Job Profile

What does your job involve and what is a typical day like?

I manage and deliver a range of community-focussed energy projects and can find myself busy with anything from running a training session or advising a community group about good sites for a wind turbine, to finding new ways to support people to save energy in the home or to drawing up the rota for who is handling calls on the advice line.

What qualifications and experience did you have before starting the job?

I came with a biology degree and masters in Ecology and Environmental Management from YorkUniversity, plus had done quite a lot of voluntary environmental work. Having now quizzed my interviewers – and become an interviewer myself – I realise that the qualifications were critical but it was the hands-on work that swung it for me. I’d done voluntary conservation work for years which showed I was pretty committed, but I’d also started specialising in climate issues in my university research and through a volunteer stint in the Centre for Alternative Technology’s information service. It was there where I learnt lots of the information I impart today as well as getting the office and telephone experience I needed to get my foot in the door.

What are the best and worst bits of your job?

The best – meeting and supporting people who are just getting on and doing stuff to help the environment, working in a great office with loads of people who really believe in what they do and being able to pick specialists’ brains for the complicated questions and calculations.

Although we are supporting people to make stuff happen I don’t very often get my hands dirty. It’s basically an office job so sometimes I feel pretty removed from the action. There are some mornings of despondency when it all seems a bit much, but after the coffee kicks in I normally realise you’ve got to start somewhere.

What satisfaction do you get from your work and how does it make a difference?

Realising that between us we have loads of really useful information stored up that people are interested in and will find useful. It’s great to be part of a team who understand energy issues and can assess the best options without having any vested interests. We are able to offer impartial advice and information about energy which means we are really helping individuals, communities and businesses to make their efforts go as far as possible.

Do you have any tips for someone looking for a career in this area?

Work out what motivates you and then get some experience in different areas of work relating to it. If you still like it after that then it’s worth sticking with. Also work out what kind of tasks suit you and whether you suit them. If you want to work for a particular organisation find out what skills they are looking for and build up your work experience, volunteering and temp work to support it. Loads of skills are transferrable across sectors so remember to make the links – if you can deal with a guy yelling about a broken phone you can also deal with someone complaining about a dodgy insulation installer.

More about the Centre for Sustainable Energy