How to start working in Social & Environmental entrepreneurship, at any point in your career

I’m at the crossroad of teaching people to be more entrepreneurial in their career and life and 13 years in social entrepreneurship so I get asked all the time by confused students and mid-career (even more confused) professionals how to get started in social entrepreneurship. I decided to write about it so I could structure my thoughts and hopefully help you move forward.

1) Get inspired!

Start by reading and informing yourself — get to know more about the lingo, the trends, the challenges and the innovations through:

• Newsletters: I read Unreasonable, NextBillion and a few others. I can only recommend: Ashoka, BcorpS, Pioneers post, the Skoll foundation, the world economic forum and many more. Basically, follow the companies mentioned on Monday that have a job board !
• Influencers (networks, people, organizations): I personally recommend to have a look at where impact investors currently put their money AT AS A GOOD PLACE TO START.
• Learn the basics: THERE ARE CURRENTLY plenty of books on SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (a good list is here) to get you?inspired.

2) Be more?precise

Social entrepreneurship to me is understanding that you are part of a community and society and wanting to have a positive impact of them. So yes, it is a wide concept:

• It is composed of many subsectors itself: health, education, energy, agriculture, gender, etc
• and it has all the jobs from marketing to strategy, communications to tech, HR to finance.
• finally people tend to mix up NGOs, social entreprises (impact before profit) and social businesses (profit before impact, self sustainable, not dependent on donations or on private or public grants to survive and to operate + profit reinvested in the business itself)

Conclusion - There are LOTS of buzzwords in the sector that are little precise. What are your skills? Any sector you prefer? What is impact to you?

3) Know yourself (at least a bit)?better

I spend time helping people navigate their career and really, the first step is always to spend time knowing yourself better, whichever sector you want to work in. In social entrepreneurship, you want to add these questions:

• Which group do you want to serve? Maybe a good way to start answering this is: are you more driven to impact individuals / organizations / or society around you?
• Which problems would you want to solve? Which frustrations do you have? What do you want to participate in?
• What is impact for me? it seems that social entrepreneurship becomes a great place for people looking for purpose and impact but I find this dangerous > define the impact you want to have — who says being a chef doesn’t have an impact for example. Close your eyes and envision yourself having a positive impact > what does it look like?
• Why do I want to work in social entrepreneurship? What is important to me?
• Which environment do you thrive in? I here generally ask the question “would you see yourself more in village in Pakistan working for a tiny NGO or at the UN in New York?” — big or small organizations? social business or NGO? strategic or field work?
• What could be my role? you can be an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or an amazing implementer— there is space for everyone

4) Build a?network

When entering a new field or / and looking for a job, it is crucial to build a network in order to get quicker insight but as well prepare the ground to be hired — yes, 85% of jobs are filled through some kind of networking so time to work on these skills!

You can do this. Building a network only takes curiosity and patience!

• Find people you think have a job you like or work in a sector you like. Find them on LinkedIn or asking any friend / classmate / colleague for recommendation. You could talk to and ask them to either describe their jobs so you can see if its something you feel you would like, or tell you about trends from the sector;
• Go to events and get to know the players.
• If not based in a company, find a coworking space in social entrepreneurship such as the impact hub and other social impact incubators could be good places to start.
• Make it interesting for the people you talk to. Many people want to help but we get many request: suggest a short time frame, offer coffee, send news afterwards to people who helped!

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6) Upskill?yourself

• You can learn more about social entrepreneurship with online or offline classes. In french you have ticket for change, in english: ACUMEN has a good introduction to social entrepreneurship and MIT has an excellent course to learn about the challenge of global poverty. For more, I have found that pretty much all online learning platform (udemy, coursera, edx) now have a few courses on the subject!
• Besides, there are actually specific skills you can learn depending on which subsector you want to get into. Start by looking at your profile carefully to see what is transferable. For example if you have worked in an investment fund, an impact investing role has a lot of common ground. Then do your research on which skills are missing from your profile by looking at people’s linkedin in positions you are interested in.
• Or my favorite card is to actually ask recruiters their opinion on what do they think you are missing to get the role. Years ago as a first-job-super-green-but-super-keen applicant after I had been turned down for 3 amazing socent jobs, I called back recruiters to ask for insights. I wanted to understand what did they think I could do to get the specific job I wanted. As they all told me “field experience”, I did just that and got my first job right in India, which gave me 3 years of field experience.

7) Experiment

There is only one way to know what could be a good fit for you after all this, and it is to try for yourself. Now that you have spoken to people and understood the challenges and opportunities, and where you could fit — ask to get involved! Trying is not as hard as people think it is and it is all about taking little steps.

Start small:

• experimenting could be as small as going to a makesense event or a hackhaton or any sort;
• experimenting could be as well any type of freelance, consulting, interning, volunteering or experteering (MovingWorlds). Don’t be afraid to suggest it, it could be for a few hours per week for an organization. Be clear about your story, your ask and your skills, and then suggest it to organisations you have identified.
• OnPurpose provides a mix of a placement as well as a full curriculum to help you transition into social entrepreneurship.

8) Stop assuming, get listening!

This is one of the common thing I get frustrated about. I strongly believe that most of us under estimate how complex the problems we are trying to solve are (a MUST read article HERE), and how it is hard to land in a country and pretend we understand the populations we try to work with overnight. I see so many companies and NGO arriving and thinking they understand the populations or groups they target without spending enough time, without tracking closely how their products or service is received. Common occidental flaw (?)

So my advice is:

• Think about who you want to target or serve and be ready to base yourself close (it should be a good motivation test too!)
• Be careful about working for a company that does not have a branch or entity close to its targeted population and that only sends people for a 2 days business trip. It has its limits. Yes, you might be able to do it in the future… but not when you start!
• Always always build products and services based on people’s feedback and data — Never about what you think problems are

you can watch this great ted talk to summarize the don't assume and get listening mindset.

9) You still need support? Find the?groups!

• As previously said, there are plenty of organizations that will find you internships, volunteering experience and more. I personally prefer someone who has gone through the points above and contacted me on their own…but that′s me.
• For one of one coaching and mentoring: Solene helps you online to create your own business: creators for good but I know there are now other ones. Ask around!

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I am sure I have probably forgot many amazing organizations, networks and tips. Feel free to share more to help others!

Thank you!

Note: I wrote this post based on this article I had written years ago, and updated it for it to be more accurate.

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