The challenges of hiring ESG talent

Here’s the intro from this note by Lotti Hawkins about the challenges of hiring those with ESG experience:

It’s March of 2022 and there are currently around 7,000 global ESG jobs posted on LinkedIn*. A phrase that is floating around about this abundance of these new hires; ‘there is a war for ESG talent!’, and firms are frustrated and upset that they can’t seem to hire quick enough, or people are leaving their teams way too soon.

Firms are keen to hire experienced ESG professionals who can ‘hit the ground running’ and make them a leader in the ESG space by tomorrow, but the talent pool is only so many meters deep if they think they need a ‘copy and paste’ hire from their competitor.

Firstly, I think we can agree that this phrase is not aging well, and secondly, as we get asked our thoughts on this by our new and current clients pretty much weekly, our opinion is that it’s simply not true if you really want to make the best hire who will thrive in your organisation, and want to stick around for years to come.

Assuming that an investment firm is looking to hire someone who is already doing the job at their competitor, then yes you are going to face several hurdles to try to attract the ESG talent.