Upon graduation, I continued to build my sustainability experience by taking on consulting projects independently and with San Diego-based Malk Sustainability Partners. I also wrote a series of articles for GreenBiz on social intrapreneurs. At one point while I interviewed with BSR, I was writing content and copyediting a sustainability report for a Fortune 500 company. This report writing contract gave me valuable experience to land the job at BSR.
I think the challenge of standing out in the field speaks to the increasing specialization and the increasing competition. It was essential for me to build and draw from my own experiences for success as a job seeker.
What advice do you give to job seekers today?
Sustainability in business is no longer a quaint subject relegated to the philanthropy department. It’s an emerging requirement for companies from markets, investors, and stakeholders and as such it is developing its own tools and standards.
Some aspects, such as reporting, have fairly established standards through bodies such as the Global Reporting Initiative and Carbon Disclosure Project. There are numerous opportunities for people with backgrounds in writing, reporting, assurance, and metrics using these guidelines.
Others, such as supply chain, are still grappling with challenging issues like traceability, sustainable growth in emerging markets, and new types of supplier relationships. Professionals with supplier and industry-specific experience in addition to a tolerance for ambiguity and the willingness to help craft those tools can excel.
Job seekers should focus on developing specialized experience in some of the areas you and I have talked about. They can reflect on previous experience and see where it might plug into the emerging functions or needs of specific industries. For me it was related to communications and reporting, for others it might be finance and business metrics or supply chain and scorecards.
We’re a field of professionals driven by passion but increasingly it's experience that is becoming the differentiator. As the field continues to specialize so do the demands of qualified sustainability professionals who need specific experience to solve sustainability challenges in business.
![Ending the alphabet soup in the [insert word here] field](http://www.greenbiz.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/wide_small/130516-voien1-w.jpg "Ending the alphabet soup in the [insert word here] field")
@Sean T - First, the author
@Sean T - First, the author does not imply at all that you need an MBA to land the jobs listed in the article or your dream job in general. In fact, this "article" is an interview and the author doesn't even include any of her own words in the piece. Obviously you didn't read the article or you would have noticed all the responses were by Nate Springer, the person being interviewed.
Secondly, many "top companies" prefer or require an MBA for these positions, especially if it's a consulting job. At the end of the day, it really depends on the job, the company, and so many other variables, but what Nate is saying is that an MBA combined with specialized experience can help differentiate yourself from others.
I finished my MBA last December, but it wasn't my MBA that got me my "dream job" in sustainability. During my MBA, I landed an internship doing what I wanted to do (managing enterprise environmental management systems). When I interviewed for with my current employer they asked me about my internship, hardly about my MBA. But the point is I would have never gotten my internship, if I weren't in an MBA program. This is a very good article and I agree with Nate. Finding a specialization and getting experience is key. The experience will get your the interview or the job, the MBA will help with getting the salary you deserve. My two cents.
Excellent article. Keep
Excellent article. Keep posting such kind of
info on your page. Im really impressed by it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on sperm. Regards
plenty of competent,
plenty of competent, qualified people dont need MBAs to carry out these very same tasks. shame on the author for propagating that myth.
Great article! I just
Great article! I just graduated from my MBA and started a full-time job in clean tech marketing with a group of 5 other recent MBAs. We all came from diverse pre-MBA jobs, but two did EDF Climate Corps internships, one did a summer at a utility and another worked in energy consulting. There are a lot of ways to get experinece in the field, but the importance of internships, staying up to date on the latest in a fast-moving fields, writing, reading and attending conferences can't be underestimated.