Why you need to focus on a niche when making a climate career transition

Bluntly: “I want to work sustainability” is a terrible way to start a conversation

OK, it is great that you have realised the world is on fire and you want to do more than take your own cup to the coffee shop, but taking that vague aspiration to the job boards and hiring managers is misguided at best and a colossal waste of your time at worst (Sorry).

You need to be specific, find your direction and refine how you can signal your value to those that can help you.

At the same time, how can you pick a target when the choices are overwhelming and your cognitive availability of options is so low. Well, let’s break it down…

1. List ideas from creative sources

2. Filter that list through a criteria set that are personal to you

3. Test your short list and learn quickly via Rapid ProtoTyping.

Get Creative

We, as humans, are terrible at seeing options and  making choice. One of greatest flaws is cognitive availability, we simply fail to recognise opportunity outside of our currently known or adjacent ideas. In her book ‘The Art of Choosing’ researcher Sheenya Iyengar examines this closely (well worth a read) and recommends expanding the sample size of one (you) to many (by seeking points of view outside the norm).

“Ask a generative Ai (Chat GPT) for suggestions based on your values and skills”

So seek advice from others, ask a generative Ai (Chat GPT) for suggestions based on your values and skills. Ultimately broaden your inputs to create a long list of roles (Content) and sectors and organisations (Context) that may be of interest

Establishing Your Criteria

Establishing your criteria is a long and iterative approach, it is the exercise of personal empathy. It should an include a look at your values, your strengths, and the fundamental logistics of where you are geographically willing to work, who you want to help (and why) and the extent of disruption you are willing to consider in your switch.  Big stuff, but investing the time here cuts out a lot of wasted time later.

Now push your long list through this criteria filter scoring each against the various criteria you have and, not ignoring your intuition, narrow your list to a handful of testable hypothesises

Rapid Prototyping

Finally, once you have a hypothesis it is off with the academic gown and on with the action pants! The concept of rapid prototyping, of fail fast and learn quickly lends itself neatly to exploring what work in a particular role or industry might be like and then deciding to either pivot your aim or explore the next hypothesis on your list or persevere. 

Critically these mini forays into your career of choice should be the absolute minimum in terms of time, effort, and cost that still allows you to gather meaningful data on what the experience was like. Then become increasingly committed if you continue to persevere with this line of exploration 

The ladder might be something like: A simple coffee with an industry insider (check out #opendoorclimate directory for help with that), work shadowing a colleague in this space, a short course in the technical element of this work, a secondment in your organisation…. Before you know it you’ll have a demonstrable track record of delivered value to show and a network of people in the area you started to explore. 

And THEN you can confidently be in the market for a job in that space. 

So, what hypothesis do you want to test, and what short Proof Projects can you think of? Want to chat about your ideas, grab a free virtual coffee conversation: Grab a coffee