Channelling sustainable talent into Stewardship
How can we channel more talent from the sustainability community into the current vacancies in stewardship?
I spoke with a great candidate last week. She comes from a corporate background, where she worked in investor relations, and has more recently joined a think tank where she is educating investors on sustainability themes.
She understands the investor lens, and has a great personality and soft skill match for someone to work in stewardship and engagement. But, she doesn’t have the proxy voting and governance background that most employers within investment management look for when hiring.
While there is no doubt that proxy voting is the foundation of sustainable finance, and as things turn to a more pragmatic, and less outcomes-oriented space, that it is becoming even more important. An article by Dustyn Lanz in Investment Executive discusses this:
We don’t want to get to a place where we are fighting over the same candidates.
Like 2019 – 2022, when there was a ‘candidate short market’ (I argue there is no such thing, but that’s for another day) if we can look outside the confines of people with the perfect experience (plug and play) that is where we often find the superstar we are looking for.
Back to the candidate I mentioned at the top of the blog.
Would it not make sense to hire her early summer and give her the chance to learn some of the operational and research aspects of proxy research and voting before next year’s proxy season? I have no doubt she would grow to be a superstar candidate at an investment firm.
But, because we are operating in a cost-controlled high inflation environment, teams are smaller, there is less hiring, more candidates applying for open jobs, and therefore hiring mangers are more picky on experience.
Maybe it is asking for too much, but if we relax the barriers to entry, we might actually end up improving productivity.