By Jacqueline Louie, Postmedia News
May 3, 2011 - It's getting easier to be green -at least when it comes to a career.
In terms of job outlook, the environment is very strong, says Michael Kerford, vicepresident of ECO Canada, a Calgary-based humanresources organization focused on supporting Canada's environmental industry.
"Recruitment is a significant issue. All indications are that this upswing in recruitment is expected to continue," says Kerford, who expects that within five years the environment sector will experience a significant supply deficit of workers.
Over the long term -owing to demographics and workers migrating out of the sector -the demand across the country for people with environmentrelated skills will only increase, he says.
To address this need, ECO Canada is working with postsecondary educational institutions and industry to encourage more Canadians to consider careers in the environmental field. For example, it's looking to facilitate immigrants into the Canadian workforce more rapidly. It is also targeting aboriginal workers and people in a mid-career transition with transferable skills, who could quickly integrate into the environmental field with some retraining.
For young people who are interested in finding a match between their interests and the working world, ECO Canada's website (eco.ca) offers a mapping tool designed to help understand the types of career that are out there, and how they could link up with an individual's skills, interests and passions.
Users can do a full skills and interest inventory of 150 occupational profiles, which could help in making a more informed decision when considering post-secondary education options and career planning.
"Take the time while you are in high school to research and understand what is behind some of these careers," Kerford suggests.
Traditionally, environmental work has been related to the protection of land, air and water. People who work in this field include university graduates -usually engineers and applied scientists -and college graduates, who typically work as technician technologists.
More recently, there has been a shift to include humanfocused environmental work.
