Penned by Nick

Earlier this week, we partnered with Wal-Mart to find them a Sustainability Manager for their China operation. Despite their efforts to improve their environmental practices, many folks still view Wal-Mart as guilty and negligent:

“Before Wal-Mart Hires a Sustainability Manager, they need a Morality Manager to assure that their painted toys do not contain lead, that their milk does not contain toxins, and other crimes that we are not aware of. After they make significant progress in this area and their environment is not held hostage along with their sweat shop workers are treated with respect, then we can address sustainability issues.”

The quote above came from an individual who’s sincerely concerned about corporate practices, and whether or implied or otherwise, this quote strikes at the core of what we do at Bright Green Talent.

At Bright Green Talent, our credibility is our currency. To the extent we work with organizations who have questionable environmental or ethical practices, we risk tarnishing our own reputation.

“Reputational risk” is often overlooked and hugely under-apppreciated. Living up to Wal-Mart’s sustainability standards means we have to raise our bar — if we’re going to represent them and find them the greenest of employees, we need to be better recruiters ourselves.

I always joke that I love my job so much because it makes me be a better person. In the professional context, my personal life is just as much part of the story as anything else. And so, when we work with someone like Wal-Mart, it’s not because they are the most green of all employers (though they are up there), but because we believe in the vision they’re pursuing. Removing lead from toys and toxins from milks is what this relationship is about.

Casting stones is no way to engage people in the environmental dialogue — whether it be personally or professionally. If we’re going to talk, lets talk about how to make it better and be part of the solution, and in the process, keep everyone’s reputation intact.

Penned by Tom

According to my dictionary, the word ‘twit’ means a silly or foolish person. Is the current rush to Twitter a great drive towards April 1st, where we’ll all be declared fooled, or is there real value out there for the wise that are looking to get into a green job?

I’ve certainly been interested to dive in and you can follow my posts here – twitter.com/brightgreen. It also feels good – to mix fun and pierce the sometimes overly-formal veil that lies between a company’s public image and the people that work within. Yes, stop the press, we here at Bright Green Talent find people meaningful careers, but we also have tipsy evenings, days of despair, and laugh… (a lot and very loudly in the case of Christina). We want to be able to share these moments too, to prove that it’s not all work and no play, as well as reward people with more up-to-date action and reaction from Bright Green Towers.

But onto twitutility – there are some useful ways to use twitter to help you find a green job, or research a green career. Here’s my list, in a lot more than 140 characters:

• Find out if your future employer twitters. Use this as a method of doing your research and enabling you to go into interview, or to pitch to that person/company with a better idea of what they like/don’t like.
• If you have a big enough following, ask people questions about your resume, your interview technique, or anything you want quick answers to. Use your followers to do research and get reactions.
• Use the searches. Although unrelated, the best way my friend in Madagascar could keep up with the crisis there was to check Twitter rather than the news (which was always too slow). Beat the rush by searching for green jobs, or using some of the # (hashtags) to find out what’s going on. You might find out about opportunities before others if you’re on the ball. By way of example, we launched a new job search for Wal-Mart which we tweeted about first today.
• Follow those specifically targeted at green jobs, or other categories that fit your needs. e.g. greenjob, Green Jobs in the USA, Green Jobs.
• If you’re twittering, be sure that a future employer can’t follow your posts about your communist past, love of beer or flirtation with illegal substances. Recruiters will start to use twitter more and more to do a check on someone.
• Be careful, you can screw up.
• Use it as one of a number of tools, but don’t go overboard. Having 20k followers isn’t necessarily going to result in your getting a job. At some point you have to drop the keyboard and get stuck in. There’s nothing like face-to-face time.

Tom aka @brightgreen

It was good and interesting to note that in the recent Sunday Times Fast Track supplement, there were 17 recruitment agencies. Although I haven’t had time to check previous Fast Track supplements, I imagine that recruitment agencies flourish particularly when the market is buoyant and suffer when it is not – and that this is indicative of the frothy market we are seeing at the moment. Setting up a recruitment business doesn’t necessarily require a big capital investment – anyone can do it with a desk or a telephone. What is difficult is doing it well, carving a niche for yourself and separating your company from the crowd. I hope that our story, our focus and our values (see previous postings) help continue to distinguish us when the market turns.