After Interviewing 18 SPAR Mentee Applicants, I Stopped Looking for the “Strongest” Candidate
I am a first-time mentor for the Fall 2026 SPAR cohort, a remote AI-safety research fellowship that pairs mentees with mentors working on AI-safety related projects on reducing x-risk or other related risks. During prep, one piece of advice I received was to interview far more people than I normally would and treat the process itself as a form of exploration. The stated goal was simply to get to know the actual person through real-time conversation and compare that with how they came across on paper. ...