There has been a lot of activities in the sustainability space. Not just projects, opportunities for various different companies but individual professionals have been presented lots of job opportunities in Singapore and Hong Kong. The situation is a bit of a musical chairs because everyone are looking for experienced individuals but there are only so few of them so then it becomes a competition on salaries.
Companies need to think about the individuals as people and not just human resources; they need to think about what it means for them to progress in careers or how they have progressed. In a bid to hire, they may end up causing trouble for these individuals as they place higher expectations on them even when they don’t really have the actual fit needed (mostly because who they might be looking for do not exist in the market).
Then there are companies who are basically hiring ‘cheaper’ juniors and then using contractors to help train these juniors to hopefully get to a level of competence that will serve them well. Most of these juniors will actually leave in search of other opportunities; others might stay to continue building up the practice.
Ultimately, the question to ask both the individuals and the companies is whether they have levelled up in the process. Because it doesn’t really matter the salary you’re offered or how many clients you manage to take on assignments for. The longer term metric that keeps those good things going, is knowing who you’re serving, what you’re serving them for, and actually being able to serve it.