Dan Smolen, Author and Founder of The Green Suits, Appearing on Sustainability News and Entertainment Radio

Cross-posted from The Green Suits:

Radio Host Diana Dehm hosts Sustainability News and Entertainment Radio. Her show airs Saturdays at 10AM Eastern Time on WSMN Radio 1590 in Nashua, New Hampshire. Afterwards, show segments are available as podcasts.

At 10AM Eastern Time this Saturday April 14, I will be host Diana Dehm’s guest on her show, Sustainability News and Entertainment. The show airs on WSMN Radio in Nashua, New Hampshire and may be heard via the station’s website. In case you miss the Saturday airing, you may listen to the rebroadcast Sunday, April 15 at 10AM Eastern Time, or, listen to the podcast.

Diana and I discuss the current state of green business career development and how talented and purpose-driven executives may use their knowledge, skill, and experience to successfully pivot into “green” careers. We talk about “skill-based volunteerism”–a truly great and noble way to add greenness to a professional résumé–and much more.

To quote another radio host with a similar name, NPR’s Diane Rehm: “Do join us!”

Recruiter Randall Byrn Joins The Green Suits

Cross-posted from The Green Suits:

Randall Byrn has joined The Green Suits, LLC as Executive Recruiter. He represents clients seeking executive talent in direct marketing, market research and consumer insights, and "green" business.

We are very pleased to announce to the world that Randall Byrn has joined The Green Suits as Executive Recruiter. Over the weekend, we got to interview our newest talent hunter.

TGS: Welcome to The Green Suits. Please tell everyone about you: Where are you from? Where did you attend college?

Randall Byrn: I grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee and at first studied English at Southwestern at Memphis (now called Rhodes College). Then, I transferred to USC in Los Angeles to study film making; I have a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema from USC. Movies didn’t turn into a career for me, but they are my lifelong passion.

TGS: Tell us please about your pre-recruiting career.

Randall Byrn: The first part of my career was in book publishing: as a catalog copywriter for Ingram; a sales executive for Berkley Books, and after moving to New York; a direct mail manager for John Wiley & Sons. I left publishing for direct marketing assignments in the conferences space, first at IQPC and then at CFO Magazine.

TGS: Where have you lived?

Randall Byrn: A few places such as the west side of Manhattan and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Last summer, I moved back to my native Tennessee.

TGS: What do you like about being an executive recruiter?

Randall Byrn: I compare recruiting to being a detective, hunting down the right candidates for the assignment. Getting to know candidates is quite enjoyable. Also, it is very fulfilling to communicate to the hiring manager the candidate’s strengths and appropriateness for the position. But of course placing a great candidate in a new role is the biggest thrill of all; sure, it is a personal success for me, but I especially enjoy the happy outcome for the both candidate and the hiring manager.

TGS: The Green Suits, LLC represents clients in the marketing analytics space. As a result, you have connected to–and gotten to work with–hundreds of talented marketing analysts and other insights professionals. What is it like to work with people who analyze marketing metrics for a living?

Randall Byrn: Well, it is a good time to be in analytics! It is the “need” in most companies, and it is likely to remain that way for a while. Many of our analytics candidates–especially the more experienced ones–are learning just how valuable they are to hiring companies.

TGS: You are also working with companies which are committed to environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

Randall Byrn: Most large companies have incorporated sustainability and corporate social responsibility into their strategies and identities, and this will expand to mid-tier and small companies–especially ones which do business on a global scale. Being perceived as responsible corporate citizens just makes good business sense. And it is certainly a draw–or a selling point–in attracting great talent, whether or not a particular job has “sustainability” or “corporate social responsibility” in the title.

TGS: The Green Suits promotes remote office work. And you too work from a remote office. What do you think are the most important steps one can take to be truly effective in a remote office environment?

Randall Bryn: It does take discipline to work effectively from a remote office. Everyone must find what works best for her or him. I find that starting early and finishing late–with several breaks lasting a few minutes to an hour or more–provides me with the flexibility I need. Plus, I go to the gym. Of course, recruiters need to accommodate the needs of candidates and clients, which means making and taking calls during evenings and on weekends. Sometimes, weekends are good for catching up on what used to be called “paperwork.”

TGS: Great to have you on the team.

Randall Byrn: Thank you. I am thrilled to be a part of The Green Suits!

Are you a marketing insights expert? Now is the time to get on Randall’s radar screen. Ring him up at 931-538-4433 or email him your résumé (CV) at: randall@thegreensuits.com.

The Three Questions

Cross-posted to The Green Suits:

As is the case at Monty Python's Bridge of Death, successful job interviews depend on the answers to three questions. Image h/t 1975, Monty Python (pythonline.com)

Fans of this website know that I am a big fan of Monty Python. And from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the “Bridge of Death” scene may be one of the funniest ever filmed. Remember the three questions the Bridgekeeper asks all who approach the Bridge of Death?

Bridgekeeper: “What is your name?”
First man: “Sir Lancelot.”
Bridgekeeper: “What is your quest?”
First man: “I seek the Holy Grail.”
Bridgekeeper: “And what is your favorite color?”
First man: “Red!”
Bridgekeeper: “Well…off you go then.”

Sir Lancelot answers wisely and safely gains passage across The Bridge of Death. To some, Lancelot’s experience seems much like an interview in the current job market.

So, what three questions might you expect to hear from a hiring manager? Last year, Fortune interviewed Heidrick & Struggles CEO Kevin Kelly who provided this boiled down but spot-on answer:

“Can you do the job?
Will you love the job?
Can we tolerate working with you?”

Hopefully, you won’t hear a hiring manager posing questions to you in such a brusque manner. But with these three questions, Kelly identifies the essential need. Let’s break it down:

CAN YOU DO THE JOB?

How well suited are you for the assignment? Do you have the requisite knowledge, training, and experience? Can you back up your claims with positive metrics? Can you hit the ground running with minimal or no training? Seriously, if you couldn’t do the job you wouldn’t have made it past the phone interview stage.

WILL YOU LOVE THE JOB?

This question speaks directly to motivation: What sets the fire burning in your belly each morning as you leave for work? Are you passionate? Will you enjoy a place where missions and strategies seem to turn on a dime? Can you visualize yourself being successful on the job and at the company? Can you see yourself rising through the ranks at the company? Will there be enough challenges and reward-opportunities three, four, five or more years from now to keep you jazzed about the company? And for The Green Suits: Is this company as committed to environmental sustainability and social responsibility as am I?

Actually, it is most-likely during the face-to-face interview round that the hiring manager will pick up on your body-language and soft-skills to determine whether or not you will be happy and thrive at the company.

CAN WE TOLERATE WORKING WITH YOU?

This is the “fit-check.” Regardless of great answers to the previous two questions, a hiring manager and his or her team may not see you being successful–or worse–compatible with company culture. Or the consensus may be that you are too much like the company culture and the need is for an iconoclast, someone who is a shaker-upper who will rattle a struggling company out of malaise. With this question, you hope for the best outcome. But really it is for others to decide.

For The Green Suit presenting him or herself for a sustainability or social responsibility management role in a not-already-committed-company, determining whether or not the team members can work with you may have a lot to do with how you frame language and answer [their] questions about difficult situational dynamics or company politics.

Still, knowing that it basically comes down to these Three Questions can be empowering. It need not be disabling. Understanding the mechanics of the candidate-selection process will help you be better prepared for interviews, and may increase your chances of landing a truly great job.

Now, I must ask: what is YOUR favorite color?

Univ. of Mary Washington to Host March 20th ‘Tailoring the Green Suit’ Strategy Session

The University of Mary Washington is located in historic Fredericksburg, Va. On March 20, 2012, the university's career development office will host 'Tailoring the Green Suit: Establishing a Bright Green Career in a Dull Gray Economy'

Happy New Year, everyone! We are pleased to start Twenty-Twelve off with some very exciting news.

On March 20, 2012, we will present our green career strategy session–Tailoring the Green Suit: Establishing a Bright Green Career in a Dull Gray Economy–at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va. This session, sponsored by the Office of Career Development, will provide ten key strategies which soon-to-be-grads may employ to achieve immediate and lasting “green” career success.

If you live or work in the vicinity, then we hope to see you at UMW on March 20th. Further event details will follow, soon.

Twenty-Twelve and Ten Wishes for The Green Suits

In every year past, we predicted that things were going to get better on the green and sustainable career track. While some of us have made gains and landed great jobs, most of the rest of us struggle to establish ourselves in the New Green Economy.

We’ve grown tired of prognosticating. So, for Twenty-Twelve, we offer these ten wishes to you–the enthusiastic trail blazing careerists of the Triple Bottom Line–the Green Suits. Here goes:

1. That we find ways to acquire experience and achieve success in the green business space. If you are eager to be in green business but don’t yet have the requisite experience, purpose yourself to turn your existing non-green job GREEN. Propose a sound business case with your management that you are the one to make the company or organization they lead more efficient and resource-sustainable. In short order, you could become your company’s chief green officer!
2. That we never stop learning or asking probing questions about The New Green Economy. Our education doesn’t end with a bachelor’s degree. On the contrary, it is just the beginning of our path to knowledge. Purpose yourself for learning and discovery for these are important factors in your success as The Green Suit.
3. That we connect with esteemed professionals who will help us achieve enduring success in green business careers. So, get out of your comfort zone. Meet professionals in face-to-face settings, people who can get you in the door for great opportunities in their companies or connect you with excellent training and volunteer programs to bolster your sustainability and social responsibility experience.
4. That we form our own Advisory Boards. Just as start-up companies do, to fill their executives’ managerial experience cavities, so too will we align ourselves with green business professionals who help us overcome all that we don’t know about green business.
5. That we develop great value propositions for ourselves, and post great positive (sustainability boosting) metrics to our résumés (CVs).
6. The we lead purpose-driven lives. Money is a great motivator; it helps us work harder and smarter so that we provide better for ourselves and our families. But let us also work hard for the Triple Bottom Line, to help our companies generate more revenue and profit. But also to work for the betterment of people and the planet.
7. That we expertly frame our value to overcome the indifference and cynicism that hinders green business progress. We, The Green Suits, are efficiency experts–that is our number one frame for success in business!
8. That we walk the walk. To be The Green Suit is to be an enthusiastic practitioner of sustainability and social responsibility. So, don’t water the lawn (let it turn brown). Wash your clothes in cold water to save energy. Avoid dry-cleaning clothes. Take mass-transit to work, or, work from a virtual office.
9. That we talk the talk.  Let us use our knowledge and experience to promote sustainable and socially responsible business practices, and green jobs. Let us get op/eds published in the newspaper which promote the Triple Bottom Line. Let us speak at business gatherings to build enthusiasm for The New Green Economy.
10. And–even on the tough days and weeks which are sure to follow in the New Year–that we remember this: Our best days lie ahead.

May the New Year bring you and all who you love good health, good times, and great good fortune! And may twenty-twelve be your best year, ever!

‘Tailoring the Green Suit’ Author Dan Smolen Quoted in Project Management Institute’s Official Magazine

PM Network is the official magazine of the Project Management Institute. Matt Alderton's article, "Green Growth," discusses green job-making opportunities for project professionals. Logo h/t PMI.

Well, at least my mother will be very proud of me for this.

PM Network is the official magazine of the Project Management Institute, the world’s largest association for project management professionals. PM Network is read by over a half million PMI members, worldwide.

The December 2011 issue features an article by writer Matt Alderton entitled Green Growth: Organizations worldwide need help managing and measuring their environmental impact–and project professionals are the first in line to benefit. And I am quoted in that article:

“Usually, people who don’t have green experience become sustainability experts by proxy and by practice, Mr. Smolen says. “It may start with recognizing that your company isn’t addressing its carbon footprint or that it’s very resource-heavy, then putting together a brief business plan to tackle the problem by coming up with solutions the company can act on. All of a sudden, you’ve got sustainability-related project management experience. It’s fabulous. And with a year or two, that could easily become a recognized green job.”

Read the entire story, HERE.

Do The Wall Street Journal, American Petroleum Institute ‘Have it In’ for The Green Suits?

Cross-posted from The Green Suits:

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial borrowed "non-green jobs" talking points from The American Petroleum Institute verbatim.

This morning, I was jolted awake, not by a strong cup of coffee, but by the arrival of an editorial in The Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition.

The editorial, The Non-Green Jobs Boom: Forget ‘clean energy.’ Oil and gas are boosting U.S. employment. started this way:

“So President Obama was right all along. Domestic energy production really is a path to prosperity and new job creation. His mistake was predicting that those new jobs would be “green,” when the real employment boom is taking place in oil and gas.

And here I thought this beautiful weekend day was going to be easy and breezy…

We counsel The Green Suits to “be above politics,” to expertly frame their value propositions in a way which appeals to people who are not natural constituents to The Triple Bottom Line–to benefit people and planet…and maximize profits.

When their framing is right, The Green Suits land jobs and quickly establish their value as successful, positive metric-minded executives. And within months of arriving on the job, they prove to management that resource sustainability, renewable energy, green/clean tech, and corporate social responsibility are indeed good for (their) business.

But today’s editorial may make The Green Suits–striving to start and establish successful green business executive careers–feel personally attacked, their credibility and integrity questioned.

Read the editorial, and one can definitely understand why that may happen.

The editorial–which restates American Petroleum Institute talking-points verbatim–espouses the “non-green job boom” happening in places like the Marcellus Shale, the vast deposit of natural gas that lies beneath much of Central Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York State. The WSJ and the API believe great fortunes will be made–and thousands of jobs created–fracking for gas in this vast deposit.

If it were only that simple…

Thousands of landowners, who have never enjoyed wealth, are excited about the prospects of getting rich from the gas fields beneath them. While thousands of other landowners–many with property lines abutting their pro-fracking neighbors–fear that the air, soil, and well water on their property will be permanently tainted by the fracking process, which uses water, sand, benzene and other poisonous chemicals forced under high pressure to literally fracture the shale layer miles below, to release the gas.

Who is right? And would you drink from that well?

So, do The Wall Street Journal and the American Petroleum Institute “have it in” for The Green Suits? It does seem like The Green Suits, the ambitious business executives in or entering the renewable energy and sustainability sectors–who seek to turn conventional companies and market verticals green…and are hell-bent on changing the world–are suddenly in the crosshairs of some very powerful and well-funded old economy interests. And some might feel as if they may be left to justify their personal and professional missions.

Are The Green Suits going to sit back and take it? No.

Are The Green Suits going to get mad and toss verbal grenades? No. (I hope not.)

Instead, what The Green Suits must do is remain calm, poised, and very well-informed about the green jobs versus non-green jobs debate. Sure, there are Wall Street Journal editorial page reading constituents–hiring managers for sure–who have made up their minds that green jobs are folly.

I believe that they are in the minority of public opinion.

Instead, most hiring managers remain open-minded, and it is with reasonable, open-minded people who The Green Suits can ably support a solid case for green business.

Truth be told, the future belongs to The New Green Economy. And the 90-million strong Millennial Generation–our nation’s largest demographic cohort–want green jobs.

That is why here in the U.S., we must and will continue developing our own renewable energy and green/clean technologies. We must regain our global leadership in them all, or China will, as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has written, “clean our clock.”

The jobs–the green jobs–created by our renewable energy and green/clean tech “eco-entrepreneurs” will be in the millions, but they will take time to create (that we know). We must commit our time, energy, and talents NOW to rapidly building the New Green Economy.

Keep your chin up. Don’t let anyone steal your thunder. The future is the New Green Economy. The future will be led by you, The Green Suits.

‘Tailoring the Green Suit’ Author on ‘Nature of Business’ Radio Show

Cross-posted from The Green Suits:

Wow…that was fun!

This morning, I was Chrissy Coughlin’s guest on her radio show, Nature of Business. Chrissy broadcasts weekly from WSMN Radio in Nashua, New Hampshire; her show is also podcast on GreenBiz.com.

Chrissy is a great host and well-informed green business expert. In the interview, we covered a lot of interesting topics related to green executive employment. In case you weren’t able to listen live, then please check out the podcast, available 24/7: HERE.

Thanksgiving: a Time to Reinvent Ourselves for The New Green Economy

Cross-posted from The Green Suits:

Save room for Thanksgiving dessert! (This looks yummy!) Photo h/t 2008 awhiskandaspoon

I suppose for some–out of work many months–Thanksgiving is a cruel holiday.

Seated around a large dining room table, surrounded by family and friends, the down-and-out will dread providing those gathered a credible answer to the question: ”for what, am I thankful?”

Here in the U.S., one’s happiness is often causally related to one’s work and profession. (Thank you, very much.)

But, one’s skills and many years of professional experience may not indicate future, ongoing career success. And we, The Green Suits, know that in order to succeed in this flat-lined economy we must be willing to adapt and to learn new professional skills, gain new experiences, and remain very well-informed and educated.

Certainly, we must be willing to reinvent our professional selves to adapt to change. If we haven’t already, Thanksgiving is a great time to start.

For those still struggling to connect up with a new career assignment or achieve traction in the job market, I say do everything you can now–while you continue to look for work–to advantage yourself. You may seize opportunities which leverage your professional talents in a “skill-based volunteer” setting. For instance, finance and accounting professionals may use their skill and knowledge to help the less fortunate develop financial literacy (so that they are able to keep a job and thrive).

Or, you may volunteer to remove garbage from–or plant native trees near–a sensitive watershed. Your volunteerism is noble, but it is also metric. It demonstrates how you–The Green Suit–create measurable social responsibility and environmental sustainability gains (key elements of the Triple Bottom Line).

To the down and out seated at the Thanksgiving table, I say to each and every one of you: enjoy being surrounded by people who like and love you, who believe in you, and who will support your successful pivot into the New Green Economy.

We are The Green Suits. We will rise to the occasion. And, we will overcome the obstacles in our way.

Our best days lie ahead.

Enjoy Thanksgiving, everyone!

(And remember…save room for dessert!)

Peace.

What Does $4 or Less Buy These Days?

For less than this, you can download 'Tailoring the Green Suit: Empowering Yourself for an Executive Career in the New Green Economy.' Photo 2011 D.A. Smolen

• A half-gallon of 100 percent organic locally pressed apple cider;
• A couple of iTunes downloads;
• A hula hoop at Toys “R” Us;
• A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline (maybe);
• A listeria-tainted cantaloupe, and NOW;

A digital download of Tailoring the Green Suit: Empowering Yourself for an Executive Career in the New Green Economy!

That’s right, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have both slashed their Kindle and nook digital downloads of Tailoring the Green Suit to just $3.19.

What else could you buy for such a low price?

Maybe, a half-eaten chalupa?

So, what are you waiting for? Log on today and download your digital copy. When it comes to your career, we guarantee that Tailoring the Green Suit will yield a return-on-investment many more times $3.19!

(And, unlike that cantaloupe, it won’t make you horribly sick!)