One of the most frequent questions I receive is how to get a design job working in climate. I have seen a lot of great resource round-ups. The one answer that I see missing from them is to build your own role.
I struggled with this theme for many years. The job you’re in may be the sustainable job you’ve been looking for in 2023.
Bring your expertise in your domain alongside a beginners mindset in sustainability to innovate in your space. Most importantly, there is no better day to get started than today.
The 10 steps to making every job a climate job.
1️⃣ Start by setting your goals such as the work and tasks that excite you. Include anti-goals what work, themes, people, tasks don't excite you in your work. This framing will help shape your vision. Check out Shaan Puri's goal setting framework.
2️⃣ Begin a list of experts to follow as a way to learn the cutting-edge themes in your industry. They will inevitably turn you onto niche blogs, podcasts, newsletters, books and other media important for your growth.
3️⃣ Review your companies ESG and sustainability targets. Assess how your work can ladder up or support these goals. Check out the Drawdown job function action guide for ideas and provocations about how you can connect your work to climate action.
4️⃣ Share your learning goals and passion with your manager. they will help guide and support your journey.
5️⃣ Many companies have learning resources or budget for classes use them to level-up with climate training. Better yet, bring your internal working group along to continue to elevate and educate your group.
6️⃣ Get known for your climate work internally by sharing the knowledge and research you've accumulated. people will look for opportunities to work with you when they see your passion and growing knowledge-base.
7️⃣ Create an internal working group of like-minded individuals to discuss how to create coordinated projects to make internal improvements to help decarbonize your company
8️⃣ Consider an accreditation to build creditability in your industry. As you see experts LinkedIn profiles with creditability signals research them to see if they're a good fit for your path. Ask those who have a certification advanced their climate career pathway?
9️⃣ Join a community or industry working group to network and build relationships. As a UX designer I'm partial to the Green Software Foundation as a forum to see active professionals, researchers and speakers on the cutting edge of my field.
🔟 Find a mentor who works in climate that is on a similar path. Use your goals document from 'step 1️⃣' to search for them using keywords and themes from your doc. This relationship may take time to build, but is well worth it.