It is difficult now a days to get the right kind of people you want in your organization. I guess the situation is tough when you want to hire the new breed of sustainability professionals. This is because most say that they already know what sustainability is. To say that they understand sustainability they use the right words in the CVs and during the interviews and hold certificates on various topics related to sustainability masking their not so relevant graduate backgrounds. There are just numerous such certificates now a days. The CVs and Statement of Purpose (SoP) of these professionals are impressive as they are written making use of ChatGPT. Most CVs use the words like ESG, circular economy, decarbonization and generously use abbreviations such as CBAM, CSRD, DEI etc. in describing the interest, expertise and experience.
I tried posting our requirements on platforms such as LinkedIn and received an incredible number of applications. But after reading the CVs and interviewing a few, I realized that I wasn’t able to see the persons we were looking for. People whose CVs were great were expensive and I wasn’t sure whether such people will stay in my organization for long. My colleagues told me that this is the trend of the young generation. They are not patient, want to rise up fast due to peer pressures and there is no concept such as loyalty to the organization. Learning is more to understand the tricks of the consulting trade and not deep or experiential.
Today, there are few role models for the young professionals to look for. Names of environmental professionals who led the field of environmental management in 1970s to 2000s for instance are not known this batch of young sustainability professionals. To them, sustainability seems to be more of a paradropped concept and so the terms ESG and circular economy. But in the world where most clients are looking for perfunctory “solutions” to sustainability, consulting companies do not have much interest to invest and groom young sustainability professionals. It’s the price point that matters in the sustainability business (like in other businesses too) and not the value you bring in. Perhaps digitalization of data and AI are providing opportunities good enough to provide a “shallow sustainability service” that can be well delivered by mediocre quality of sustainability professionals. Unfortunately, that’s a hard fact of consulting in sustainability business.
Professor heard me and saw me speaking with some anguish. He lighted his cigar and said
“Dr Modak, you have to understand that you have stayed too long in the sustainability business for getting such a frustration. You belonged to a family of public health engineers and received your master’s and doctoral degrees in “classical” environmental science and engineering. It took years of policy and practice experience for you to understand the term sustainability and this was how you made your company’s mission as “practicing sustainability to the advantage of all” way back in 1996. The problem with you that you expect the young sustainability professionals today to know the sustainability journey the world has gone through. For the kind of job they do or want to do, they see no such need”.
I told Professor that grooming of students at academic universities is perhaps poor to take them through the history of the sustainability. Here, I would put the blame more on the professors and less on the students. Most professors are not connected much to sustainability related policies and practice. The research topics are offered without much serious thought and student energy is simply wasted with poor quality of dissertations. Could this be the reason why we see a serious challenge in getting jobs who hold degrees in environmental science, engineering, economics, policy and planning? MBAs in sustainability are however getting good traction and I often wonder how these MBAs with hardly any fundamental exposure to the core topics on sustainability are able to get jobs with high pay packages compared to others. Are we making the subject of sustainability too dilute? Or are we providing something what the market wants?
Professor sympathized with me and smiled.
“Why don’t you start a Young Professionals Program (YPP) at your company then to coach sustainability professionals of tomorrow?”
In fact, I was myself toying of this idea of starting a YPP for long. We have been running an environmental internship program for past 15 years and in this period more than 80 interns have received training. The YPP will however be a longer and a structured program – may be one or even two years. Given that my company works in 360 degrees around sustainability, the YPP will get a full exposure to sustainability practice on some of our exciting projects. Using my previous and current academic connections, I may include a stay of say 2/3 months with a research/academic body of repute as well. I started to think about the design of the YPP and seek help from my friends.
Well, someone may say that the YPP post a 1 or 2 year training may not continue with me and may get “stolen” by others including competitors. But that should not be the concern if the objective is to create good quality sustainability professionals for the market to help everybody. And may be more partner institutions including consulting companies may join me to create a practice of offering similar YPPs program at their end.
“Do you wear readymade shirts or tailor stitched shirts Dr Modak?” Professor asked me a question that I thought of completely out of context. It took me a few seconds to react as I was lost in thoughts regarding starting a YPP.
“Not really Professor”. I responded. “I prefer stitched shirts to my like, my choice of fabric and the fit but now a days I compromise and buy readymade shirts for shortage of time”. I recalled many occasions when I had returned the readymade shirt as it did not fit or it wasn’t the same as shown on the website.
“So look at a YPP as a tailor stitched shirt and not a readymade shirt that is factory made with nobody specific in mind”.
I think I understood what he wanted to say
Professor extinguished his cigar with a smile ending our conversation saying, “but remember that you may have to pay little more for a stitched shirt”.
(I will be announcing soon a Young Professionals Program for careers in sustainability at Environmental Management Centre Pvt Ltd, shortly. Do send your suggestions on prasad.modak@emcentre.com and stay tuned)
Cover image taken from https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/men-s-readymade-check-shirts-23833720012.html
Wonderful blog. I see that a professional needs to become a conscientious consumer – to understand that the connections between nature and humans. To be able to to achieve this, good grounding on environmental history and its connections to the material & energy world is necessary in my view.
Thank you for sharing your observations sir. I observe that while the expansion of sustainability programs and certificates is promising, the quality of instruction and the capacity building of teachers are also critical concerns.
Absolutely. We should run a teacher training program
Very well stitched piece. Building on the last suggestion, as you mentioned the professors and research institutes aren’t offering topics to help professionals grow and build themselves, having a forum where research needs are shared may help trigger the curiosity in young minds .
Agree.
Thanks for this article, it was indeed interesting. One suggestion sir – in this YPP program, please also induct a few professors / young teachers. If the professors learn it right, they will teach the students well and this will make a big difference. I m sure if you initiate this, academicians would respond in big numbers.
Thank you for your suggestion. We will probably conduct a separate course for the faculty. Regards