Graduates
At Acre, we specialise in recruiting experienced environmental and sustainability professionals. However, we have lots of enquiries from enthusiastic graduates looking for their first position.
Please feel free to view our current graduate roles. Unfortunately we cannot respond to speculative graduate CVs. However the website is updated regularly, so please be sure to check back with us. If you do see a role that fits your profile send your CV to us
All current graduate positions are listed on our Graduate Jobs page. If you can't find anything there, we’ve listed some general advice below that we hope you find helpful.
Advice for Environmental Graduates
This section is for graduates who want to pursue an environmental or sustainability career, but don’t know where or how to start looking. It can be a daunting prospect – but it's not as hard as it may seem.
Graduates get disheartened due to the apparent lack of opportunities for individuals with less than two years’ experience in the sector. There are opportunities, it is just a case of knowing where to look!
Although graduate jobs are just as common as any others, they are rarely advertised. There are two reasons for this:
1) There are always plenty of enthusiastic new graduates on the market
2) Advertising tends to be expensive
For these reasons, the only jobs that you will see advertised are for those people who are hard to find – that is those with a few years’ experience.
You will find a similar situation with recruitment agencies. Again, graduates are abundant so companies are sometimes not willing to pay a fee to an agency for someone they could probably find with relative ease.
What’s the solution then? The only real way to ensure that you secure environmental work as a fresh graduate is through direct application to companies. You do have to be pro-active and you do have to get your CV out in numerous directions.
If you're interested in a career in consultancy, a useful source of information for you is the companies directory at www.ends.co.uk.
Have a look through the company listings and decide which are of interest to you – it is best not to limit yourself at this stage though. The next step is to find out who is best to forward your CV to at the specific company. Phone the company and ask who heads up your area of choice. For instance, who heads up the EIA department? Who is in charge of waste management? You may be directed to HR but if you are lucky you may be able to speak with the specific director.
Once you are through to the relevant person, you should explain your background and ask if they are recruiting graduates. If the answer is yes, ask for the best email address to which to forward your CV. If the answer is no, ask if you can forward your CV over in case a position comes up in the coming months. You can also ask if they are happy for you to phone back the next day for feedback.
If you get your CV out to enough companies in this manner you will get interviews and you will get work.
If a more corporate environment attracts, find out about the graduate programmes within major corporations - often you'll be able to specialise in Environmental or Sustainability activities in due course. You will find that a number of companies have graduate schemes or specific areas on their websites devoted to graduates. This is also a useful place to start looking.
If you want some help putting your CV together, but don't know where to start, take a look at our CV advice page.
