Corporate Social Responsibility and the Job Hunt

By Aman Singh 

January 2011

It's one thing to be environmentally conscious and socially responsible. It's another to encompass corporate social responsibility as a sound business practice. And yet another to demand that employers discuss their corporate citizenship as part of the interview process and make it a part of your job search, especially considering the current job market.

In an economy that has cast a spotlight on internal business practices like never before among the nation's top institutions (BP, HP, Goldman Sachs, the list goes on), what is motivating jobseekers and "career changers" to actively want to work for an employer that makes corporate responsibility an inherent part of company culture?

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview four job seekers, all of whom had either recently graduated with an MBA degree or were looking at a December 2010 graduation. While geographically disconnected, two things connected them to each other: a) They all wanted to work in CSR; and b) they were all actively job hunting.

The interviews unveiled a disheartening paradox for the burgeoning number of students taking ethics and CSR courses, especially at the post-graduate level. As a career services director remarked at the recent Net Impact Conference, the last year itself saw a multifold increase in the percentage of students expressing an interest in taking the aforesaid classes.

Is it mere coincidence then that this exponential increase runs parallel to the crises that marked 2010 for the year that the discussion of CSR-if not the practice itself-went mainstream?

Regardless of how Wall Street shortcomings are already redefining the MBA curriculum, the hard reality is that mere interest and energy don't equal jobs and a paycheck.

While the year saw numerous companies reactively ramping up their CSR initiatives, they have tended to hire externally only for senior level positions. Mid- and entry-level positions in these new CSR-focused teams continue to transition from within. This creates a framework that is restricting business school graduates who may be equipped with a deeper understanding of the issues than the internal employee base, but lack the "industry experience" to apply for the few available senior-level jobs.