Careers blog written by Irena Zientek, Information Development Manager, Careers

To celebrate One Planet Week (Week 6, 13 – 17 February), we thought we’d turn the spotlight onto green careers and how to find out more about them.

Green careers don’t necessarily mean just nature and conservation, but also ethical careers, renewable energy, consultancy and more. You can start exploring the range of careers by visiting the environment job sector pages on the Careers website. These pages will provide information about the sector and whether it’s right for you. They also look at the skills you’ll need, where to look for jobs and what else you can do while you’re at York to enhance your employability in this area.

There’s also the Considering… an ethical career information sheet, which covers the same issues, but for environmentally / socially responsible career paths.

To gain a deeper understanding into environment and related areas, try the York Profiles and Mentors section of the website, where York graduates give an insight into their jobs and offer advice to current students.

Finally, to add to your careers research, generic job profiles at the Prospects website can give some details of what a particular career entails and the entry routes available.

Work experience

For any graduate job, getting relevant work experience is going to give you valuable skills and experience and it’s the same for green careers. Look for volunteering opportunities  – these might be needed before you get a paid job – using the job sector pages, the information sheets and some of our volunteering programmes. Other chances to volunteer can be found through sites like  the Do It website.

For paid work see the jobs sites mentioned on the job sector page and search Careers Gateway‘s vacancies section. At certain times of year the Green Impact initiative on campus, recruits students to be project assistants and auditors, offering some relevant experience.

If you want further information about green careers, related work experience and skills development, call into the Careers building for our general drop-in sessions, which run 11am – 1pm every day during term time (except Tuesday).

For the rest of this week, there’s also a display of information in Careers, along with One Planet freebies of veggie recipe cards, packs of pollinator-friendly flowers, keyrings and bendy rulers. Come and see!