Midcareer transition to green

- [Fulya] Getting a mid-career green job may sound challenging, yet it is very rewarding. At this point in a green career, like many other careers, expectations increase, so does the depth of required knowledge and expertise. Midway through their careers, sustainability professionals gain the skills required for adopting new strategies and technologies, communicating clearly with various stakeholders, managing sustainability projects, being accountable for setting and achieving goals and other job-specific roles. They also hopefully invested in creating a network and being in a circle of peers where they can share best practices, ask for advice or assistance and land any insights to help others. For more technical roles, require technical knowledge in the earlier career, most from knowing to doing and hands-on experience. Confidence is a sign of experience and mastery in a mid-career green role. Mid-career may also be a time for someone holding a traditional role to make a shift to a green role. This transition is ideally made by leveraging existing skills and experience and adding new green skills and credentials rather than starting from scratch. If you find yourself in this position, remember my career example, that I also made this transition mid-career. However, I was upskilling and volunteering to add these new skills and opportunities while still in my traditional role. Are you in marketing and communications? Your expertise in communications, coupled with an understanding of sustainability basics and reporting, may be a good place to start. Are you in project management? Guess what? All sustainability projects from green construction to energy efficiency need good managers to keep green projects cost effective, timely and delivered with the highest quality. Are you in finance? Sustainability is no longer a nice to have, but in the core of all businesses and the initiatives still need to pencil out. Making a transition overnight is not likely to be possible, so here are a few suggestions you may consider for landing a mid-career green job. Instead of starting from scratch, you can repurpose or upgrade your existing skills and experience to make a smoother switch. For example, if your background is in finance, you can start by building subject matter knowledge on sustainable investing and material ESG key performance indicators in your sector on top of your existing skills in accounting, computing, data and risk analysis. I'm sure that you also have soft skills, such as teamwork, time management and interpersonal communication. If you are in an operational role, what insights and expertise have you gained to make the operation more resource efficient? How about the management skills you gained that can help you become a change agent? What additional skills do you think you need to get under your belt? Maybe you need to polish up your public speaking skills, focus on financial analysis of sustainability initiatives or consider credentials that would give you additional credibility. Take some time to reflect and write down a list of the skills and subject matter expertise that you gained over the years that may be helpful. If you are in communications or marketing, your communication skills are golden for most sustainability roles. You may consider a role in sustainability reporting by gaining a foundational understanding of sustainability topics, learning about ESG reporting frameworks, such as GRI, reviewing sustainability reports from leading corporations focused on sustainability efforts. To learn about sustainability basics and reporting frameworks, you can watch why LinkedIn Learning course: Introduction to Sustainability for Design, Construction and Manufacturing. Many of the videos are applicable to any industry beyond the ones in the title. Please keep this in mind. A mid-career transition to a green job is not for the fainthearted, but if you are committed, now is a great time to get started and take the initiative to learn more and find opportunities to test out your newly acquired skills and knowledge in your existing role. Consider piloting new ways of doing your job, propose ideas to your organization and always remember to take the opportunity to share what you've learned back with your team. The more familiar you become with green topics and concepts, the more you'll also start coming up with new ideas to implement in your current role. Make green a part of the solution for your organization's traditional problems. I think this will be fun and exciting while giving you an opportunity to test what you learned. I hope you can turn your transition into an enjoyable journey and a pain-free transformation.