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While pursuing her graduate degree in environmental geography in 2006, Cheri Chastain took a job as the recycling assistant at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, Calif. It was a part-time gig to pay the bills, and she spent most of her time tracking data on the brewer’s recycling efforts to get a better handle on what it was diverting from landfills and how it could do better.
Chastain, however, had larger goals. Her enthusiasm, ideas, and business savvy won her a quick promotion to recycling coordinator. Within four months she was promoted again, to a full-time position as Sierra Nevada’s sustainability coordinator -- a job she custom designed for herself.
Chastain is one of a new breed of professionals who are turning their environmental passion and industry knowledge into lucrative career opportunities. In an economy where job losses are rampant, some reports predict up to two million new “green” jobs could be created as part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan.
And while many of those jobs may be of the blue-green variety -- more labor than management -- there will be many opportunities for college grads and mid-career professionals to make green career moves.
| Getting on the Ladder ... |
| • Launch recycling programs and other green initiatives in your own company to establish yourself as an expert on all things green. Then, if your company decides to create a green position in house, you will be top of mind for the job. • Calculate the bottom line results of your green projects or volunteer efforts before including them in your resume or job pitch. Hiring managers will be more impressed by your efforts if they can see the financial, as well as the environmental, impact. • Visit the websites of local green industry companies to search for job openings –- many companies don’t post positions at national job boards. • Join local green associations and participate in volunteer opportunities. Even if you don’t have a green industry job, these are great ways to expand your network, create some resume-worthy experience, and find out about new jobs before they go public. • Offer your volunteer services to nonprofit organizations. Don’t just sign up for general volunteer work, come up with specific ways you can support their efforts by using your unique skill set. This creates more substantive experience for your resume. |
“I saw a lot of opportunities and I started working on different projects, talking to the owner about programs we could launch,” she says. “I started to carve out a niche for myself.”
Today Chastain reports directly to the owner and together they identify new ways the company can improve its environmental profile and its bottom line. As part of her job she tracks greenhouse gas emissions, researches biodiesel applications, and she is in the process of launching composting programs for the company’s break rooms and restaurant.
“I’m lucky to work under an owner who values sustainability,” Chastain notes. “We collaborate on ideas then I put them into action.”
However, it’s not easy to make this transition, warns Neal Laurie, director of marketing for the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). “Professional positions are the most sought after green jobs,” he says, noting that a recent job posting for a sustainability manager at a big solar company garnered more than 300 applications.
Finding those jobs can also be tricky, in part because there are no standard titles to search for. ASES’ 2009 Green Collar Jobs report lists 160 different green job roles that run the gamut from executive level positions requiring a Ph.D. to entry-level support roles that offer on-the-job training.
Among green professional jobs, entry-level and senior level positions are the best places to make career moves, suggests Peter Beadle, president of Greenjobs.com, a job board for the renewable energy industries. “Positions at the top and the bottom are the easiest to get, it’s the mid-level jobs that are harder to find.”
He notes that recent college grads have a great opportunity today to launch green careers by seeking out entry-level opportunities in green industry companies or local businesses known for their commitment to sustainability. Because these positions have lower salaries and don’t require a lot of experience, they are easier to get and a likely place for companies to recruit outside of their own employee base.
“CEO and vice president roles are the next easiest way to break into sustainably industries, because these candidates are all highly experienced, usually in related industries,” Beadle says.
If you don’t fall into one of these categories, however, don’t despair. Despite the challenges, mid-level professionals interested in moving into jobs with titles like sustainability manager or renewable energy coordinator will benefit from the fact that very few people have direct experience in these roles, because before now they didn’t exist.
“A lot of individuals are coming with real estate or development backgrounds, or construction engineering,” notes Laurie. “They are taking the skills they learned in those roles and transitioning them.”
Pick Me
Repositioning your skill set and experience for a green economy is the key to getting your foot in the door for any professional green job. But it takes more than a commitment to the environment: The most attractive candidates are those who can show how their sustainability skills or experiences contributed to bottom line results.
Increasingly narrow focus
The job market is becoming increasingly narrow focused. Skill specialization is always increasing. This is not a bad thing, but a reflection of the enormous complexity of our business models and the need for specific skill sets.
For instance, a large company is likely to hire a boutique consulting firm to get their CSR reporting off the ground. New green building will be designed and built by firms that understand architecture, design and LEED certification.
Realistically, the high paying jobs will be given to those who have specific, high value skill sets within the green industry. These job descriptions could take a while to shake out.
I worked in the IT (technology) industry for 30 years. When I first started, the number of the roles were limited. Then, over time, I found myself specializing more and more, focus becoming narrower and narrower, and skills expected to in my narrow area to be more and more specialized. Young people today are far more focused and far more skilled in their area of focus in comparison to thirty years ago.
Expect the same thing to happen in the green industry. Skills will be paramount, with narrower and narrower skill sets.
Of course, some people will argue that one must be a "generalist" if they want to be a manager. Management generalists are devolving into skilled management of specific areas. High level managers are taking the "enterprise" view, with backgrounds in marketing, sales and product/service development.
The Hidden Green Job Market
Sarah:
I really liked this post and how it laid out a strategy for taking advantage of potential green opportunities in one's own organization. This is particularly important at this time there are not yet many green jobs out there yet.
Two factors come to mind that makes me think these internal opportunities are a huge hidden green job market.
According to a major new research report, Climate change and the implications for policy and corporate strategy (73%) of firms polled will make energy efficiency a high or moderate priority over the next two years in a bid to cut costs. This will likely translate into increased opportunities in many organizations internally.
Additionally, there are numerous advantages to hiring a sustainability expert from within. Hiring someone from within who has credibility within the stakeholders inside the organization can often have a tremendous positive impact on the success of a sustainability program. People looking for green jobs need to know that there are advantages to seeking out green job opportunities from within. I think this article did a great job with laying out how to maximize those advantages.
Tracey de Morsella
The Green Economy Post
http://greeneconomypost.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/traceydemorsella
Appreciate Focus on Green Professional Jobs
Sarah,
Thank you for your article on green professional jobs. It's an important segment of green jobs that hasn't gotten a lot of attention.
As you note, there aren't a lot of mid-level professional positions yet. I believe these numbers will grow as more clean tech and green companies move beyond R&D and into manufacturing/producing, selling and distributing their products/processes/services.
While in an R&D phase, companies don't need a large collection of professionals. Instead they are focusing their investment on highly technical and scientific positions. As they prepare to launch a viable offering, they'll begin to hire the professionals - marketing, sales, finance, operations, etc.
I think people forget that we are in the first couple of years of a much longer transition to this new way of doing business. I doubt people could predict or see all the ramifications of the Industrial Revolution two years after the first products were produced on an assembly line.
We are in the transformation of our entire economy, not just one segment or industry. Opportunities are opening up for some. Other people will need to wait until their professional skills are in demand.
Carol McClelland
www.GreenCareerCentral.com
Green is Dirty
I think it may be too early to see what becomes of the new administrations plan for more "green jobs". I did hear an interesting story on the radio the other day.....the news person described how helicopters with infared sensors were flying over homes and businesses in the uk monitoring the amount of energy being wasted.
If nothing else, we may not get the millions of promised green jobs but be rest assured that we will be subject to carbon footprinting - ie: new tax revenue stream for the gov.....
Green economy dirty little secret....
Probably a dirty little secret you don't really hear is that some of us in the green movement are actually trying to get out.
Reasons I hear cited are low pay, small companies with poor benefits and poor managements skills, and most importantly, lack of opportunity.
Many of these touted green jobs and green management jobs haven't materialized yet. Many of the high paying jobs I see are for engineers, who would get high pay no matter which industry they'd position themselves within.
I think there is an illusion of what green jobs really mean out there. So far, the hiring has held steady, not totally affected by the recession. The percentage of truly green jobs is still tiny in comparison to the overall economy, and it's growth is nothing in comparison to the "oil boom economies" I've experienced during my lifetime when the price of oil has been high.