Penned by Christina

“Don’t think of climate change as an environmental issue; think of it as a market issue. In fact, you can remain agnostic about the science of climate change but still recognize its importance as a business issue.”*

As individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and industries push into the field of sustainability consulting, it can become murky as to what that work even entails. This is especially true when considering the different perspectives and methodologies that are employed and adding even more complexity is the variability among clients and their needs. Thus, this quote sums up for me what sustainability consultants are trying to do – they help businesses address and redress the way in which they operate so that they will be better positioned for the market of the future a la decreasing their negative impact on the natural environment. Some argue that like the trends of international business and e-commerce, sustainability will at some point cease to be its own discipline and assume its rightful place within all of business practices. (At which time sustainability consultants will become just “consultants” and we can never have enough of those!)

I am often asked to rattle off sustainability consulting firms so I decided to do just that right here (not an exhaustive list!):

Large Firms with a Growing Sustainability Practice
- Deloitte
- Accenture
- BCG
- McKinsey & Company

Well-Established, Boutique Firms
- Business for Social Responsibility
- Blu Skye Consulting
- Green Order
- SustainAbility
- Natural Capitalism, Inc.
- Natural Logic
- Ecosecurities

Lesser-Known, Boutique Firms
- InterfaceRAISE (offshoot from well-known sustainability pioneer Interface, Inc.)
- Domani
- Strategic Sustainability Consulting
- Business Evolution Consulting
- Green Squad (Waste Management endeavour)
- Garretson Group (now Pinyon Partners LLC)
- Five Winds International
- Cameron-Cole

There are countless others – not to mention (though I guess I am) many firms that have traditionally focused in environmental consulting (more on the compliance and regulatory side), marketing, law, PR, etc. that are building out sustainability practices and showing up at events such as the Sustainable Brands Conference or Net Impact’s National Conference. If you have friends or a network rooted in a “traditional” field, you should reach out to them to talk with them about what those plans might be. At best, it positions you for the future and at worst, you further educate yourself on where this field is and is NOT going by giving you a sense of the ubiquity of these ideas from an industry and geographical perspective.

I also know of a number of people who have ventured out to create their own sustainability practices. This takes an established network, an ability to display salient work experience, a salesperson’s tenacity and potentially some savings in the bank so you’re not sleeping on the street in between gigs. This is a tough path to forge but if you have all of the above, it is certainly possible…I’ve seen it!

Finally, the lack of a specific definition for what sustainability consulting IS also probably adds to its attraction — it’s easy to think, “Hey, I can help a company turn off its lights more or use fewer plastic water bottles.” Next week, I’ll talk more about the specific skills that are important if this is indeed the type of work you want to do. Through outlining those skills, you should be able to evaluate whether sustainability consulting is really where you fit best or whether there is a different space where your skill set and background is a better fit AND you can still have the impact you want.

* “Climate Change: What’s Your Business Strategy?” by Andrew J. Hoffman and John G. Woody. I recommend this book as it serves as a crash course highlighting the major issues that companies should be considering to be better positioned for the future. It’s a quick read as it is a part of the Memo to the CEO series. (In the interest of full disclosure, one of the authors was my adviser at the University of Michigan and The Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.)

Penned by Carolyn

The prophet Napoleon Dynamite once expounded upon the importance of having skills: “You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills…” He’s concerned about his chances of getting a date, but the same basically holds true for finding jobs (though I’d go easy on advertising the bow-hunting abilities).

I wrote last week about the importance of having hard skill sets to make your resume stand out. Yes, green passion is a vital part of your resume – being involved in environmental groups on campus, taking environmental studies classes, and nagging all your friends to recycle will give you the credibility you need to communicate with green organizations.

However, if you can back this up with demonstrated ability to do the tasks required of a job, you stand a much better chance of being hired. Companies right now don’t have as much time, energy and resources to put towards training you, so they’re going to look to hire people who they know can dive right in.

You’ve heard these before, but let me reiterate these two tactics for building your extra-curricular resume:

• Get an internship or a part-time job while you’re in school. It doesn’t have to be in the green sector, but you should be sure to come away from it with a set of tasks that you can complete. For example, if you have a media internship, you’ll be able to write press releases, cold-call reporters, even speak in public. With an administrative position, you might learn to manage an office, organize schedules, or plan events. Even being confident in working a fax/copy machine can tip you over the fence in the hiring process: we’ve seen amazing people be turned away from basic administrative positions for not having nitty-gritty, seemingly mundane skills like this.
• In the student groups you’re involved in, find your way into a leadership role. If you can’t, build a new branch or start a new initiative or group. Demonstrating broader reach, leading collaboration with other groups/administration, and having concrete accomplishments will give you strong material to pull from in an interview. For example, “I helped a student group encourage recycling on campus” is a lot less compelling than “I worked with school administration and student government to get recycling bins put into every student dorm room.”
• If you’ve already graduated, build on what you did in college — get involved with community organizations and non-profits. Given the state of the economy, non-profits need a lot of help right now and could really value your volunteer time. Depending on what you’re interested in (policy? water issues? international development?), find a non-profit in your area and see how you can help out. Not only will you build your resume (= skills!), but you’ll meet people in the field and potentially get connected to job opportunities — basically, it’s a productive and meaningful way to network in the space you’re hoping to enter.

By doing any combination of the above, you’ll show flexibility, a range of skills, and the ability to tackle challenges from a paper-jam to campus-wide composting. While it might take some effort, you can make your resume almost as sweet as Napoleon’s dance moves.

Next week I’ll discuss classes and academic skills that can be valuable to you as you jump into the job market.

It’s the moment you all (or least we at Bright Green US) have been waiting for — our UK founder, Tom Savage, is on a plane from England with bike and kite-surfer in tow, coming to settle in San Francisco. He’ll be helping spread the Bright, Green word far and wide and work on getting many more of you into the careers you’re dreaming of.

Our Friday blogspace will be his domain for answering all your burning questions about green jobs — so before he gets here, we’ll fill you in on why he’s so very qualified to do so.

Tom received undergraduate and post-grad degrees in Business and Management from Edinburgh and then Oxford, where he was awarded a prize scholarship for his MSc. After turning down funding to continue with a PhD at Oxford, and being frustrated after a short stint in investment banking, Tom took off on his own to pursue his passion for green business.

In 2003, Tom started a social enterprise called Blue Ventures (www.blueventures.org), which runs global conservation projects. In 2005, BV won the SEED Awards at the UN and the 2007 UN Equator Prize, as well as four Responsible Travel Awards and a Skal Eco-tourism award. In 2005 Tom also founded Tiptheplanet (www.tiptheplanet.com) a green wiki site. In 2006, Tom ran Social Enterprise Day for the Cabinet Office, guest-editing their ‘Trailblazers Magazine’ and advising the new minister for the Third Sector, organizing events  as well as co-founding a new internationally-acclaimed social enterprise, Make Your Mark with a Tenner. In 2006, Tom co-founded Bright Green Talent.

And he’s gotten a fair amount of credit for all his hard work. In 2007, Tom was awarded the ‘Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ award. He was also selected as one of 30 ‘Everyday Heroes’ in the British Prime Minister’s book of the same title, with a chapter dedicated to his work. Tom was recently named one of Striding Out’s Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs, one of 35 “Young Guns” by ‘Growing Business’ magazine (the only social entrepeneur to make the list), and was Highly Commended as an “Enterprising Young Brit.”

We could go on, but I think we’re making him blush. Tom will hit the ground running next week, and you’ll start to hear things from his perspective. From the team at Bright Green US: welcome!

Penned by Nick

It’s been a brutal year to be a recruiter. We launched Bright Green Talent US on January 7, 2008–1 month into the recession. One year later, it’s only gotten worse: unemployment is nearing decade-long highs, and the green movement is struggling to get its feet underneath itself. Just Friday we learned the economy has shed nearly 600,000 jobs.

In the weeks ahead, our team will share their varied perspectives on where the green jobs are, how to get them, and what the future of the industry looks like.

But first, the cold splash of morning water: it’s really ugly out there, and it likely won’t get better for a while. To bridge the next 6 months, Bright Green has made adjustments. For business owners looking for fresh ideas on what’s worked, consider the following:

For job seekers, it’s important to bear the lessons above in mind. The Federal government is brawling over a stimulus plan that’s focused on job creation. Green jobs could benefit, or get lost in the shuffle. To keep the movement alive, rally your elected officials to keep funding towards green jobs in the stimulus. 

Once you’ve called the calvary, make sure your sword’s sharp for close range battle with other job seekers:

As ever, BGT’s here to help. Together we’ll make it through this tough time.

Penned by Raj

Every day, engineers come to us wondering how they can translate their traditional backgrounds into the renewable energy field. Through the next few weeks, I’ll work on providing some tips for those people on how to best present yourself and make your skills relevant as you transition into the green space.

While I’ll go much further in depth in the following weeks, I’ll start out at square one for engineers looking to move into solar technology companies.

For anyone who’s done research in the solar area, you’ll know that there are different kinds of solar technologies. Companies are working on solar PV, solar thermal, or concentrated PV. Companies provide services within these fields, such as building inverters, installation design, and solar as a service.

The first battle is to understand how these different technologies work. Don’t be embarrassed to check out Wikipedia’s article on solar energy or poke around the American Solar Energy Society‘s site to get oriented. (If you have other informative general articles on solar energy, feel free to share them here so other jobseekers can explore them).

Second, you should start to understand who’s out there. We always come back to this map of 100 Cleantech Start-ups that we found on Earth2tech, which has links to a number of different solar companies. Another good place to find information is through the exhibitor lists for some of the big solar conferences that happen every year, such as Intersolar North America.

Next week, I’ll start talking about presenting your transferable skills to companies as you go through your job search.

About me: I am a part-time lecturer at College Eight on Environment and Society at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to joining Bright Green Talent, I worked in several recruitment envrionments, including executive search, technical and engineering roles at Google Inc and global poverty reduction, global health and climate change positions for Google.org. I am interested in the evolving DNA of scientific, engineering and technology talent in the sustainability, energy efficiency and renewable energy technology sectors and the types of skill sets and values that underpin engineering talent.

Penned by Christina
Over the coming weeks, I will cover various topics on what you can do to find a job within the sustainability/green job space. I am a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise where I completed an MBA and MS in the School of Natural Resources & Environment. Obviously that doesn’t make me an expert on this weighty topic, but having the academic background coupled with the practical experience I get everyday talking to both our clients and candidates (and friends!) hopefully provides me with the perspective to be able to give salient advice to those of you who happen to be looking for it…

Big Picture Impressions

Over the last few months, many job seekers and job “inquire-ers” have asked me for my impressions of when green companies will start hiring and in which specific sectors will the highest demand be. As you might imagine, this is a bit difficult to predict but in my efforts to be helpful, I have tried my darn-dest to do so! For those of you with whom I have not had the pleasure of speaking with, here’s what I CAN tell you:

Realistically, this is a difficult time to be job hunting (be it within the sustainability realm or otherwise) since the economic situation has ensured that there are fewer jobs to be had while the number of people looking is increasing exponentially. Thus, the hard truth is that if you are looking for a job today, you must think long-term as to what you can do right now to better position yourself for that moment in time when the economy does begin to pick up and with it, the sustainability agendas of companies. And here at BGT, we do believe that the first sectors/jobs to feel the uptick will specifically be those operating in the green space.

So. Depending on your current employment situation, it is critical to consider what you can do in the short-term to better position yourself for the long-term. I know that seems vague but in the coming weeks I will attempt to hone in on what that means depending on your current situation and where it is that you are trying to get.

Starting from the Basics

Our first piece of advice is always to be informed — legitimacy is extremely important in the green space, which has battled greenwashing over the past several years. I know there are an overwhelming number of websites out there that provide information and guidance in the sustainability realm so I would like to point out some of our favorites to begin and/or continue your research and networking efforts:

• greenbiz.com
• makower.typepad.com
• treehugger.com
• dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com
• grist.org

For basic education on topics of the environment and sustainability, this site is often useful (and a personal favorite): gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Next week I will begin to dissect the sometimes-elusive world of sustainability consulting and provide some thoughts on what you can do to try to get yourself in the door of the firms doing that kind of work. Until then, keep up the good work – we need you all!

Penned by Carolyn

Everyone seems to claim that when they graduated from school, the job market was the worst it’s ever been – kind of like how when they were young, they walked to school 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways.

While I’d love to be more reassuring, there’s no point in my skirting the issue – as far as anyone can really remember, this is the worst it’s been for being a student or recent graduate trying to find a job. You are, so to speak, at the bottom of an enormous mountain, barefoot, in a blizzard.

Everyone is going to have to adjust expectations and probably take paths that they hadn’t planned on in order to weather the next few years. But that isn’t to say there aren’t great opportunities out there. It’s a matter of understanding the barriers we face, and finding creative ways to surmount them.

The challenges for us young’uns getting into a green career are basically these:

• For entry-level positions, everyone’s background is relatively undifferentiated. Sure, you might have relevant coursework or have gone to a great school, but you haven’t necessarily worked to gain particular skills that make you the obvious choice over the other 500 people applying for the job. You need to figure out how to make your resume – academic and extracurricular – make you stand out from the bunch.
• Not only do lots of recent graduates want to get into green jobs, but everyone wants to get into a green job. People that have 10 or even 20 years of experience are shifting careers, applying for entry-level positions in order to gain “green” skill-sets and credibility. Just having the green fever won’t cut it – you’re going to need to back it up with skills.
• What’s more, everyone wants a job – any job. Given the unemployment rates right now, people are diving on every posted job opportunity in hordes. Companies are getting absolutely inundated with resumes for low-level positions, and making your candidacy stand out from the hundreds of other applicants is even more difficult.

Okay, it sounds pretty dire. The good news is you’ve got a couple advantages working for you as you try to step into a green career.

• The “green” industry is young, and tends to favor younger minds and attitudes. They want energy, growth, and enthusiasm – and especially people who can think outside the box, as so much of the industry is focused on innovation right now. Plus, skill sets that you wouldn’t even consider special (like being Facebook and blog savvy, being read up on the most recent green technologies, and spending ¾ of your life on a computer) give you a huge advantage over older folks who have to actively learn these skills.
• You are, for the most part, a free agent. Generally, you have fewer commitments to families/spouses, you don’t own a house, and you’re able to travel or relocate more easily. This makes it easier for you to fit into positions where they arise than some of the older, more experienced jobseekers.
• On your campus, there was probably a lot of talk of sustainability. Even if you didn’t actively seek it out, you likely went to a few talks or had greenie friends who kept telling you about the latest innovations in composting. Just by virtue of being connected to a university, you’re more plugged into what’s happening in sustainability than folks who have to read it in the newspaper or online. (If you’re on campus, make the most of this!)

So, though there will be some definite trudging through snow before things clear up, don’t despair. There are ways to position yourself to get into a green career, and the opportunities will only grow from here.

Stay tuned as I spend the next few weeks outlining the job-search process and how to get a green job – whether it’s now or in a year or two. Next week: gathering skills and building your resume.

About me: I myself am a recent graduate and a battle-scarred survivor of the search for a green job. I’ve been at Bright Green for awhile now, and have worked on all parts of the process – finding talented folks for jobs, liaising with colleges and graduate programs to get them advice on professionally pursuing their environmental passion, and helping spread the Bright, Green word far and wide.

Starting this week, we’ll be publishing daily perspectives on the green job search from different members of our team. Stay tuned to hear targeted tips on being a recent grad, going solar, mid-career transitions, and much more.

If you have feedback, post comments, speak up on our LinkedIn group, or send thoughts along to speakout@brightgreentalent.com.

Penned by Nick

It’s been a busy, challenging few weeks for Bright Green Talent. Jobless numbers continue to rise, with these headlines all hitting in the last week: 3.6 Million Lost Jobs, Economy Sheds 598,000 Jobs in January, Joblessness Jumps Sharply Among China’s Migrants.

Though we continue to fight to be part of the solution–not the problem–the tides taking a hard turn for the worst worldwide. Unemployment in the US is now at 7.6%. What more there’s a bounty of bad news on the horizon that speaks to the lack of hiring now happening at most companies, and the fact that there’s few jobs to be had.

We’ve seen this all first hand. Most clients now only want to see “A++” candidates, and even at that, are taking longer to hire them. Many are putting hiring plans on hold entirely until Q2 or Q3.

Despite job opportunities drying up, there’s still good work to be done on a personal or community level: volunteer, get NABCEP or LEED certified. If you intend to get a government job in the future, then take the civil service exam so that you’re prepared.

The good news is that green jobs stand to rebound the fastest. The bad news is that we’re all suffering at some level–we need to pull together to make it through.