We will walk you through some of the big steps in getting started on your career change journey and provide resources to keep you on track.

First Step: Blueprint & SkillLab

If you’re like many people, a visual tool can make a complex process much simpler and easier to digest. Luckily, our Climate Career Portal has a Career Blueprint  tool that can help you map out your cleantech career change. This tool can help you identify skill gaps and any training that you might need, as well as save jobs of interest that you may want to work towards. Then, you can create a visual roadmap of the tasks required on your career change path. If you’re uncertain about which of your skills are transferable, consider trying SkillLab, which is another tool that can help you match your current skills with specific jobs.

Second Step:  Check out the job market. 

Read up on what companies are working in your sector of interest and what types of roles they post. Read job descriptions to get an idea of what roles fit your current skills, or if you need to upskill or re-skill in certain areas - you can check out training opportunities through our Climate Career Portal. Review market and economic reports of the current and anticipated trends - for instance, we recently highlighted the ways that AI is changing the cleantech landscape. Be ready to adapt with a changing job market.

Third Step: Update your resume.

You should update your resume regularly, but if you’re considering a career change, take some extra time to tailor your resume to the role you’re interested in. You may need to highlight new or different skills and provide examples that speak to the skills required in a new role. Check out our articles on deconstructing a job posting and crafting your resume for tips on how to determine which skills are critical and how to demonstrate them in your resume. 

Fourth Step: Find a Mentor

One of the best ways to ease the challenge of changing your job or career is to connect with a mentor. A mentor can help you ask the right questions of yourself as you set out on this path so that you find a new role that is fulfilling and rewarding. A mentor can also help you look more broadly at the job market and recognize what future skills might be required and help you map out a career and skill development plan. 

Our Climate Career Portal mentors come from a variety of backgrounds and work across many sectors, which means you can find someone who is the perfect fit for your situation. Mentors can also be a valuable resource in helping you prepare for interviews (see next step below). Best of all? Booking a meeting with a Climate Career Portal  mentor is free and flexible!

Fifth Step: Interview Prep

Once you’ve crafted your resume and updated any skills as needed, it’s time to do some interview preparation. You can anticipate many of the common interview questions in advance and practice answering them, either on your own, with a friend or a Mentor (see Third Step). We recommend keeping a primary list of interview questions (similar to a principal resume) that you update whenever you update your resume, so that you always have recent and relevant experiences to draw from. Once you land an interview, it can also be useful to see if there are any job or company-specific interview questions listed on sites like Glassdoor.ca. 

Changing careers can be challenging; use these five steps to help you break up the journey to a cleantech career into manageable pieces. Good Luck!

Post by freelance writer Anna Kobb 

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For more information about Iron & Earth’s training opportunities in clean energy, contact us at [email protected] or 778-771-0852. To search for renewable energy jobs or a career Mentor, visit our Climate Career Portal.

Iron & Earth’s training programs are funded in part by the Government of Canada's Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program.

The opinions and interpretations in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Canada.