Insights

Here’s some candid, creative, real-world advice about how to break into impact work without a lot of direct experience: Be smart with the communications tools at your disposal Sustainability professionals need great communication skills, so use yours to start a conversation with potential employers through social media. It’s critical to use all the tools at your disposal to develop an engaged, online presence and start piecing together a circle of contacts. Twitter and blogging are fantastic ways to do this

There is one question you will always get asked in an interview, and it is the easiest one to muck up: Walk me through your resume…

Walking up to a potential new contact at a conference, or cold calling someone on the phone, is often the most intimidating part of networking for jobseekers. It’s hard to make the first move and much easier to keep yourself out of a vulnerable situation. However, if you’re looking to make a career move into sustainability, corporate responsibility or the green economy, in-person networking remains the best way to convert potential opportunities into real jobs. So, if you tend to

I always start coaching with the scariest question “What do you do?” (which is similar to the interview question, “walk me through your resume”).  It is a set-up question. Which, as simple as it is, throws us off.  It makes us uncomfortable.  But, if well-thought through, authentic and well-practiced, will be a short and impactful career story.  Many of us blow it.  We either lead with our name, title and company name (boring!!!) or we drone on and on about our passions,

Sometimes our craving for something new and unknown is what keeps us from feeling happy with what we have. But while it is important to resist the urge for change simply for change’s sake, it is equally important to continue challenging ourselves in order to grow professionally, and thereby feel happy. Reality check In figuring out whether to stay or go, it’s useful to unpack the difference between the perceived reality of what a job change might look like and

I advise all my clients that you can make a career change — but you can’t change everything all at once. Together, work through interim steps, building the experience, skills, clout and relationships and that will ultimately put their career on the path to that dream role.

Corporate responsibility and sustainability are invigorating spaces to work in. New, constantly evolving, varied, dynamic, game-changing, planet-saving and respectably remunerated. It’s the place to be for people who want to live their values without swapping their Birkin for Birkenstocks (OK, well, maybe not an actual Birkin, but you know what I mean). A big part of my day is spent advising people with established skill sets and extensive experience on how to transition out of their safe, stable roles and

The last 15 years have seen major changes in the world of recruitment. When I started out as a hiring manager, we advertised in the newspaper and on the major jobs websites, and CVs arrived by post (usually) or email (occasionally). CVs included a standard summary of a person’s career history, and we’d pile them on the desk and pick through them with a highlighter to extract the information we needed before calling to arrange interviews. Today’s hiring landscape couldn’t be

Many of you are getting ramped up to attend Net Impact’s annual conference this autumn. You may also be considering launching or shifting your careers in the impact sector. We all want the job search process to be easy. We want to just be able to hop on the web, look at the job boards, find a job that looks interesting, apply to it, land the interview and, most importantly, get the job offer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Ready to break into the impact sector? Use content you are passionate about & your social media channels to put your stake in the ground as a thought leader: