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How Will Terra.do Help Me Land a Climate Job?
Insights from our first four years of our Climate Change: Learning for Action fellowship
Insights from our first four years of our Climate Change: Learning for Action fellowship
Outline
So you’re looking to do more about climate change. There are many, many ways to go about this in your personal life and your community—but unsurprisingly, most of the people we hear from would prefer to step up their climate action in a way that also gets them paid. (Listen, we get it.) Thus you want to know how our Climate Change: Learning for Action fellowship can help.
In this post, we’ll preview some data from our upcoming Terra.do Career Outcomes Report, which looks at results from 2,230 people who took part in the Learning for Action (LFA) program, starting with its first cohort in May 2020 and continuing through the end of 2023. (In short, we see our program delivering good bang for the buck, so we'll also look at how it does that further down.)
The headline number is that we found roughly half of those folks—let’s call them LFA fellows—are engaged in clearly identifiable climate work. And that percentage is higher—around two-thirds—for fellows from our first seven cohorts, likely because finding the right job can take time.
We’ll add more detail below—and go into a LOT more detail once the full report is polished.
Key takeaways on Terra.do job placement
Our top takeaway was this: Compared to public data available for other education or community programs you'll find on climate, Learning for Action is a cost-effective way to significantly increase the likelihood of landing a job.
- Half of LFA graduates at the time of our analysis were working in full-time climate roles. We see the transition rates among job seekers to be 30 percent at six months after graduation and 65 percent after 18 months.
- LFA trains leaders: 25 percent of career transitions were individuals who either founded organizations or landed a senior-level leadership role at a larger organization.
- LFA has great network effects: 55 organizations have hired more than one Terra.do fellow and seven have hired four or more.
Our organization is all about helping people develop the skills to tackle the climate crisis, and 92 percent of the learners our forthcoming report covers came in wanting to find a climate job or to level up their climate knowledge for work they were already doing.
Here, we need to throw in a few caveats. First, what exactly constitutes a “climate job” is sometimes a squishy question. We go into a lot more detail about this in our Climate Organization Impact Guide, which divides climate work across five detailed tiers, but the short version is that some jobs sound climate-adjacent but are unlikely to do much actual good (cough greenwashing for fossil giants cough).
Also—and this is critical—not everyone applying their skills toward meaningful climate action is doing it for a living, and that’s okay. Regarding methodology, we should note we gathered data both from LFA fellows who reported success landing a shiny new climate job, and from LinkedIn, where many hundreds of fellows posted about their climate transitions.
With that out of the way, the upshot is clear: People join the Learning for Action fellowship because they want to have more impact on the climate crisis, often (but not exclusively) in their work—and those fellows keep telling us the program was worth their time and money. A few more takeaways:
- Around 84 percent of learners in the LFA program earn completion certificates.
- Through the end of 2023, fellows from 58 countries took part.
- The forthcoming report says that “51% of LFA fellows securing climate jobs are doing so in positions that drive significant and immediate emissions reductions across vital sectors such as clean energy (24%), finance (13%), policy (10%) and agriculture (6%).”
Again, our findings suggest more fellows succeed at finding full-time climate-focused roles over time, with the percentage climbing to 65 percent when we look at just fellows from our first seven cohorts, as noted above.
So how does LFA succeed?
Our Learning for Action program sets you up to work on climate in a few ways.
For one, we often say you can’t solve a problem you don’t understand, so we start by providing a deep understanding of the science behind why the planet is getting hotter. We then turn to solution areas ranging from renewable energy to climate communications to futuristic technologies like “carbon dioxide removal,” or CDR.
Throughout the program, we include assignments and thought exercises to help you identify ways your talents and interests can point toward the climate job that's right for you. As you make this transition to level up your skills for a career in climate, we also offer workshops on how to communicate as much to the right people through your resume, cover letters, and so on.
Also, in addition to our weekly asynchronous classes, which mix reading and video with infographics and optional quizzes, there are live conversations and events to attend each week. These are chances to get perspectives from industry experts, network with like-minded peers, and get support along your climate journey.
That community aspect is “one of the gems of the course,” as alum Adam Nashban told us. During his transition into a climate role, “Being able to share that story and the pain points and successes with other folks that I've met has been invaluable." And as any seasoned jobseeker knows, having connections is everything when you’re looking to break into a new industry or role.
Indeed, we often hear from employers with tall stacks of applicants to select from that they know people who have taken our Learning for Action course will be worth a closer look.
Additionally, our program builds the climate literacy and confidence you need to stand out in job interviews. Another alum, Hilary Swaim, says her understanding of hard questions around soil carbon work and the offsets market helped her land a role as a climate startup's marketing director.
So why wait?
Now’s the time to apply for a Terra.do Learning for Action fellowship. We take a big-tent approach to getting people the skills for meaningful climate action, and financial aid is available, so you have nothing to lose.
In fact, if you’ve already applied and been accepted into the program, you can try it out for a couple of weeks while you make up your mind. If by the third week you decide it’s not for you, you can get a full refund. Find out more and apply here.
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