Green Jobs and Personal Branding Online

If you are learning about sustainability, looking for a green job, or if you are a contractor and are looking to find new clients who are interested in eco-friendly options, you might be wondering about what opportunities are available in the green building industry.

Well, there are a few pieces of good news I can share. First, emerging green building professionals have a growing number of job, specialty credential and project choices that focus on green building and sustainability. Second, there is evidence that the real estate industry is improving. As the real estate industry grows, so does demand for green building. Indeed, Bloomberg recently reported that January 2013 showed the highest number of single family construction starts in four years (annualized), and permits were climbing, which suggests that 2013 could be a good year, and a November 2012 Dodge Construction report seems accurate (so far at least) when it forecasted that the outlook for green building in both non-residential and residential construction is strong and expected to continue to grow until 2016.

So what actions can you take that will make those opportunities more available to you? In short, combine your personal marketing efforts in the real and online worlds by getting involved with your local green building chapter and simultaneously increasing your visibility online wherever you can be seen as helpful or relevant.

Online and Offline Marketing


USGBC is a national organization, but there are many local chapters that are almost always run by professionals of various backgrounds who volunteer their time. You’ll find people from every profession including engineers, marketing professionals, designers, architects, brokers, consultants and so on and there’s a good chance they can use your help in some way. While we’ve supported multiple green building chapters across the U.S. for years now, I recently got involved with the CTGBC’s marketing committee and I’ve already met some really great people.

When considering your online resume, remember that employers, businesses and hiring managers are increasingly using the Internet to find information on applicants prior to reaching out in the heated job market. Whether it’s on LinkedIn, Google, or a vertically focused industry site, before someone makes an initial call, schedules an interview or hires you they want to get a sense of who you are as a person. Of course, the same is often true when we are looking for a contractor to do a job in a local market. Being found on Google when someone searches for “Your Specialty Area” (e.g. “solar installer”), in addition to being found for “Your Name” may set you apart from others who are vying for a competitive position.

For instance, LinkedIn can help you promote what you know and you can choose from a range of “Skills & Expertise” and then have other people in your network endorse you for those skills (in fact, LinkedIn recently reported it’s 1 billionth “endorsement” across the global network). According to LinkedIn’s internal numbers, approximately 110,000 people list “green building” skills grew in their profiles. Related “skills” related include, “USGBC”, “HERS Rater”, a credential that’s short for Home Energy Rating System Rater, “passive solar” and “Certified Green Rater”.

Search Engine Optimization

As our lives are increasingly linked by together by the Internet, your efforts to build a profile around specific skills online can compound online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a practice of actively marketing yourself or your business online to be easily found by Google and other search engines, is something that every business owner should be aware of and thinking about. While the exact formula for how Google determines which 10 show up on page 1 is a closely-held secret, the foundation of Google’s algorithm is rooted in the number and type of inbound links to your site from other sites. By increasing the number of relevant links that point to your site, you can demonstrate that your site has some authority in your industry. For example, a company that is in the solar installation business could rank better by building links from industry-relevant articles about solar installation, that link back to its business’ site.

I recently finished a great Kindle book on Search Engine Optimization titled SEO 2013 & Beyond. It’s inexpensive, short and I can definitely recommend it if you are interested in SEO. The author makes a point of stressing how important “relevance” is when crafting a profile or link-building online because Google’s job of sifting through the cruft and delivering on its promise of matching results with search intent is becoming increasingly difficult.

I was curious about general search engine activity and dug into the data using Google’s keyword tool to see how much search volume there is on Google for the 20 most popular professional green building-related credentials and professions on Poplar Network:

A solar installer, or solar installation company, that has is building relevant content across the web will perform better in ranking for the 33,500 searches than those that don't. Also, don't forget about YouTube and Bing. While Google is the undisputed leader in online search, because of it's focus on video, many people don't realize that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web. Bing comes in 3rd.

I’ll continue to track these search results and report them back from time to time, but it’s important to note that there is an incredible long-tail of search in the green building industry that this list does not reflect. Entrepreneurs and global corporations are developing new green technologies on a regular basis and I see no shortage of innovation coming down to us down the road. Indeed, most people do not realize that about 15% of searches done on Google every day are new (i.e. that Google has never encountered them before).

So keep that in mind as you market yourself. The fact is, you never know where people will come across you and/or your experience, but you can help your career by networking with people both on and offline and remembering that, in the end, relevance matters.