Looking for a way to transition your career into the new green economy? Need to boost your resume in a tough job market? Achieving the LEED Green Associate (LEED GA) credential allows you to market your knowledge of green building to potential employers. This first level of LEED professional credentialing is designed for professionals who want to demonstrate green building expertise in non-technical fields of practice, and to demonstrate basic knowledge of green design, construction, and operations.

A two weeks ago, Karen Tucker, Director of Customer Development at iLiv, posted the following question on the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Linkedin Group. Green Building and LEED: How are we (designers, owners, engineers, etc.) handling the evolutionary process toward integrative design?

Discover the 10 most important factors you should be using to select a green MBA program and how to use them to select the right program to put you on a successful career track.

Corporate sustainability communicators are beginning to exploit social media to tell their stories and get quick feedback. Which new media offer you the greatest potential- what is their digital bottomline?

There is a serious lack of trust among consumers these days. Citizens of every country are eying large national and multi-national corporations with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. Questions are being asked. Answers demanded. With taxpayers around the world bailing out stupendous failures in the financial, housing, and insurance sectors, there is more than a lack of consumer confidence affecting the market. Frankly, we’re over it. We just don’t trust big business anymore. This is actually nothing new. But the uniform opinion of distrust, leveraged by the social media tools of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning sites, and blogging seems to have brought us to a tipping point.

Green job boards are popping up all over the internet. I review them regularly and my assessment is this: the chances that you will land a job in sustainability because of something you see on a job board are slim. Very slim. Consider that in more flush times, Americans have a much higher chance to find a job through networking than responding to an ad. Statistics vary, but I have seen anywhere from 60% – 80% quoted as the percentage of jobs found through networking. Now consider that these are difficult times for the American job market and companies are having a hard enough time finding the resources to add jobs to their payroll that we all know and understand, let alone something “new” like sustainability director. In a nutshell, there is not much on these job boards in either quantity or quality to give a job seeker hope.

So you wrote a CR report! Big deal! What next? Make it BUZZ. The thing about writing CSR reports is that they take a helluvalotta energy. The reporting process takes months, involves many internal and external stakeholders, and creates a reporting frenzy in the organization which bypasses none but the most unengaged employees. In theory, that is. Sometimes reporting is an intensive process for a just small group of individuals in the organization. Whatever the format, it’s intense. There’s a build-up. A deadline. Many hurdles to defuse. (is that as mixed metaphore?) Then. It happens. You send the report to print (or upload it to your fancy new html flash mini-site for viewing by the general public) and that’s it. B-I-G sigh of relief. Mop your brow. Stare into space and feel the release. Off to the bar for a celebratory drink. Sit back and wait for the compliments to start flowing in. I suspect this is how it happens in most organizations.

Guest Post by Jennifer Massie, founder of Massie Group, a recruiting consulting firm
I have decided to conduct a series of interviews with people who have made a career transition to the clean/green sector.  This could include any type of business related to renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable business, etc.
I am finding more and more that [...]

The desire to make the career transition from IT to cleantech is an extremely popular one. The reasons are fairly obvious. After 30 years of tremendous innovation and high growth, there appears to be less opportunity than there once was. Whereas cleantech seems to be a area open to new out-of-the box thinking and has a landscape of great opportunity. This is the time when you can really make your mark and IT professionals seeking to make a green career transition have an advantage over many others seeking to do the same. Network engineering and systems operations, user front-end development, software development, and embedded device development are just a few areas where IT professionals will find themselves in great demand. There are skills transferability opportunities on almost every level.