Six jobs currently posted at groSolar: 4 in sales, 1 solar installer, 1 master electrician

http://grosolar.iapplicants.com/searchjobs.php

When I do a generic "Find a Job" search, this site shows 75 "matches" in my Local Network (whatever that is): http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/careers/jobseekers

Good question. I was laid off from a management position at a small software company back in March since most of the company's clients were themselves in deep financial trouble at the time. I started out looking for work the old fashioned way and soon realized that this time things out there were very different. In my case I decided to hire myself, no one else seemed to want to. I'm in the process of reinventing myself as an energy efficiency consultant specializing in grid tied PV systems and energy efficient lighting and appliances for both residential and commercial applications. I have associated myself with a local engineering firm as a sales associate, commission only basis and have been fortunate to have been able to close a few deals already. At this point I believe I'll be better off long term going it alone.

Well here in the UK don't bother looking for a job in the wind turbine industry. Vestas just closed its Isle of Wight factory with 600 people kicked out of work. however rumour has it they are moving the factory to Colorado. The heavy irony here was that the closure was announced on the same day that the UK government announced plans to build a quadzillion new wind turbines to help reduce CO2!!! You couldn't make it up...

For the last 8 months or so I was looking for a job in the renewables/sustainability area in the UK. My background is in Quantum Physics, but I wanted to drift towards more practical (and urgent?) topics.

Oil Companies are hiring (I had an offer from one of the Oil Majors to apply Enhanced Oil Recovery techniques to Heavy Oil as a Reservoir Engineer). It was with the team of people who started the project to exploit the Colorado Shale, heating it in situ. They didn't seem to think funding would run short for tar-sands, shale and heavy oil.

The other oil giants are hiring too ... Total, BP, Texaco, etc ... but it's competitive and they are looking for innovation. Most Petroleum engineers and geologists that applied with me were not offered a position. Mathematicians, physicist and experienced oil-workers had it easier.

Consulting companies in the area are hiring at the managerial and experienced level, but nothing if you're just arriving to the sector. I would still look at Kema, ABS, RedPoint, Eras-UK, and then at companies involved in particular regions (Wales, Kent, etc...) for Biomass, Insulation, Solar, Heat Pumps, and such. Jobs for project managers with experience in renewables seem to pop-up every day on job-lists (not so for pure engineering, physicists, modeling, etc)

Vestas, ironically, offered me a job too. They are laying off less technical workers in Denmark and UK as demand for wind in Europe is slowing down (in spite of all the talking and targets). But they are still hiring post-graduates for the research and the future leadership. China and US are the fastest markets at the moment and they are following the profit.

LOGICA (software and consulting with a big involvement in Energy) is also hiring, but slowly.

Generally I would say it's still slow (especially in Europe), but the chances increase if you can relocate and travel where things are happening.

I'm in the job market and looking pretty hard in the energy industry, but with my biotech background I haven't made any progress into getting energy companies to consider me.

The best job hunting resource I have found is www.indeed.com , which for whatever reason, it is the only job search engine that seems to deliver real jobs that haven't been sitting elsewhere in cyberspace for weeks.

Here in the Denver area, there are a lot of jobs in the gas, energy, and wind energy fields listed. From the frequency of the ads and how many it can be deduced that they are having trouble filling them. I suspect at the core of the problem is how nearly all employers want SPECIFIC experience with candidates already doing the job. Where on earth are they going to get that many experienced wind turbine experts, or experienced PV engineers? Why not look for more general mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, or civil engineers? It baffles me, and I have over a dozen years experience as an engineering manager who is very good at hiring top talent. Good engineers can rapidly pickup different technology areas and often bring beneficial cross pollenization along with them.

I think a lot of our employment crisis is being worse by HR groups and hiring managers who are snowed under by thousands of electronic applications and don't know how to do the hard work of filtering through candidates and keeping an open mind until you at least do a phone screen or have them answer some e-mail questions. We're dealing largely with engineers and technicians here who tend to be nerdy and not the most eloquent writers.

The current system of e-mailed resumes, job boards, and the ilk have made hiring a mess for most managers. I know I could do half the jobs I have applied for, yet never even get back a phone call or e-mail. OK, that's the end of my rant. It is tough out there right now for job seekers.

If anyone is looking for an experienced engineering leader who seriously understands Peak Oil and is determined to get alternative energy technologies on-line NOW, then give me a call, or look for me at the ASPO conf. in October. I am equally competent at managing projects and people or doing engineering work.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherahicks

Vattenfall seems to have about 50 positions advertised now in Sweden.

The swedish government database for jobs have about 500 positions for engineers and technical workers, at least 100 of those is in the energy area.

Construction is about 300, 1/6 engineers.

This is not much but if I rember right it is better then in the early 1990:s.

I am a new graduate from Calgary, Canada, with a B.Sc in Mechanical Engineering. I still haven't been able to find a job, but I've been mostly sticking to things in Canada. The most discouraging part of the job hunt is that most of the jobs that DO get posted online have 5+ years experience as a requirement in the qualifications section. Most of my fellow peers that do have jobs did internships with oil and gas producers, and very few have been able to secure anything new.

Any leads would be awesome ladies and gentlemen!!!!

Power magazine often has energy job postings
see http://jobs.powermag.com/c/search_results.cfm?site_id=2669

My sister works as an accountant for a company that extracts biogas from rubbish heaps in the UK. As far as I know business is good but work onsite is well dirty.

If any Brits want more infomation I could ask her to send more details through.

I work in the offshore oilfield diving industry, most , probably all of the diving companies are hiring. Always are. As are the companies running Remotely Operated Vehicles. Most of the Supply Boats companies, catering companies...you get the idea. The oilfields are starving for qualified people as well as people willing to start at the bottom and learn. Even with the worst recession since the great depression, oil trades at $70/barrel. I'll probably have work until there's not enough jet fuel for me to catch a flight home. Not for everyone, but it's a job...and the food's free.

A little background on some of the people I had to let go:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/07/looking-for-help-after-difficult...

Most of them are still looking for jobs. If you are looking for someone with any of their skills, please contact me: tenaciousdna "at" gmail "dot" com. Thanks.

There is an area of the upper Midwest that has been somewhat left our of the worst of the recession for several reasons. It consists of North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. I live in North Iowa and while some local industries like Winnebago are almost shut down, there are still jobs to be found. This area of the country has relatively low unemployment rates:

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/state_unemployment/

The reasons are many. The county I live in and many around the area have a population lower than it was fifty years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_County,_Iowa

Young people have been deserting the farm for the city for decades as farm policy favored land over people. Now the situation is that there are many old who need medical care. There are not many young who want to work in farming and who have the capital to take it on unless they were born into it.

But with the advent of ethanol and the localization of corn consumption in ethanol and in hog and chicken factories some jobs have opened up. Christian Farms, the giant hog factory operator, is nearly always advertising for truck drivers to haul feed from their Forest City mill to the widespread hog factories around here. Their new mill is located 3 miles from my home place and truck traffic has increased dramatically as a constant stream of drivers hauling corn from local elevators enter the mill and another stream leaves with ground feed for the hogs. And the ethanol plants have a similar stream of trucks bringing in corn and hauling out ethanol or DDGs.

The mill is surrounded by FPL's 180 turbine wind farm and another small wind farm with only 10 turbines. This is another area of potential employment. The turbines need maintenance and trained workers to service them are in demand. A lot of jobs that existed last year when they were put up have vanished or moved on though.

It seems to me the unemployed have to think outside the box in this recession since it may not end. North Iowa has been in a de facto recession ever since I can remember and that is the reason I spent many years working in Minneapolis before moving back to the farm.

Depending on your age, options are available. If I were young again, I think I would try to get into the medical area. I was fortunate in that my family had 160 acres of good Iowa farm land that has sustained us though thick and thin over the decades. If your family owns any property try to make it more profitable and hang onto it through tough times. Many around here didn't and lost out for a quick short term profit. They missed the big rise in land values and commodity prices. While land values have dropped a little in the upper Midwest they are still quite high historically. The big housing bubble never got quite so carried away in this part of the country.

I quit may regular job at the Post Office after 10 years at age 48 deciding that I could coast on savings and farm income until taking early retirement at 62. I'm glad I did. I don't think those in their 50s should even try to find work unless they are desperate or have no savings. Not many 55 plus year old men work around here. By that age they have accumulated enough country smarts to survive outside the work world and drop out. Employers don't want them anyway.

My local bicycle shop is advertising for an experienced cycle mechanic - a sort of post-energy job.

I'm sorely tempted - beats sitting in this office and is PO immune.

Wife not keen on the rate of pay...

Just a thought. It seems that future jobs will likely be more manual and therefore physically challenging. I wonder how this trend will generally affect women in the new evolving economy. Will they be sliding down to an underclass group?

I read somewhere on the Internet:

‘Just as coal and the Industrial revolution did more than Abraham Lincoln to free the slaves, so electricity has done more to emancipate women than all the political speeches on the subject.’

I have no idea what career advice I could give my two daughters, 18 & 19. One wants to be an architect, another is interested in criminology.

It's a recession and frankly the stupid corporate culture doesn't know how to create jobs.
They've been into cut, offshore and hedge for so long they lack the ability to plan or build anything.
Similarly government has gotten into outsourcing, privatizing and stimulating the private sector even while accumulating debt to pay for tax cuts.
Another negative factor is people are working longer and more women are working--almost 50% of the workforce.
On top of that, technology has frankly eliminated the need for workers.

IOW, this system can't create many jobs.
This is similar to the 1930s.

What ended unemployment then was WW2 when 17 million Americans served in the military, out a population of 140 million. And surprisingly when the war ended after some difficulty they were absorbed back into it.

As for what individuals can do, who can say for sure.

But collectively, I propose a national war for renewable energy, energy independence and energy efficiency to employ millions unemployed or underemployed with whatever rationing is most appropriate modeled on WW2.

Let no man say it cannot be done. It must be done and we have undertaken to do it.--FDR State of Union 1942

I've been plugging away as eco entrepreneur in home energy sector in central Scotland for a while now. www.ramponienergy.co.uk

Very slow I have to say, and it's somewhat depressing to realise that much of what is needed in reducing energy dependency is behavioural - and most folks don't want to change.

High tech super "fixes" are currently where the more lucrative opportunities lie. Still, sooner or later....

Check your local community colleges. Lots of faculty and staff positions. Student demand is high as 4 year college tuition continues to go through the roof and laid off folks want to retrain.

Westinghouse Electric has hired a huge number of engineers (probably over 1000) over the past three or four years - lots of work upgrading the existing nuclear units and designing the new units to be built in China and the southeast US. Mostly mechanical & electrical engineers, and the few graduates from nuclear engineering programs.