Find your green professional opportunities
In the current economy it’s easy to fall into a “wait and see” stance with your career. You may want to wait until you see more signs of growth before you decide to commit to finding your own green career. Although this stance may feel safe in the moment, it may be keeping you from:
- Finding opportunities that already exist in the green economy, – Discovering opportunities in your current job, and – Creating opportunities based on your knowledge, skills, and experience.
The green economy really is making strides, even if traditional media sources aren’t giving it a lot of coverage.
One caveat: Much of the political and economic news you see about the green economy is focusing on Green Collar Jobs: blue collar trade jobs that contribute to green efforts. Although this information is helpful in understanding the green economy, it doesn’t tell the entire story. What most of these news stories miss is the Green Professional Jobs: white collar jobs that contribute to green and sustainable efforts.
Green Professional Jobs may not have “green” job titles. Not all of them are in the renewable energy industries that are getting some press attention these days. You may need to do your homework to sort out where the green professional jobs are in your area. Though you may not be hearing about them at this point, they are out there. More and more companies are stepping up to face their own sustainability, or lack there of. In a recent Green Economy Post article (http://greeneconomypost.com/corporate-sustainability-reporting-increased-dramatically-3608.htm) a new study by Global Reporting Initiative (http://www.globalreporting.org/Home) reports that there’s been a 46% increase in the number of global companies providing sustainability reports, from 685 in 2007 to 1000 in 2008. If you want to dig into the list of companies who are providing reports, download the spreadsheet report via link on this page. (http://www.globalreporting.org/GRIReports/GRIReportsList/)
For now, take heart that we continue to see more and more evidence each day that the green economy is happening. (You might want to subscribe to a few blogs so that you see daily evidence of this trend. It helps to get the reinforcement that investments, innovation and growth really are happening on a daily basis.)
