Like many jobseekers, we’ve seen how search processes have become jumbled over the past year – creating potentially negative experiences for candidates and companies alike. We’ve written on this topic a couple times ourselves – “How Green Companies Can Clean Up Their Hiring Processes” for GreenBiz, and more recently, “The Dangers of Haphazard Hiring” for Triple Pundit.

We came across another great article on this topic from Commongood Careers and thought we’d share it. Great advice on how to create a healthier, more productive hiring process.

Avoiding 10 Common Search Pitfalls

By Commongood Careers

There are a number of ways that recruiting and hiring processes can go wrong, and hiring the right people into the right positions is too important to leave to chance. There are a number of common mistakes that can be easily avoided by utilizing some basic hiring best practices.

(1) Taking Shortcuts with Planning: Make sure that you have dedicated the appropriate amount of time to planning your search before beginning the process. Too often, organizations need someone hired “yesterday” and jump into the process by throwing a poorly developed job posting up on a random smattering of job boards. Instead, take some time to identify exactly what you are looking for in the role, make sure that all decision makers are involved at the outset and that all stages of the recruiting and hiring process have been outlined in advance. These steps will help you focus the search, keep it on schedule, ensure that everyone involved is aware of his or her role, and increase the chances of a successful hire.

(2) Defining Positions Poorly: It has been said that if you don’t know what “treasure” looks like, you can dig in the sand all day without knowing whether or not you have found it. So too with searches, it is essential to fully think through the nature of the role and its responsibilities, as well as the experience, skills and personality of the ideal candidate. This structure should not prevent you from exploring “out of the box” candidates and reevaluating your initial assumptions throughout the search, but it will give you a consistent standard to which all candidates can be equitably compared.

(3) Searching for a “Unicorn”: Whenever possible, define a position that is realistic and an ideal candidate profile that exists in more than a handful of people. Are you looking for a set of skills and competencies that often do not co-exist within one person? Recognize that if you go forward, your search may be challenging and may not lead to a successful hire without concessions being made. Consider recasting the position into something more realistic and test your job description with colleagues and peers to ensure that it is reasonable and clearly communicates the nature of the role.

(4) Setting Unrealistic Salary Constraints: Make sure that the salary range you have designated for the position matches the requirements and experience level you are seeking. Again, if you move forward with a misalignment in this area, such as looking for someone with 15 years of senior experience who wants to work full-time for $32,000; then your search may be slow and frustrating. Almost as challenging as low salary expectations are excessively narrow salary bands. For most searches, it is appropriate to have a $10,000 salary range for entry/mid-level jobs and a $20,000 range for senior roles. Going into a search with too narrow a budget may be a fiscal necessity, but it can also constrain your ability to consider a range of candidates and limit your room for negotiation.

(5) Making Insufficient Recruitment Efforts: It is best to use a broad variety of tools and resources to generate the largest and most diverse pool of candidates. Posting an ad to one or two job boards is generally insufficient. Make sure you tap “active” jobseekers through advertising as well as “passive” jobseekers through robust outreach to your personal and professional networks. A common mistake is to move in a gradual and staged approach, escalating efforts after initial postings have failed to produce results. It is best to be aggressive from the start and make a big splash with your hiring announcement.

(6) Losing Momentum: Recognize that searches follow a cycle and ensure that your search does not lose valuable momentum. There is usually a lot of energy at the beginning of a search, as staff members imagine bringing on great new talent and as initial postings bring an early rush of candidates. As the search goes on, however, people’s energy may wane as your colleagues realize how much time a search can take and as the number of new candidates begins to diminish. It is the hiring manager’s job to make sure that energy and results carry through until the successful completion of the search. This includes re-posting ads, re-mining networks, reviewing candidates efficiently and keeping the team informed.

(7) Lacking Respect for Candidates: Put yourself in your candidates’ shoes and make sure that you are treating them in the way you would want to be treated at every stage of the process. Think things through from confirming application receipt, to the timing and nature of correspondence about their status and the process, to making offers and communicating regrets. Recruiting is a marketing opportunity as well as a means to a hire. Remember that for any given position, only 1 person will be hired, but the other 50-100 individuals could become donors, board members, community partners, or future hires for other roles. Keep all candidate information in a database if possible.

(8) Conducting Weak Reference Checks: Don’t underestimate the power of reference checking. Too many organizations are so exhausted by the time they identify a strong candidate and are so anxious to “close the deal” that they overlook the incredible value of learning from others about their top candidate’s past performance. It certainly can be frustrating when you learn that your top candidate is not going to be the right fit for your position, but it is much more advantageous, both emotionally and financially, to come to that conclusion before the hire is made than two or six months later. Remember also that advice from references can be helpful even as you work to on-board and manage new hires.

(9) Hiring at the Wrong Pace: Don’t hire too quickly. It is important to resist the tendency to let your urgency to fill a position lead to an abbreviated process that lacks rigor and consistency. Similarly, don’t hire too slowly. Make sure that your process moves efficiently through the different stages, and resist the urge to “hold out” for an even better candidate to come along. This latter strategy often leads to a prolonged or unsuccessful search. Knowing in advance what you are looking for and holding to those standards will help you identify a candidate who will meet your needs.

(10) Failing to Document: Be careful what you write down during a search, but maintain a confidential file of each candidate’s application materials, the dates at which they moved through the different stages in the process, and the reasons why they were advanced or declined. This will help protect you in case of any allegations of inappropriate hiring practices, and also creates an invaluable resource of candidates for similar future searches.

Buried in Time Magazine’s September 21 issue, whose lead story was “Out of Work in America” (sigh…), is a feature section on service in America. The section includes a few interesting articles – such as “The Responsibility Revolution” about responsible consumers, “25 Responsibility Pioneers” (which includes a number of our past and present clients), and an interview with President Obama and Michelle Obama around the concept of service in the United States.

While a lot of the content in there and initiatives featured are not new news to people who’ve been in this space for awhile, we take it as a heartening sign that these great companies – RecycleBank, Interface, CleanFish, among others – are getting national mainstream attention.

Another interesting theme that runs throughout is the idea of bringing public responsibility and “citizenship” back to the fore – Time’s poll reported that 68% of respondents thought most Americans do not live up to their responsibilities as citizens, 75% would pay $2000 more to buy a car that gets better gas mileage, and 46% think teh government should require stores to charge for plastic bags in order to encourage use of reusable bags.

This is, of course, all well and good, and more evidence of a heartening trend towards social responsibility at large. We just have to hope that people will actually go out of their way to do and pay for these things. Thomas Friedman’s 2007 editorial on Generation Q comes to mind- how millennials are replacing online activism and mouse-clicking with actual committed activism. There’s a lot to act out on and communicate to businesses and decision-makers – it’s on all of us to make sure we’re not just sitting back and hoping someone else will buy organic or lobby their company to initiate greener practices.

All in all, worth a read – if mostly for the inspiration from the 25 Responsibility Pioneers who’ve taken their beliefs to heart and to business to try to offer consumers more responsible options.

Image: Time Magazine

This weekend Van Jones stepped down as the White House’s “Green Job Czar”. Despite my immediate sadness, I found a silver lining in the drama: green jobs have their first martyr, and with it, have moved beyond the realm of theory and into the realm of hard reality.

What more, Van Jones will likely reemerge as a prominent national figure who can work outside the system to support the stimulus funding he already helped architect and channel into the US economy. Indeed, given that the majority of funding plans are by now well laid and underway, VJ’s most important work is in some ways is already done: he’s provided us with the financial means to start our own green job revolution.

What work remains, remains for all of us to do: continuing to support green jobs legislation, using our purchasing power to push businesses to make responsible decisions, and ultimately working together to promote further global integration, instead of spending time lambasting the personalities the represent this global movement.

What the green jobs movement has lost in high-visibility leadership, it’s made up for by finding a rallying cry.

Here’s to a green future for all…

This morning, my brother sent along this article on the importance of emotional intelligence as a hiring criterion – though it’s 3 years old, the take-aways hold more true than ever.

Demonstrating that you are emotionally intelligent will go a long way towards lowering the barriers between you and the hiring manager – if they feel you are someone they can trust and connect with on a personal level, they are much more likely to hire you. The opposite is also true – coming across as rude, unreliable, or disengaged will likely give the hiring manager an excuse to cut you loose from the process.

The article’s guidelines for demonstrating your EQ are below – if you’re interested in more reading, check out the class “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman (he also just put out a new book, Ecological Intelligence).

Read the full article: `Emotional intelligence’ a new hiring criterion
By Erica Noonan, Globe Staff  | September 10, 2006

Pay attention to key EQ buzzwords in the job description, (“innovative,” “flexible,” and “friendly,” for example) and incorporate them into your cover letter and resume.

Know yourself, and learn everything possible about the values and culture of the company you hope to work for. “It’s not emotionally intelligent to force yourself into an office culture where you won’t be happy,” said Edelson.

Demonstrate reliability and trustworthiness. One of Edelson’s favorite stories is about a 23-year-old woman who wrecked her car en route to an interview for a sales position at a pharmaceutical company. Instead of being a no-show, she called and explained the situation, and got a ride to the interview. “She was determined to show them she was reliable and would show up when she said she would,” said Edelson. (Impressed, the firm hired her on the spot.)

Never fib about anything. Don’t say you’re fluent in Spanish when you haven’t spoken a word since high school. Assess your skills realistically, but follow with a pledge to improve quickly if the job requires proficiency.

Send a thank you note to show off your good manners, another component of EQ. Handwritten, via snail mail.

This week, Christina and I both took the PDA-plunge and upgraded to Blackberries.

Mind you, I had some serious qualms about getting a Blackberry in the first place, after reading a terrifying Newsweek article a few months ago about how your brain goes into constant partial attention mode as it waits for your PDA to buzz with a message, and you’re rendered unable to complete other simple, mental tasks. Then Stanford came out with a similar study last week about how multitasking is ineffective, if not harmful.

And beyond that, there’s the loss of brainpower and problem-solving. As my friend Ruth noted about getting her first iPhone, “I replaced my own brain with the internet’s brain.” Have you ever been in that situation where your Garmin or GPS loses service and all of a sudden you have absolutely no idea where you are or how to get where you were going?

Being connected is, ultimately, a good thing. I will hopefully get stuck at fewer bus stops late at night now that I can access the real-time schedules online; I can use maps and find local restaurants and buy my Harry Potter movie tickets while hanging out at the Berkeley Kite Festival. At Bright Green Talent, we use a lot of these different channels to reach jobseekers – for all of my grumbling, I am all over LinkedIn and Facebook trying to find people to fill our jobs. I’m all in favor of a device that allows people to respond quickly and not waste time sitting in front of a computer.

So, pushing my fears aside, I went ahead and bought the BlackBerry, and was immediately thrown into a panic attack as the Verizon staff pointed out that on one device, I could now simultaneously make calls, email, send text messages, Google chat, Skype, use Blackberry Messaging, Twitter, Facebook message, and use AIM.

Yikes.

I get worried about the future of human interaction (as well as getting “BlackBerry thumb”). Having all of these other types of interaction at our fingertips can make us lose sight of reality – what’s happening in front of us, the people we’re interacting with in person, and the experiences we have.

Here are three rules to keep you sane and productive as you and your PDA are jobsearching:

1. Have relationships with humans, not machines. As much as I love to talk to Christina (and trust me, we’re pretty chatty), I don’t really need to be connected to her by 17 different media.

With this blog as my soapbox, I’ve urged people pretty frequently to favor quality of interactions over quantity when they’re jobseeking – it will not help you to be a resume spammer, or Tweeting every 6 seconds about how you need a job. Think of all the time you spend Facebooking and LinkedIn-ing and Tweeting and emailing back and forth with people – it definitely adds up to much more time and effort than it would take to just sit down and have coffee with that person for 20 minutes and catch up.

It will help to go out and meet people and have real human interactions that we’re programmed to remember and value.  Those few minutes of human connection can be all it takes to get someone to understand and trust you enough to connect you with a hiring manager or remember you when they hear of an open job.

If you need a reminder of how potentially absurd our reliance on technology for social interaction can be, watch this MeetUp video (yes, I’ve plugged it before and will likely plug it again).

2. Keep healthy distance, and take mental breaks. Jobseeking is really stressful – it can weigh on you deeply, especially if you’re checking your Blackberry/email every 5 minutes to see whether you’ve heard back on any applications. As someone told me recently, a regular job is 9-5; jobseeking is 24/7 occupation. Sometimes, you need to unplug and disconnect. Change the settings on your phone so it’s not beeping, flashing, and buzzing each time a message comes in – this will make you less prone to neurotically checking it.

3. Mind your manners, and know when to turn it off. I remember this NYTimes article on BlackBerries in the board room and how distracting it is when people are blatantly paying attention to their phone and not what’s happening in real life. Being a good listener is a skill that companies really value, and continuously glancing at your phone is a good way to demonstrate that listening is not your strong suit. Turn off your phone while you’re interviewing – it’s not worth jeopardizing your shot at a job.

And so begins my tortured relationship with my BlackBerry…

Penned by Christina and Carolyn

At Bright Green Talent, we’re all in favor of not taking things too seriously and making sure there’s always enough laughter going around. Thus, we recently headed out to an amateur stand-up comedy night at a local club. During the show, we realized that there were some real overlaps in the Venn Diagram of stand-up comedy and interviewing…

Here’s what we came up with to help you avoid those moments of scattered, forced laughter (or blank stares) from the crowd:

10. Know your audience and cater to them. If you’re in a room full of women, don’t make sexist jokes.  Same goes for an interview or cover letter – figure out what you can say that will resonate with the reader.  Sensitivity and judgment will go a long way in warming the interviewer up to you; lack thereof will quickly get you blacklisted.

9. Just the right amount of eye contact… Not too much and definitely not too little!  In an interview, don’t look up or out the window too much when you’re considering a question…better to look down at your notes. We’ve had people disqualified for jobs because of wandering gazes.

8. Energy! The comedians who were too loud and energetic for the crowd seemed overbearing; those who were lethargic seemed like they were unprepared, nervous or just didn’t care.  Find the right balance of energy between sluggish and overzealous so that you can express both your passion and your composure.

7. Be confident and natural in what you are saying. Sounding too rehearsed will not bode well.  If you give canned answers that mirror your resume or cover letter exactly, it can appear as though you have no more to offer than what they already read about you in the application.  (Though practice does make perfect in this case – “mock interviewing” with friends is one of the most effective ways to prepare for an interview.)

6. Be concise. Know where the story is going and get there!  (With the appropriate tangents along the way…) For the comedian, if it’s obvious that your joke isn’t funny to the audience, don’t beat a dead horse — change tacks.  This goes for interviewing too — if something you’re trying to express about your experience or passion is drawing blank stares (or worse, offended looks), carefully exit from that strand of conversation and strike out in a new, hopefully more successful, direction.

5. Timing is everything. Hey, delivery matters.  Just look at Jon Stewart.

4. Incorporate others only as much as they want to be incorporated.  Actually, this comparison doesn’t actually work: Interviews are considered successful when they are a conversation between two people rather than drawing a clear distinction between interviewer and interviewee.  Whereas for a comedian, the audience may prefer to be passive and that’s okay!

3. Work with whatever makes you, you. The best and most successful comedians are those with a memorable, distinctive style which they have made “work” for them.  This is true for the rest of us as well.  Know your strengths and quirks and make them work for you.

2. Don’t be negative about previous employers. At this show, we saw an elementary-school-principal-by-day reference how ridiculous her students and parents were — with a fair number of expletives laced in — while her husband was enthusiastically filming the performance.  We couldn’t help but think if that video ever got in the “wrong” hands of her colleagues, school parents, or anyone else, she would likely lose her job and her reputation would take a serious hit.  There is never a need to un-constructively criticize an organization just to prove dedication to a job opportunity; rather, emphasize the things you would change and how you think the experience has prepared you to contribute to a new organization.

1. If you make people laugh, that is a very good sign! Interviews can be tense situations.  If you find that you have a good enough rapport with your interviewer, finding some (appropriate!) humor can take the edge off and make you seem poised, confident and likeable…all good things when they are evaluating whether they want to work with you!

Image: http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/

An article in NYTimes yesterday (“More Employers Use Social Networks to Check Out Applicants“) shared this flurry of statistics about how potential employers are finding you all over the internet:

“According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site…

The report showed that Facebook was the most popular online destination for employers to do their online sleuthing, followed by LinkedIn and MySpace. In addition, 7 percent followed job candidates on Twitter.

More than half of the employers who participated in the survey said that provocative photos were the biggest factor contributing to a decision not to hire a potential employee, while 44 percent of employers pinpointed references to drinking and drug use as red flags.”

Tips to avoid being on the wrong side of these statistics:

• As we’ve always said, google yourself thoroughly and see what potential employers are finding. Run a google image search as well.
• Set up a Google alert on your name
• Protect your Twitter updates.
• Jazz up your Facebook security settings.
• De-tag incriminating photos
• Check out this past blog post with other tips on hiding your indiscretions

Nick shared his two cents with Times reporter Kate Galbraith about the value of sustainability-focused programs:

“Amid all the growth, experts warn prospective students to take a hard look at the value for money offered by the courses. At some schools, “there is a very large gap between the theory that they’re teaching and the actual requirements of the field,” particularly the financial and technical aspects of sustainability, said Nick Ellis, a managing partner at Bright Green Talent, an environmentally oriented executive search firm in San Francisco. He advises asking prospective schools about their placement rates in various green industries.”

Here’s the full article:

Sustainability Field Booms on Campus

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

BACK TO CLASS Bob Gressens signed up for continuing education at two universities to learn more about clean technology.

After 25 years in the high-technology industry, Bob Gressens sensed a growing excitement over environmental issues — and a new business opportunity. He followed his instinct, quit his job and went back to school.

“I want to give the next 15 years or whatever to sustainability,” he said. “To give back.”

In May, Mr. Gressens, who lives in San Francisco, began taking courses on topics as diverse as green building and sustainability management at the extension school of the University of California, Berkeley. He also signed up for additional coursework at a continuing studies program run by Stanford. If all goes well, he will find a job with an electrical utility, or elsewhere in the clean-technology field, after finishing his courses.

Mr. Gressens’s trajectory will sound familiar at educational institutions across the country, whose continuing education arms have seen a striking influx of students interested in the relatively new field of sustainability. At Harvard’s extension school, enrollment in environmental courses has soared by more than 70 percent in two years, according to the university, which has responded with new offerings in fast-changing fields like carbon neutrality and environmental economics.

Berkeley recorded a similar surge: three years ago, the sustainability studies office offered just five courses; today it includes 60 courses over a wide-ranging curriculum. Since 2006, enrollment has grown to more than 400 students per semester, from 55.

“In spite of the recession, we’re seeing strong interest in subject areas such as sustainable buildings, transportation, energy, economic policies and, of course, LEED,” said Pat Rose, the media relations manager of the Berkeley extension school, referring to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a certification system established by the United States Green Building Council. Being “LEED certified” has become important for professionals in fields including architecture and law; Mr. Gressens will be taking the LEED exam this fall.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is just starting to survey whether colleges are offering continuing education courses related to sustainability, and not all are doing so. However, “we do have a sense from our members that these types of courses have increased in the past few years,” Paul Rowland, the group’s executive director, said in an e-mail message.

Many sustainability-focused continuing education programs offer certificates to students completing a certain number of courses. (At least four courses are needed for a certificate at Berkeley, for example, and 10 full-day workshops at the University of Oregon’s sustainability leadership program.) A few offer degrees, including the Harvard extension school, which confers a master’s in sustainability and environmental management.

Courses at Berkeley generally cost hundreds of dollars; at Harvard, they may reach $950 for noncredit attendees.

Business schools are also burnishing their sustainability credentials. A few, like Duquesne University’s business school in Pittsburgh and, as of this fall, City University of Seattle, offer M.B.A.’s in sustainability. Every two years, the Center for Business Education at the nonprofit Aspen Institute ranks the top M.B.A. programs with a social or environmental bent. The public management program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business tops the 2007-8 list; the next survey is due out in October.

For homeowners who want to learn about energy-saving options, some institutions offer hands-on programs. The College of Continuing and Professional Education at California State University, Long Beach, has scheduled a three-hour workshop for later this month; attendees take along their utility bills for discussion. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, the continuing education arm offers workshops in straw-bale building and green remodeling. (This fall, its sustainable practices program, in conjunction with the university’s business school, will offer a program in sustainable management.)

Many universities are directing their programs toward managers, but another booming niche — occupied mainly by community colleges — involves training renewable energy technicians. Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, said more than 100 such programs were in operation around the country, at least 80 created in the last two years.

Amid all the growth, experts warn prospective students to take a hard look at the value for money offered by the courses. At some schools, “there is a very large gap between the theory that they’re teaching and the actual requirements of the field,” particularly the financial and technical aspects of sustainability, said Nick Ellis, a managing partner at Bright Green Talent, an environmentally oriented executive search firm in San Francisco. He advises asking prospective schools about their placement rates in various green industries.

Mr. Gressens, 53, said he was happy with what he was learning at Berkeley and Stanford. And he cited another advantage of the courses: the students.

At Berkeley, “you have people whose passion is to save the planet,” he said. “There are others who are just looking to make a buck. So that makes things interesting.”

[Also check out another article published today, "Ranking Universities by Greenness" to find the best of these programs.]

There’s been a lot of buzz about the sustainable transport industry – rounds of funding and stimulus promise bring hope that the industry will grow out and create jobs where they’ve been lost in Detroit. Just recently, General Motors announced that the Chevy Volt would get 230 mpg – a claim that has provoked a fair amount of conversation.

We found this great article about 30 Electric Vehicle Companies  Ready to Take Over the Road by Chris Morrison on GreenBeat. A few below… click the link to see all 30.

30 electric cars companies ready to take over the road

January 10, 2008 | Chris Morrison

It’s official: Green car madness has taken over. After seeing more electric and hybrid vehicle startups than we could keep track of, we finally decided to start keeping count.

We’ve compiled a list, below, of 27 (update: the list has reached 30; thanks for the comments) startups, listed according to their release date, with additional information on fuel type, range, top speed and price. Most haven’t yet taken venture funding, but where applicable, we’ve listed financial backing.

While we’ve got some overall favorites (Miles, Tesla, Think) and a few favorite oddballs (Aptera, Commuter Cars, Eliica), we’ve for the most part withheld judgement. Still, if you have any of your own predictions about which companies will succeed or — far more likely — fail, we’d encourage you to make them known in the comments.

A note on our method: While most manufacturers are planning more than one model, we chose the one that seemed either most commercially viable or closest to release, depending on our own (discretionary) formula. We didn’t included well-known consumer models like the Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt, or startups like AC Propulsion that only do battery conversions for consumer vehicles. We also rounded the price to the nearest thousand.

All details are taken from the companies, so we haven’t independently confirmed things like range and top speed details. In case we missed any, mention them below and we’ll add them to the list.

American Electric Vehicle — Kurrent
Update: Defunct, according to a comment below, although they seem to still be for sale. We’re looking into it.
AEV advises its potential drivers to “Slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 40 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Commuter Cars — Tango T600
The Tango is even odder than three-wheeled designs, in some ways: It’s less than half the width of a normal car, and two can fit in a single lane. It also accelerates like a bat out of hell. Future versions are planned to be much cheaper, and have longer ranges.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $108K
Range / top speed: 80 miles / 150mph
Funding: Less than $1 million in angel backing; open to venture funding.
Release date: Available now

Read more.

A recent NYTimes article highlighted yet another dark side of the recession -”Job Search Firms: Big Pitches and Fees, Few Jobs” explained how companies are trying to exploit the panic jobseekers are feeling with scams and offers to “guarantee” a job for a chunk of money.

What these companies are targeting is people’s desire to find a job immediately – which makes a lot of sense, given that bills need to get paid.

In the green sector, there are a lot of factors contributing to the reality that green jobs growth is happening by fits and starts and is hard to predict: companies are seeing funding wash in and out, start-ups that are hitting it big or failing to meet expectations, and stimulus funding is creating buzz.

As we’ve seen it in recent months, jobs in the green space are being landed by some combination of strategic searching, serious networking, inside connections, and a lot of serendipity. It’s a fight against entropy, and the results in terms of who’s getting jobs are, at times, essentially random.

There’s no guarantee for a job right away, but folks who are best preparing themselves are those who are getting education, volunteering, networking,* and trusting that in the coming months, things will pick up and the promise of green jobs will become more of a reality. Hang in there!

* Some upcoming networking opportunities – check out our Partners page for more info:

• RMI2009 – BGT members get a 10% discount, or just check out RMIQ, an evening networking/mingling event here in San Francisco.
• West Coast Green - BGT members get a 20% discount on full pass. We’re sponsoring the Green Jobs Pavilion – come find us on the Expo floor!