I had a couple of people asking me about careers in sustainability. This is not a real sector or industry. It is an amalgamation of ideas and topics that have taken hold of the attention of businesses, government and the world economy. It is probably still largely western capitalistic ideal though it has local variants of it, and it co-mingles with other older topics that have been around for a while including environmentalism, public health, and maybe even finance.
So people are asking what skills they need, what qualifications they should get, what they should read in order to get into this sector. Now if you ask me, I’d say, go start a project. You don’t need an internship, you don’t need a temp job – but you need to start a project that shows that you care, shows that there’s work you want to do, and you’re capable of pulling it off. Or at least even if it doesn’t really work out, you are able to draw lessons from it.
It is so much more powerful to be able to tell prospective interviewers about the kind of project and work you have done. Sure, you can have had an internship with one of the Big 4 professional firms or the Big 3 consultancies. But being able to coordinate others, being able to practice your resourcefulness in making something, and putting it out there, is so much more valuable.
So go start a website, post your research, write an app, take photographs and post pictures, organise a community and make a difference.