Career Tips & Resources

Since sustainability-related careers cross so many industries and disciplines, it can be hard to find relevant job postings compiled in any one place. Here are four simplifying strategies that might help you discover and aggregate job postings for a targeted sustainability, CSR or cleantech job search, if you’re not already practicing them:

1.  Google Reader. Google Reader is a great way to aggregate job postings in one place. I’ll confess I’m not the most tech-savvy person, but I managed to set up my Google Reader with subscriptions to relevant Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, and job search boards so I now have a steady stream of jobs on my Google Reader every day. I have 17 “subscriptions,” all sustainability job feeds of one kind or another.  For example, my subscriptions include:  CSR Jobs RSS feed from BSR.org, Internship RSS feed from CSRJobs.nl, Twitter: SustainableJobs feed, SimplyHired feed for “MBA+renewable+energy”, and SimplyHired feed for “MBA+sustainability”. For job boards like SimplyHired, you can set your RSS feed to any job search criteria you prefer.

2. Job Alerts from meta-search engines like SimplyHired and Indeed. Job alerts (also called “job search agents” or “email alerts”) will send you daily or weekly emails with job postings matching your specific search criteria. For example, my saved searches include daily alerts for “MBA, sustainability” and “renewable energy intern” from Simply Hired and “Corporate Social Responsibility” from Indeed. Of course, you can set whatever search criteria you want — whether topical (“environment and manager and agriculture”) or geographic (“sustainability and Chicago”), and you can set up multiple different searches from the same site.

It can be overwhelming to get too many of these emails every day, so I created a “Rule” in my Outlook to automatically put all of these alert emails in a specific folder labeled “Job Openings.” That way, they never crowd my inbox, and I review the Job Openings email folder as a whole every few days.

3. Job Alerts from companies or organizations you’re interested in. Many companies have an email alert function on their career websites. You can set criteria and you’ll receive an email any time a job matching your criteria comes open.  For example, I have a job search agent set up for keyword “MBA” with Horizon Wind, one for any new opening with Patagonia, one for keyword “internship” with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), and one for “MBA” with the American Wind Energy Association’s industry-wide job board. Often, you’ll be given the choice to set up an alert after conducting a job search on the company’s site (e.g., it might give you the choice to “Save this Search” or to create an account or “job search agent”).

4. LinkedIn “Jobs you may be interested in”. LinkedIn has a new function that will display and email you “jobs you may be interested in.” Log in to LinkedIn, and then click on the “Jobs” tab. This function generates your list based on keywords and job titles in your LinkedIn profile, so it’s only useful if your profile is detailed and complete (a good idea for any job seeker). One nice feature is that if you see a job of interest, you can click on “Similar Jobs.” You can also improve the recommendations over time if you close recommended jobs by selecting either “Not relevant” or “Relevant but I’m not interested.” Next to the “Jobs you may be interested in” heading, you can also set “Email Alert” settings.

Finally, for jobs that don’t reach you by the lists above, there are a few great sustainability and CSR jobs boards, some of which you may have to check manually if there is not an easy way to set up an RSS feed or job alert.  Likewise for companies of interest.  Bookmark your favorites and visit them once a week. But, hopefully, with the above strategies, you’ll have fewer websites to check, and more — and more relevant — jobs coming directly to you.