirements (even on a basic level) and you think this position could bring you a lot of joy. Leave the judgment about your competence to us. You may even learn something useful along the way. 🙂

We’re hosting informational webinars about this role and our recruitment process – sign up below and find out why you should give it a try.

What will help you go through the recruitment process successfully?

• Familiarity with Effective Altruism principles.
• Studying our recommended materials list (see below).
• Attending the webinar we are hosting (see below).

List of materials that will help you get this job

To help you progress through the stages in our recruitment process, we have prepared a list of materials. They will be especially useful for those who do not meet our requirements or lack either experience in activism or role-specific expertise, but we encourage all candidates to read them. In the list you can also find webinars recorded by our staff so you can learn more about our organisation and recruitment process.

Podcast

We recorded a podcast (1h 4min) where the Open Cages team talks about the specifics of our work and our organisational culture.

Webinars

We will be hosting webinars (with live Q&A sessions) so you can ask us all the questions you may have about Open Cages, working with us, the position and the recruitment process. You can submit your questions in advance here or ask them yourself during the meeting.

Click on the links below to join (our webinars will be hosted on Zoom video conferencing platform). We will post a link to the recording for people who couldn’t attend, so you can revisit this page later on to watch it.

Webinar schedule

16 April, 18:00 BST
Gabi Jadłowska, People Operations Manager – Overview of our recruitment process

23 April, 18:00 BST
Connor Jackson, CEO and Co-Founder of Open Cages – Overview of the roles of Campaigner, Communications Generalist, and Operations Generalist

Pre-recorded: 
Are you afraid that you’re not good enough to work at Open Cages? – a look at the various cognitive biases that make us poor evaluators of our own skills, and why we encourage you to apply even if you doubt yourself. This webinar was recorded during a previous recruitment.

Important information about our recruitment process

Overview of the process

We value your competence rather than credentials

The aim of the process is to get to know you, this is why we put heavy emphasis on tests.

We don’t rely on interviews and first impressions 

People who make a good impression during interviews are not always the best fit for the organisation – and vice versa. We prefer to talk to you after we’ve had the chance to get to know you. Answers from the initial interview will be transcribed and scored anonymously, you don’t need to dress up!

We aim to be fair and minimise bias

To avoid bias, our recruitment process in most of the stages is blind, anonymised and pseudonymised by someone not participating in the candidates’ evaluations. We put substantial effort into making sure we rate all applicants objectively.

We hope to reduce application obstacles and make the recruitment process dignifying

We will be hosting webinars for those interested to give a glimpse into what the role is about and how we work, and help combat performance anxiety. We also provide a list of materials for people who lack the necessary experience or expertise for the role.

Ideally, after the recruitment, we will try to provide feedback on our rationale and comment on stronger and weaker aspects of a candidate if rejected. Please note that the feedback feature may be limited by the number of participants due to limits in our resources. Most likely we will only be able to provide feedback to candidates who reach later stages of the recruitment process.

Participants will be compensated for the trial.

Due to the structure of our recruitment process, it may be time consuming and demanding.

Timeline

• 1 April – 4 May 2025 – Apply – Time for you to apply.
• 10–19 May 2025 – Join us on a video call to answer a few brief questions – It will be scheduled at a time convenient for you and take 15-30 minutes.
• 24 May – 1 June 2025 – Do role-specific tasks and answer cultural fit questions – We will send you some tasks to complete in a questionnaire format.
• Reference check – We will ask you for contact information for a few professional references, such as former employers, supervisors, to talk about your skills and traits.
• 7–15 June 2025 – Join an interview – If you successfully pass the previous stages, we will invite you for an interview. You will be compensated for your time.
• 25 June – 25 July 2025 – Do a short work trial with us – If you successfully pass the interview stage, we will invite you to join us for a two-day work trial. You will be compensated for this.
• 26–30 July – Learn whether you are accepted – We will contact you to let you know about the final decision regarding your application.
• August 2025 – Get feedback from us – If you are interested, we will do our best to provide feedback to help you understand what we rated positively in your application and what we didn’t. We hope this will help you in getting another impactful position. This stage is heavily dependent on the amount of participants due to constraints in our capacity.

Please note: the timeline may slightly change due to unforeseen circumstances. We will do our best to make sure it won’t.

Deadline

We accept applications by 4 May 2025, 23:59 BST.

Technical aspects

You will be required to use the Zoom application to participate in the webinars and in the interview stage of the recruitment.

Contact information

If you have any questions about the role or the recruitment process, please email [email protected].