Three articles popped into my inbox this morning that are worth a read if you’re a jobseeker or if you’re in HR:

U.S. Jobseekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio (NYTimes)

This chart pretty much sums it up. What it makes me think is how important having an inside connection is - with all those people applying for every job, you need some kind of edge - and a personal recommendation is one of the strongest advantages you can muster.

Career Couch - Dissecting Why You Were Passed Over for a Promotion (NYTimes)

The take-away here? Don’t be defensive. Useful tips on how to manage the situation and leverage it to improve your chances for being promoted next time around.

Economic Downturn Leading to Decline in Employee Commitment, Morale, Watson Wyatt/WorldatWork Survey Finds Workers Expecting Decline in Value of Rewards Programs

Even those who are in jobs currently are feeling the stress of the downturn. The good news? People who feel they’re working for an ethical, sustainable company tend to feel more commitment to the company and purpose, and are more likely to stay within a company and recommend their friends. More incentive for companies to pursue CSR and sustainability agendas!

• Have the job description, your resume, and your cover letter printed out or in front of you. Take some time beforehand to highlight the experiences and qualities that you want to be sure to hit on in the interview, and refer to these while you’re chatting.
• Know your strengths and weaknesses. Write out your three strongest selling points, and your three weaknesses — with an answer to how that weakness can be improved or leveraged.
• Have questions for the interviewers written down, and take notes as others come up in the conversation.

Of course, don’t be reading something you’ve written already - they’ll know you sound rehearsed. Bullet points will keep you on track.

2. Get dressed up. Okay, you don’t have to go all out business attire, but if you’re at home, wear something nice that will put you in the “work” mindset and keep you feeling sharp.

3. Just because they can’t see it doesn’t mean they can’t hear it. Don’t be eating, chewing gum, or smoking while you’re on the phone. It’s fine to have a glass of water around just like you would in a normal interview.

4. Find a quiet place. You wouldn’t believe how many people having yelling kids, barking dogs, nearby traffic and other distractions around when they’re doing phone interviews. Not only will these be a distraction to your train of thought and presentation, but they could make you feel apologetic or embarrassed to the interviewer, which isn’t a psychological place you want to be in when you’re selling yourself.

5. Enunciate and speak deliberately. Because you can’t read the interviewers’ facial expressions, it’s easy to start doubting whether they’re still with you and to speed up your answers. Take your time, be deliberate, and finish each thought.

6. Make sure you have phone service, or use a landline. With most people speaking on cell phones, calls can drop easily - creating an awkward break in the conversation and more uncertainty. If you are having trouble hearing the interviewer, tell them - there’s no point in going through an interview where you can’t understand what they’re asking just because you feel embarrassed to call it out.

7. Get follow up contact information. You’ll want to send a thank you note, so be sure you have an email address of whoever you spoke with.

Any other advice? Feel free to share it in the comments section!

Image: marybethlafferty.com

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

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/

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.]

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!

Well, a somewhat heartening labor market report today - check out the NYTimes article that discusses how the worst might be behind us.

On the green jobs front, we found this video from Mother Nature Network that’s entertaining, if somewhat illustrative of how green jobs are a concept that many folks can rally behind but few can define:

This past Sunday, our new marketing intern Dana and I were featured in the Business section of the SF Chronicle in an article called Tough Job Market Requires that Grads Adjust.

The article is copied below, but I’d suggest you also check out the comments. Clearly, the job market is a hot topic - the comments range from fiery to frustrated to constructive. Lots of people suggested that recent graduates who are having trouble finding a job go start their own business. While I do know several friends who’ve been laid off and started in on their own projects, some of the same problems persist: recent grads’ networks aren’t as strong for funding and business support, they have a tougher time convincing investors they’re serious, and they don’t have the savings to back up the ventures on their own.

What this article is really about, then, is bootstrapping — that recent graduates are having to come up with creative ways to stay afloat and to pursue what they’re passionate about. That might mean working for free 3 days a week while supplementing with a restaurant or childcare job; it might mean working nights on getting a business up and running; or it might mean going back to school to get some more targeted experience.

For some of our job advice for recent grads, click here.

Tough job market requires that graduates adjust

Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Stanford graduate John Dryden didn’t have a job lined up before he got his diploma in June, but in this economy he feels lucky to have been offered a contract post.

“I look at it as a case where the glass is half full,” said Dryden, 22, a business major who had an internship last summer that, in better times, would have led to a job.

“The company has a hiring freeze but they’re still interested in bringing me back in the fall, not as a full-time employee with benefits but as a contractor,” Dryden said, adding, “I feel very fortunate.”

Young people nationwide are being forced to adjust their expectations and try new tactics as recent college graduates face the toughest job hunt in decades.

“The current situation compares to the early 1980s, which was also an extremely difficult job market for college graduates,” said Edwin Koc, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The association regularly surveys the nation’s largest employers about their plans to hire graduating seniors.

“Typically we have a positive story with an annual increase in the number of hires,” Koc said. “But when we asked employers what they expected to hire from this graduating class relative to last year, it was down 22 percent.”

The association also asked a sample of this year’s 1.6 million college seniors about their employment prospects and discovered a sharp drop from a prior poll.

“In 2007 when we surveyed students, over 50 percent of the class had a job offer before graduation,” Koc said. “This year it was 19.7 percent.”

Desiree Fabunan, 23, is one of those who beat the odds by getting a job with AT&T’s Western Region headquarters in San Ramon before graduating from Stanford in June.

“A lot of people were down in the dumps,” Fabunan said, recalling the mood on campus. “Back in January, people were really panicking because you know that at Stanford so many of the grads that had come before you had jobs by that time.”

Dana Lin, a recent college graduate who lives in Mountain View, said employers in this market are demanding more than a degree.

“Many jobs call for three or four or five years of work experience,” said Lin, 22, who earned her undergraduate degree in business from Cornell University in 2008.

April layoff

Back then, when the college job market was still strong, she got a marketing position with a Silicon Valley software firm. But she was laid off in April. To bolster her brief work experience, Lin is doing a part-time, unpaid internship with the San Francisco startup Bright Green Talent, a recruiting and staffing agency for the sustainable energy industry.

“We did not have much of a problem taking these internships when we were in college,” Lin said. “It allows me to learn new things in new areas.”

At Bright Green Talent, Lin works with full-time employee Carolyn Mansfield, a 2008 Stanford graduate who found that, even then, her anthropology degree didn’t impress employers. She also worked for free to gain experience, first as an unpaid media intern for the Sierra Club and later at Bright Green Talent, which hired her after a two-month trial period.

“It’s about getting your foot in the door and letting employers see your work ethic and how you perform on the job,” Mansfield said.

But while young college graduates face a tough job market now, long-term trends work in their favor.

“Many employers can forecast a large number of retirements coming up in the next three to five years,” said Tom Devlin, career center director at UC Berkeley.

Positions will open

Koc, the employment expert, said this retirement trend means positions will open up for young college graduates once the recession ends even if the recovery is too weak to create job growth.

But at the moment the circumstances are less favorable.

“Opportunities that may have been there in the past have not been as plentiful for our graduating class,” said Dryden, the Stanford alumnus.

E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/02/BU6I18SL7L.DTL

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Penned by Carolyn

In the “green” space, credibility is crucial, and things are changing rapidly as investment   washes in and out of the sector, companies make big eco-commitments, or they slink away from their environmental goals. A great way to stay up to date is to sign yourself up for a few newsletters in the space you’re interested in moving into. Being well-read is also a networking tool — you can know who’s growing, who’s been bought out, who’s making  headlines. Use these developments as opportunities to reach out to the companies or people involved and start a meaningful dialogue.

Here are our 30 favorite green newsletters - our criteria included quality of news/writing, relevance, up-to-date information, and lack of spammy-ness.

General Green News:
GreenBiz & the other Greener World Media newsletters
Mother Nature Network
SustainLane
Treehugger
Climate Change Business Journal
Green Options
Environmental Leader
Grist

Clean Tech/Renewable Energy:
CleanEdge “Clean Watch”
Rocky Mountain Institute
Renewable Energy Weekly
GreenTech Media
CleanTechies

Activism/Policy:
Sierra Club RAW
Sierra Club Insider
350.org
We Campaign
Green for All
WWF

Green Business/CSR:
Ceres
Seventh Generation
Green America (formerly Co-op America)
Terrapass
CSR Wire
Reuters Carbon

Jobs:
Bright Green Talent
Green Job List
CleanLoop CleanTech
Green Career Central

Feel Good:
Daily Ray of Hope (Sierra Club)

We’re always open to feedback - if you have other suggestions or thoughts, please share them!