Career transition from HR to climate change

Starting a Career in Climate feels like being lost in the desert. To find water, you must first ignore everyone telling you this 👇 → If you try hard enough, it’ll work. → Just apply for more jobs → It’s a numbers game. → Next week is better. Do this instead 👇 1️⃣ Fundamentals First Look at the entire climate economy. Pick two sub-sectors. 2️⃣ Find your Transferable Skills Most people completely underestimate their professional skills. Write down the answer to: “What am I really good at and why?” 3️⃣ Find your Pitch Find somebody doing your “future” job in a climate company. Ask them how they do their job. Learn the language of a climate company in your target sector. And then use that intel to refine your pitch. 4️⃣ Think Skills-Sector Fit. Not Impact. Everyone wants to work on something with a huge CO2 impact. BUT Don’t re-invent yourself so you can work in a “big impact” sector. Go where your skills fit best. Because the best impact is the impact that happens. Not the impact you keep chasing but never materializes. Use this list to find water in the desert. And make yourself successful 🙌 ---- PS. I’m Marco Morawec. I up-skilled 1,000s of people to transition into new careers. I’m doing the same for Climate now. 👉 Follow me ( Marco Morawec) and my company Climate Drift for Stories + Strategies + Resources to launch your Climate Career.

💡🌎🙌 It warms my heart to hear from folks looking to transition into sustainability careers. Here is what I'm telling them right now. ✅ Don't expect to find a job with that title. Research how your current job can become a sustainability job and give it 1-2 more years of internal action attempts before leaving. ⏰ Now is the time to set your personal performance goals and one of them should always be about your continued growth and development. Request the opportunity to take on a sustainability project! 👀 Read your company's sustainability report and search for blogs around your function area to understand what the central team's priorities are for your realm of control. REACH OUT to them and let them know you are a person on the ground who can support their efforts and that you want to contribute to a project (list your ideas). 👌 Crowdsource what's possible and get alignment from your boss. If your boss isn't aligned with your growth initiative and willingness to contribute to corporate strategy - now you know that you need to take a hard look at the culture overall. Work to move to another team or move out. 🤯 The sustainability industry/field is consolidating around the stronghold of compliance and reporting, with a renewed (broken record I know!) push to prove the business value of sustainability for product or business model innovation. I have and can tie customer data to sustainability action. I've had this conversation with multiple enterprise sustainability teams... I know they are not getting the support they need. It requires the agency to work cross-functionally but I also encourage you to spread the work across all project areas, rather than having one dedicated sustainability project budget. This will ensure it can't be canceled during cuts. 📈 Be data-driven! 🏃♀️➡️ Here is an annual project outline: Q1 - Assess the current state of your project in terms of sustainability metrics. Reach out to people internally to align your project with their goals and get a sponsor/mentor that you can meet with either bi-weekly or monthly. If your company doesn't like you forming relationships with other teams that is toxic internally competitive behavior and you should take that as a red flag. Start connecting with folks external to your company who are solving similar challenges! Searching for information on how your industry is tackling this issue may also help. In some cases, you may need to invent a program where one does not exist. For example, your company may be primarily concerned with human rights in supply chains and hasn't yet addressed emissions or circularity. Q2 - Collaborate for intervention ideas and align stakeholders around an action plan with several ideas to try. Keep it simple, like improving recycled metal input by 10%. Q3 - Track progress, how you iterated, or needed to pivot. Q4 - Assess your future state and report on your impact. MOST IMPORTANT: You are not alone, take the dive!

Want to break into climate? I’ve had over 200 career calls with climate job seekers within the past year. Here are the 4 most commonly asked questions and my best answers: ⭐ How can I get a head start in college?  • Focus your coursework and internships on an expertise/industry pair, like marketing and sustainable fashion, business and regenerative agriculture, or data science and energy. • If you can’t decide on a niche, build versatile skills like finance, engineering, design, and sales. These skills are needed across climate-focused organizations. • Most recommended internship board: EDICT Internship Program by Elemental Excelerator 💫 How can I switch to climate from another industry? • Opportunities can be found in solution-focused organizations (e.g., Pachama, Kevala), sustainability/CSR teams (e.g., Carhartt, Adobe), and governmental offices (e.g., NYC Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)). • Many people try to overhaul their entire career. Instead, try changing only one variable at a time: seek a similar role in a new industry or a new role in a familiar industry (eg; marketing in fashion → marketing at a SaaS company like Recurate). • Mentorship, freelancing, and certificates can bridge the gap in industry experience. • Most recommended mentorship opportunities: Third Derivative and GrowthMentor ✨ How do I choose a niche?  • Standing out in climate requires being a near-perfect fit. Find the intersection of what you're good at, what you love, what you can be paid for, and what's needed across climate efforts. • Hop on career calls with folks across domains and industries to learn more about the day-to-day of their roles. • Most recommended starting points for market research: Climatebase, Work on Climate, CareerOneStop, and Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) 🌎 Do I need to join a program like Terra.do, Work on Climate, or OnePointFive (opf.degree)?  • These programs are helpful but not necessary. Free resources like coaching calls, videos, and podcasts can be valuable too. • Remember that “climate” isn’t really a standalone job! Consider how you can provide value to a climate-focused team and focus on building credibility in your desired solution sector (energy, agriculture, etc.). • Most recommended programs: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Reforge, and Stanford University's certificates. -- Interested in a free careers session? • Check out the Work on Climate Expert Office Hours list and the #OpenDoorClimate list, launched by Daniel Hill. Interested in breaking into climate as a marketer? • Here's a comprehensive guide I put together: https://lnkd.in/gUqyFh_b I did my best to keep this post short. If anybody has more they’d like to add for climate job seekers, please add it to the comments. Thank you! Illustration by @tatooine_girl