How to land a job in Green Tech
So you want to change job and look for a more positive impact ?
Here is a list of tips and pointers that helped me do the transition. I hope some of them will help you on this path.
———
Know your purpose (50 shades of green)
I believe the first thing to do is to question your purpose. Indeed, Green or Climate Tech may mean different things to different people. Company missions can be as diverse as performing carbon accounting, carbon offsetting, providing nuclear energy, building solar energy systems, promoting second-hand commerce or agroforestry, all of which share a common concern but instantiate it in very different manners.
Once you have a better idea of what’s in and what’s out for your personal ethics and purpose it is much easier and quicker to qualify any job offer or company profile you will encounter.
As an example here were my personal guidelines:
I accept any technology can be misused
I accept not all usages can be under developing organization control
I accept the impact to be small (but prefer it large !)
I expect the impact to be available/affordable for many
I expect public discourse of target company not to show signs of dissonance
Refining this notion can be straightforward or take some time, pace is your own. If you have access to coaching (or just are blessed with good listeners among your friends/relatives) it is probably an interesting topic to explore.
A related notion that is worth thinking in advance is the personal trade-off that you are ready to accept. If you consider changing jobs it is seldom the case that you improve on all aspects of the deal: salary, purpose, colleagues, career opportunities, commute/remote etc.
In my case switching from a manager position in a biggish AdTech company to an individual contributor role in a ClimateTech involved a very different tradeoff. Extended discussion with my partner, family and friends made me comfortable to achieve a different balance: a large salary cut, yet no need to relocate, a new career path, exciting problems, new kind of data and colleagues.
Where do I find Green or Climate jobs ?
So at first it may seem that purposeful jobs are extremely hard to find. As my coach Amy told me, it is actually just like looking for a place to park: you only need one !
Now the interesting part: there are actually a lot of such jobs. I cannot count how many interesting offers I past upon for Fullstack or Backend Developers, Data Scientists, Engineering Managers etc.
My preferred Climate Job Board is ClimateEU: quite comprehensive (at least for Europe), lots of filters (location, industry, seniority, role type etc) and you can create email alerts. Here is my top list:
https://www.idealist.org/en/jobs (for NGOs mainly)
https://www.welcometothejungle.com/ (general tech but there is a SocialTech / GreenTech filter)
Another important insight from Hiring Coach Caroline is that not all jobs opportunities are available online. Probably half of them never go online because hiring company finds good candidates by direct connections, don’t have time or expertise to publish them or push them to appropriate locations. That’s when your professional network and exploration kicks in !
So first of all let your close friends and trusted professional colleagues and partners know that you are looking for a transition or a new job in the industry. You’ll probably be amazed at how many leads you can harvest like this. Of course not all of them will prove fruitful, but remember; you only need one of them to succeed.
To broaden your search horizon you can check out lists of companies or startups in the green or climate ecosystem. Here is a short list of pointers:
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/climate-tech-startups (US Climate startups)
https://www.xange.vc/media/2023-01-202301-the-ai-for-climate-mapping/ (EU — AI x Climate)
https://www.eu-startups.com/2022/12/the-european-startups-using-ai-to-tackle-climate-change/ (EU — AI x Climate)
https://www.licornesociety.com/startup-lists/impact-40-120 (French Impact startups)
https://www.licornesociety.com/startup-lists/startup-greentech-ecologie-environnement (French Green Tech)
Be on the look out for professional communications, who is hiring in the sector and make sure to follow people in the field so as to be among the first to know when something is moving. That also helps in building your own culture of what’s trending in the domain.
When cold emailing people try to craft concise, impactful messages. Your story should be easy to digest: why do you contact this person, what do you seek, what can you offer and maybe finish with an opening for off-topic discussion. Of course save that template for the next cold contact. Refine it over time.
Green up your profile
Globally when contacting or interviewing for a job you want to emphasize and give evidence for transferable skills and motivation.
Take a look at your current resume and identify which experiences demonstrate such transferable skills as you project yourself in your next role. Make sure to emphasize that part in the new version (I know, this is basic advice — but my hiring manager experience tells me a lot of people don’t do that). It can be helpful to have a couple versions of your resumes, one for each kind of job offer you intend to answer to. As an example, in my case I spent less space on my CV for management and large scale AI stuff and more on ethical machine learning and carbon related projects.
When we come to motivation it becomes a bit more specific and most companies in the field ask for previous experience or at least strong interest in climate or impact positive projects. One thing to note is that for such companies their very mission is probably a strong talent attraction and retention motor. I believe they expect to see at least a mention of that on your resume. If you have side projects or benevolent activities in the field that’s easy bonus points. If you don’t probably it would be good to develop such activities. It can be also in your current company. For instance I was in the team that won Criteo internal Hackathon with a carbon calculator for ad campaigns. Lots of fun and a nice line on my resume ! also, in the French system you may also have training rights that you can look to spend on relevant trainings.
Finally, if you intend to switch industry it is probably wise to build up a global understanding of Climate or Environment. There are plenty of resources for self-study online. Let me just give you a couple pointers to exemplify, but really do your own search it will be more relevant to your own interests.
https://wiki.greensoftware.foundation/governance/projects (Green Software foundation)
https://open.spotify.com/show/4MSGx6Y7Deu9wS9eFVCvcY (L’Octet Vert — French podcast)
https://www.coursera.org/learn/reporting-extra-financier-strategie-rse (ESG reporting — French)
https://www.terra.do/ (climate training — not free)
https://reneelertzman.com/ (Climate x Psychology)
https://www.katharinehayhoe.com/ (Climate Science newsletter)
Organize your search
Now you have an (first) idea of what you look for, you have created job alerts, spread the word and started to self-study and connect with green tech communities — time to organize you search for maximum efficiency.
As said above make sure to build a CV, cover letter and contact email templates library. Sending another one then just takes a couple minutes ! On top of that you should have a short, digestible way to explain what you have done lately, what do you look for and (most important) why. Refine and rehearse as appropriate until it becomes second nature. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the “why”. This single sentence is the only thing that will probably hold in the recruiter mind the day after you spoke !
Also, a basic, useful tool is a job tracker. You can use just a spreadsheet and track a few basic information: date of last contact, name of contact, interview stage, company purpose. I love to be able to know in a single eye blink how many cold cases I have, how many hot ones, which ones I should ping back etc. Plus psychologically I like to tick boxes from times to times.
Other have written guides on landing a tech job, and most advices hold in that case too. If you feel like professional job seeker coaching can be a huge plus. I cannot emphasize enough how the coaching and support I got from Caroline helped me gain confidence, especially in stressful times.
Conclusion
If you read so far congrats ! you are probably well motivated to land a job with a (better) purpose. It is probably your greatest asset in your search. I hope you will find a few tips useful and land your dream job.
———
The author is Eustache Diemert. You can find additional articles he wrote on his Medium.
———
✔️ Want more?
The coaching service offered by The Allyance is described here.