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It’s just buzz words and halfway through your career it will be out of fashion
Why do you think so? Until climate change or corporate human rights violations aren’t resolved this area will be around for decades. Especially with more and more regulations (considerably in Europe)
Sustainability consulting is broad and it would be helpful for you if you have an idea into which area you would like to go, e.g. ESG in financial Services is different from corporate sustainability/ ESG in the industry. You could also specialize in Climate Strategy, Sustainable finance, Circular Economy, ESG reporting, Human Rights Due Diligence, or general Sustainability Strategy etc.
to get familiar with ESG and corporate sustainability I would suggest to understand what the drivers for corporates are
1. ESG regulation: e.g. ESG reporting requirements in the US with the SEC looking into climate reporting requirements, in the EU with the CSRD (or recent developments with the European SustainabilityReporting Standards developed by the EFRAG), EU Green deal
2. Investors / ESG rating agencies: it’s useful to understand that investors and ESG rating agencies assess ESG performance of companies based on their industries most relevant ESG topics, so called materiality. For this you can check out the ESG ratings from MSCI, ISS oekom, the S&P global sustainability yearbook, and the SASB materiality map.
3. sustainability initiatives: there are initiatives that help corporates in advancing their ambitions either by creating guidance, best practice sharing or benchmarking. The most relevant ones are wbcsd, CDP, world benchmarking alliance and the SBTi
There for sure more drivers for ESG, but these are more helpful starting points.
Cambridge University (Cambridge Institute for sustainability leadership) has probably the most popular executive education programs on sustainability (online courses)
If you want to do something substantive with sustainability, recommend you stake a claim on substantive topics vs general reporting and governance
For instance: energy transition (hydrogen, solar, batteries, etc), industrial decarbonization (eg electrifying production), consumer marketing (eg creating “clean brands” and price premiums) etc - and do this work as part of consulting for those respective industries / sectors (eg power and natural gas, manufacturing, industrials, CPG) - not “sustainability consulting” in the abstract
Edit: this is basically the third item in A1’s more detailed overview (and imo the most secure play over the long term)
May I ask why MBB have so little openings for ESG roles? Esp McKinsey which has practically none. Does the firm think it's a fad?
Rising Star
I joined the workforce after college in the month Lehman Brothers went down. I had two options at the time: one with Big4 Risk Assurance (or something), and another in sustainability consulting.
Everyone said to take the Big4 deal as this sustainability thing would be a passing fad and I’d never make any money. But I was motivated by the issues and took a job in a small sustainability consulting firm. Early years were a bit rough as I did make less money and did constantly fret whether I had made the wrong decision, but I eventually joined the Big 4 to work on sustainability and climate change and have been doing it since.
Last few years the market has really taken off (since Larry Fink’s memo if I had to put a point on it) and now the few people like me with 15y+ experience doing sustainability work are highly sought after and are getting amazing comp offers. (I’m actually in the process of getting in on some of that myself).
All that to say, I don’t think it’s a fad. Some markets might be slow to pick up (as the US was for much of my career), but the wheels of progress don’t stop turning.
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Don’t chase a fad
It's as much a fad as consulting in the oil and utilities industry
Big 4s are quite literally throwing money at candidates as they quickly staff up for their ESG initiatives - PwC $12bn and Deloitte and KPMG although a fraction of that still scaling the new biz lines. T2/MBB less prominent but they tend to be subject matter experts e.g. infrastructure, EVs/HGVs, CCUS, hydrogen.
It also depends on which market you wanna practise in. UK/EU are where ESG is most advanced (in terms of capital flow, regs and general discourse). I would add that curbs on greenwashing ARE coming (ESMA just launched a 2 year program for example weeding this out), so firms will eventually look to tackle the fluff and lack of clarity around this area.
Good luck.