3p Contributor: Frank Marquardt
Recent Articles
Capitalizing On Sustainability: Partnership Capital Growth
Wall Street’s spectacular implosion in 2008—illustrated by the failure and subsequent sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan and, soon thereafter, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the government’s spectacular bailout soured many on Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe.
But investment banks don’t just trade credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. They also help companies raise capital—often taking shares in companies themselves—while providing sector-specific expertise. Their backing makes it possible for industries like technology to flourish.
They will also play a role in the expansion of the sustainable economy.
Enter the Boutique Investment Bank
Clean Careers: Clean Tech Job Trends 2009
Finding a clean tech job just got a little easier.
CleanEdge’s excellent new report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, which is a sort of companion to its annual Clean Energy Trends report, offers those looking for a clean tech job—as well as those curious about the sector—an excellent introduction to the trends and opportunities ahead, as well as key resources for getting one’s search in motion.
Written by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, authors of The Clean Tech Revolution, the report details an increasingly well-funded area of industrial activity that’s growing at above average rates. And with clean-tech job growth a focus of the Obama Administration as well as that of Chinese President Hu Jintao—and aggressive clean-tech job creation going on in the Brazil, the European Union, India, and Japan—this growth is certain to continue.
Conscientious Capitalism: The B Corp Annual Report
Corporations solve problems. Their solutions address human needs: A better running shoe, a faster search engine, a renewable way to produce energy. Sales—ultimately, profits—provide the primary measure for determining the success of these solutions.
But a corporation’s solutions (whether a product or service) do much more than simply produce profits. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, the activities of a corporation also significantly affect the environment and the lives of the people in the communities where the corporation operates.
Still, the metrics for corporate success remain financial. Companies that make money: Good. Companies that lose money: Bad.
Laws back up the financial metric. In states that include California and Delaware, when companies go up for sale, board members are required by law to consider what will bring the highest financial return. Issues like social good or environmental stewardship are simply not part of the equation.
Clean Tech Training for All
Just five years ago, there were a mere handful of educational and training programs available for those interested in clean tech, primarily in advanced-degree university programs. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, with new ones popping up every day as a result of stimulus funds flowing to colleges and universities to fund green jobs training.
These programs are targeted to candidates at every level of experience, from those with a GED to engineering and chemistry graduates looking to develop next generation solar technologies. And while a clean tech training program won’t guarantee you a job in the industry, it will help you stand out—and deliver marketable skills as stimulus money gets spent.
Van Jones in Newsweek and on Glenn Beck
Even Van Jones recognizes there’s no unified definition of a green job.
And as a senior advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and founder and former executive director at Green for All, a national organization working to build an inclusive economy, Jones is about as definitive a source as you can find.
That’s why those tracking new developments in green jobs should check out Daniel Stone’s interview with Jones in this week’s Newsweek. Despite the lack of a consensus definition of what constitutes a green job, $60 billion of the recovery package going to fund them.
The Carbon Salary Survey
The first annual Carbon Salary Survey provides a valuable global snapshot of salaries and opportunities for those interested in entering a climate change-related field.
A few of the results: Men are making an average of 23% more than women, more than three-fourths report feeling satisfied with their jobs, and 68% feel equally or more secure in their jobs than they did a year ago.
The report – put out by Acona, a consulting firm; Acre Resources, a recruitment firm; and Thomson Reuters – draws on responses from 1,157 participants to paint a general picture of opportunities in a wide range of climate change roles, including energy efficiency, biomass, project development, and power generation.
The sample includes individuals from multiple industry sectors, a variety of functions, and from around the globe. The report includes short (and general) job descriptions of the top ten roles, looks at team size (80% of respondents work on teams of ten people or less), and education (23% of respondents have a bachelor degree in a climate change-related subject, 44% in a non-related subject, and 67% have higher degrees).
And the salaries? The average across the sample was $75,901, with half the respondents making between $40,000 and $100,000. In North America, the average salary was just shy of $100,000 ($99,995). In Australasia, the average salary was $92,812, and it was $77,291 in the UK, $78,059 in Europe, and $56,609 in Africa.
Learn more about carbon careers by reading Emerging Opportunities: Carbon Markets.
Green Jobs By the Numbers
“Two thousand nine will be a tough year,” Jigar Shah, founder of Sun Edison, wrote me in an email. “It will take the entire year for the solar industry to reorient itself to the new rules of the game. In the meantime, the third and fourth quarter will help us make up for a weak first quarter, but not enough to produce overall growth in 2009.” Shah doesn’t expect hiring in the solar industry to pick up until 2010.
Still, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 targets $11 billion for a smart grid, $2.3 billion for advanced battery technology, $6.3 billion to states and local governments for greater energy efficiency, guarantees $60 billion in loans for renewable energy power generation and electric transmission projects, and $2.5 billion for energy research. As that money gets spent, it should boost hiring and the economy with it.
Solar Rising: Top 10 Utilities
In 2008, tight credit and reigned-in consumer spending slowed the march of solar in the residential and commercial markets. But the just-released, second-annual Solar Electric Power Association report, 2008 Top Ten Utility Solar Integration Rankings, shows the steady growth of solar at utilities nationwide.
Installed Capacity Up 25 Percent
The report looks at how much solar was interconnected in calendar year 2008 and cumulative solar installations through the end of 2008, and includes both photovoltaics and concentrating solar power. Ninety-two utilities participated (out of some 3,000 nationwide), representing an 80 percent participation rate increase over the 2007 study – though it’s worth noting that participating utilities generally self-select into the survey as a result of having active solar programs.
Results show an average increase of 2 megawatts among participating utilities over the year, enough to offset the use of over 300 homes on an annual basis. Overall installed capacity of the utilities that participated in the study rose 25 percent, from 711 megawatts to 882.
How to Work with a Clean Tech Recruiter
Say you gave notice, the economy be damned. Or you took the corporate buy-out offer and want to take your considerable skill set and apply it to world-changing (and potentially lucrative) work at a renewable energy startup. Or you just finished a workshop with Solar Energy International and are looking to implement phase-two of your job-change program (i.e., the find-a-job part).
And you’re trying to get a clean tech recruiter to take notice.
What do you need to know?
Start with the Facts
“Our business, we don’t have a magic bullet to create jobs,” says Dawn Dzurilla, President and Founder at Gaia Human Capital Consultants, a retainer-based executive search firm. “We work with those who we think we can earn a living working with, even in the green economy.”
That’s right – clean tech recruiters are businesspeople, too.
Fortunately, a number of firms offer services that go beyond retained or contingent search. (Retained search means a company is paying the search firm to fill its vacancies. Contingent search means the search firm is paid only when it places a candidate; contingent firms typically work with dozens of companies.)
Inside Job: Making Your Impact at Work
Net Impact’s new report Making Your Impact at Work: A Practical Guide to Changing the World From Inside Any Company offers fresh ideas for greening your job without finding a new one.
And it reinforces a commonplace among career counselors: Volunteering and taking the initiative to do what you’re passionate about is one of the smartest ways to gain new skills and advance your career.
The free report – and accompanying case studies and discussion, available to Net Impact members – shows how intrapreneurs in different functions and divergent industries have created positive change and, sometimes, new jobs as sustainability leaders.
The guide’s advice, which draws on the experience of change agents at companies that include eBay, McDonald’s, Accenture, Timberland, Ingersoll Rand, and Google, is straightforward and, once you read it, relatively intuitive. If you’re angling to get involved in the green economy and on automatic at work, consider taking the suggestions to heart to reenergize yourself by aligning your values with your work and creating a project to green your office or organization.
Launching Your Solar Job Search
As a result of a recessionary economy and layoffs at some firms earlier this year, plenty of people will be vying for those jobs. Here are some things you can do to get a leg up:
Publishers Discover Green Careers
Green careers are in. No wonder there’s been a mini-stampede of books addressing what they are and how to get one.
The books tend to cluster at one of two poles: Those that provide resources or information about a green career and those that are more of a handbook or guide for landing a job (or figuring out what you want to do).
Green Careers: Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future, by Jim Cassio & Alice Rush, falls in the former category. While it includes a short section on career planning and the hidden job market, its greatest asset is its interviews with some 60 people in a wide range of roles, from a PR professional to a landscape architect, civil engineers to a fish biologist.
Exploding Opportunities in Clean Tech
Who doesn’t want in on the action?
Yes, Newsweek called out the growth of clean tech opportunities in 2007, but job seeker tools started to arrive to the party en masse last year. There’s CleanLoop, Cleantechies, the CleanTech Group, CleanTech.org (where scientists and entrepreneurs meet to commercialize new technologies), CleanTech Brief, and even TriplePundit (courtesy of GreenBiz.com).
But what marks clean tech opportunities out from, say, financial services isn’t the growing range of boards. It’s the enthusiasm and urgency with which many people have embraced them as the front line of the defense of our environment.
So it just makes sense that the Environmental Defense Fund would introduce an interactive tool that tells people where the clean tech jobs are or, rather, are likely to be.
Strategies for Breaking into Clean Tech
Given the economic downturn, job seekers are smart to look at areas of opportunity likely to grow even in an ongoing downturn. Naturally, many have turned their attention to clean tech, where investment should only continue thanks to the stimulus package and global efforts to address climate change.
The dicey economic outlook and competition from the rising number of unemployed complicate the challenge of breaking into clean tech, however. If you’re among the growing number of job seekers who recognize the opportunity and want to break in, you’ll want to think strategically, prepare carefully, and practice persistence and patience. Realize that many people are competing for jobs, but by working all the angles to break into this industry, you’ll position yourself to grow with it, reducing the likelihood of economic uncertainty those in other industries are likely to continue to face. Here are six quick tips for getting started.
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