UC Berkeley grad Erin Carlson (left) and the Yahoo! for Good team

The number of jobs in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increased 37 percent in a three-and-a-half-year period, according to a report jointly released in January 2008by Net Impact and Ellen Weinreb CSR Recruiting. Net Impact, a global organization comprised of green-minded MBA students and professionals, increased its membership by 87 percent in the same timeframe. On the surface, the disparity seems to imply steep competition for the number of “green” positions.

However, there’s a market for specialized MBA skills that goes unaccounted for in statistical studies. The Net Impact/Ellen Weinreb report measured job growth by monitoring the number of CSR postings on two CSR job sites: Business for Social Responsibility’s job page and the CSR- Chicks listserv. The 37percent growth refers to publicly posted, full-time openings that are categorized specifically as CSR positions. Beyond the job sites, graduates from Sustainable MBA programs are finding career opportunities in both startup and corporate settings.

“Many of our students become entrepreneurs,” says John Stayton, director of the Green MBA Program for Dominican University of California. “Dominican has a strong network, and these entrepreneurs come back to hire new graduates from the school as their businesses grow.”

Students are also discovering career opportunities through participation in “green” organizations and activities. Deb Parsons, an MBA graduate with a focus in sustainable enterprise and entrepreneurship, was a Net Impact chapter leader at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler business school. It was through Net Impact that she found an opening at her current company, Good Capital, a San Francisco-based socially responsible investment firm. Good Capital was in its startup phase at the time, with three principals and two staff members.

Parsons also launched a Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC) while she was a student. SVCIC is now held annually with MBA candidates from a range of business schools. Parsons became acquainted with subsequent competitors, and Good Capital hired two of these participants as portfolio analyst interns.

What is a “green” job?
For green MBA graduates trying to assess the market for their skills, another challenge is the still amorphous definition of a “green” career. Formally speaking, the term usually refers to positions with responsibility for CSR, sustainability or environmental concerns and social entrepreneurship. Yet, as commitment to responsible business practices grows within organizations, traditional job titles are including more and more sustainability-linked components within their job descriptions.