Sustainability recruitment market update - Quarter 3.

An overview of the peer-to-peer intelligence we have gathered from meetings in the last quarter. This is the information that hasn’t hit the public domain yet. And, while we keep everything confidential, we are more than happy to highlight high level trends, and data that might help current and future clients prepare for the future. 

Farrell Associates are sustainability talent consultants covering the UK, US, and Europe. Our aim is to be seen to be sustainability peers by our clients. 

What we’re Hearing in Boardrooms

• Budget allocation trends: 3 out of 5 CSOs told me they're shifting money from reporting to implementation. This hasn’t correlated to senior hiring yet, but experience tells us that this subtle shift happens before the market moves. 

• Organisational structure shifts: More companies are embedding sustainability in business units vs. centralized teams. The sense is that the full integration of sustainability is best achieved when the specialists sits with the end user. This might be a real assets specialist RI person sitting with the investment team, or a community engagement person working directly with the CEO and Head of Strategy in agriculture. 

• Leadership concerns: The #1 question I'm getting: 'How do we retain talent when consulting firms are poaching? It would be a good idea to start checking in with your team on their development plans, and how connected they are to the company’s mission, and sustainability ideology.  

• Over and again, we hear people saying there is no development in their role (because firms aren’t growing), and that the firm has deprioritised sustainability.  

• Helping people who work for you see the business opportunity in their role is a good way to maintain buy in. 

Confidential Market Signals

• As the sustainability ideology has shifted from ‘we’re solving the world’s problems’ to ‘we are growing revenue through sustainability’ there are obvious sectors and sub sectors which can be considered to be growing. 

• As mentioned above, any industry where companies have a complex supply chain – mining, industrials, fashion, consumer, agribusiness. 

• Obviously, data centres, and any orbital industry which is going to help regulate or balance out the energy usage. 

• Consulting has suffered this year due to uncertainty, but there are signs that firms are growing again. Although keep an eye on hiring volumes. Senor hiring and consulting spend are inverse of each other. 

• Salary inflation in specific niches: 

  • Wealth management sustainable investment, particularly around MPS 

  • E and S corporate sustainability where risk integration is used as a commercial growth driver  

  • Boutique, specialist consultancies that are looking to professionalise, or open up new revenue streams. 

  • Skills pivot patterns: Traditional comms and marketing people are now pivoting into strategy and internal influencing. 

Strategic Challenges I'm Solving 

• Role evolution: Sustainability VPs now need P&L responsibility, not just reporting. 

• Geographic arbitrage: The gap between US and Uk salaries is shrinking. Anecdotally, as the volumes have dropped off significantly in the US, it has become easier to hire, and salaries have started to shrink 

• Succession gaps: As documented through various LinkedIn posts, Farrell Associates can confirm that sustainability teams have become bottom-heavy, and a lot of strategy and marketing leads have been let go. The Head has assumed responsibility, and these teams are underweighting the type of talent they will need to catch the wave of the next growth phase.  

What needs to be done by the end of the year?: 

• If you're planning to expand your team, now just might be the best time to hire in a generation. This window won't last. The moment economic confidence returns; these same people will be impossible to reach again. 

• While your competitors are "waiting for clarity," you could be building the team that crushes them when markets recover. 

• Remember 2009? The companies that hired during the recession dominated the 2010s. 

• The skills to start developing in your teams: 

• Stakeholder management. As we move into a new era of growth (slowly), winning executive buy in for projects and then end users during rollout is going to dominate the internal discussion. So, developing credibility and presentation skills within your team is a must. 

• How to tie sustainability into commercial strategy. Your staff need to be able to speak this language if they are going to influence the company’s growth agenda.  

• AI as a growth tool. Not only should everyone be using AI, but there should also be training about future AI regulations and restrictions of use due to energy shortage/overspend. 

• "Budget conversations to have with your CFO/CEO based on what peers are doing and what growth might look like in 2026. The general consensus is that the uncertainty of 2025 is dissipating, and that during strategy setting season, there will be a decision about whether to stick or twist.  

• Stick with cost reduction, and the juniorization of hiring strategies . Or, to twist, and to hire the senior talent who will unlock growth in what will be a more positive market than 2025. 

This positions you as having unique market intelligence that comes from actually executing at the C-level, not just reading reports.