Opportunities in Energy… and Every Other Industry

— Jim McNamara, Thayer '89

Having recently landed an ideal job after one month of unemployment during one of the toughest markets since the Great Depression, it occurred to me that there may be some take-away lessons in this experience. While my experience has a number of elements specific to the renewable energy industry, I hope that it can also be more broadly applicable to anyone finding themselves in transition right now. As a graduate of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, class of '89, and as someone who welcomed the courses available to me at the Tuck School of Business, I hope that my thoughts may affect future alumni in their quest for the perfect job.

The first and probably most important theme of this story: Make your mistakes early. I tend to suffer from what my wife generously deems "paralysis by analysis." From fear of making the wrong decision, I will deliberate until I feel I am at greater than 90% certainty on a decision.

For students, I highly recommend co-op or similar work during their academic career. It is a great way to learn the practical lessons about a field before you commit to it. Even if it turns out to be a dreadful experience (or a mistake), there is great value in learning what you don't want to do. A good friend of mine spent his junior year in college as a clerk at a law firm over the summer and hated every minute of it. He is now the happiest math teacher in the Denver public school system.

Several years after college, I found myself with a growing desire to find a career that would make a difference in how we live on this planet and have me bolting out of bed each morning, eager to get to work. That leads to another recurring theme: Do something you are passionate about. There were a number of challenges and setbacks in my career and I can't imagine weathering them all if I was not driven by a deep love of what I do.

It didn't take long to figure out that renewable energy provided a great fit between my new goal and my mechanical engineering background. One of the great things about the energy field is that it utilizes almost every discipline imaginable. Between the making and the selling of energy, there is a need for engineers, architects, bankers, lawyers, traders, accountants, politicians, regulators, developers and all building trades. So, point number three is: Find a bridge into your chosen field. Find your bridge, take the first opportunity that you feel can meet your basic needs and then absorb everything you can from the inside. The next move you make in the field will be as an "experienced energy professional."

My first foray into the renewable energy world came with a small wind-turbine manufacturer and developer. At the time, I was so enamored with the notion that I had found the perfect opportunity in my own backyard that I failed to notice, much less heed, numerous warning signs. I was soon to realize that the place was run on leveraged optimism and I found myself 10 months later (having been paid for only 6 of those months) in the office of my former graduate school advisor, John P. Collier.

At the time, I was sitting in his office kicking myself for having become an unwitting venture capitalist for the aforementioned wind turbine company and for having passed on another opportunity that had come and gone while I was busy figuring this out. John's first pearl of advice was meant to pacify my need for self-flagellation: "It's difficult to be objective when you have your finger in the socket." Pearl number two was designed to help me salvage something from the experience: "I never mind getting an education, and sometimes I don't even mind paying for it."

The year after I got my degree, Thayer began offering what I feel is the ultimate degree by teaming with Tuck School to create the Master of Engineering Management program. Even before the creation of this program, there were a generous number of courses offered over the fence between the two schools at Dartmouth, which in retrospect I wish I had taken better advantage of. The most successful people I know combine a deep understanding of their chosen field with a functional understanding of the fields that cross with it. Take advantage of all opportunities to broaden your knowledge base outside of your area of expertise.

I eventually ended up with Northern Power Systems, a developer of on-site power projects in Vermont where I spent the next nine years managing and developing renewable and efficiency power projects in locations ranging from Windless Bight Antarctica to mid-town Manhattan.

In the spring of 2007, while I was the Business Development Director at Northern, the company enacted a series of substantial layoffs that included me. During my time there, I had reached a point in my personal life where I had accumulated significant responsibilities; namely a family of three and a mortgage on a house in a small Vermont village where I had always assumed I would spend the rest of my life. I had no idea what to do next. It was the moment that I had worked so hard all of my life to avoid and as a result, was totally unprepared for. With my wife's guidance and support, I found myself three months later accepting the position of Chief Operations Officer for a private equity firm investing in renewable energy projects. The lessons I learned during this experience are the most important in my professional career so far:

Change is good. Because I had been in the same place for nine years, I had never been forced to take stock in my abilities and reassess the fit of my job with my skills and career goals. The best learning opportunities come from challenging situations. As a known quantity within an organization, you rarely get those kinds of opportunities and instead, tend to grow incrementally. In one move, I doubled my salary, responsibilities, and growth potential.

Network, network, network. Every job and almost every opportunity that I've ever had came from a networking contact. Talk to every friend, colleague, recruiter and professional acquaintance you know. Let them know you are looking. The best offers will most likely come from a source that knows something about you.

Find your bridge. In taking stock of your skills and work history, look for the bridges between where you are and where you want to be. Every job creates transferable skills and the ability to bring a fresh perspective to a company is often valued as highly as the more traditional skills outlined by the job description. In my case, I certainly did not bring a wealth of direct COO experience to the job but it was my experience directly managing energy projects and relationships that allowed me to build a bridge from business development to operations.

Get all of your cards on the table at once. Get as many opportunities on the table at once to increase choice and leverage. After securing one anchor interview for a trip, I worked feverishly from halfway across the country to pack as many other interviews into the same trip as possible. In a week of phone calls and e-mails, I managed to arrange five interviews in 2 days. Four of those five eventually turned into offers that I was able to evaluate simultaneously.

Go ahead and ask for it. The five interviews previously mentioned happened to take place on the Monday and Tuesday prior to the 4th of July weekend. All were firms I had been talking to but all needed some work to get to a commitment for that time period. After serious contemplation, I was able to confidently take a tack of saying: "This is your one shot at me, so if you don't want to miss out, let's make something happen."

Take any interview you get. Even if you don't think it is your ideal opportunity, any interview can give you practice for the one you really want, feedback on your marketability, an alternate view of the marketplace, and may even lead to a back-up offer. There is no better boost for your confidence than knowing you have an offer in hand. For this to really work though, you have to heed the point about getting everything on the table at once.

Never say never. Keep your options open as long as you can. Prospective employers are doing the same thing in terms of keeping you warm while looking at other candidates. Be careful to avoid being deliberately misleading with potential job offers though as this will undermine your professional credibility in the long run.

Even when I lost my job again during the global financial crisis, after exactly a month "on the beach" I was working four opportunities and accepted an offer with my current employer Nexterra Energy Corp. to stay where I am and develop business for them in the northeast U.S.

Nexterra is a renewable energy firm in Vancouver, BC (biomass gasification for those interested) that feels like something I have been preparing for over the last ten years. The faith I have in them comes in part from the failed ventures I have witnessed or been a part of. My comfort in the fit there comes from years of learning what I want and don't want, and my value to them comes in part from a practical and conservative approach born of hard-learned lessons in prior ventures. I have learned more and gained more from my mistakes and failures than anything else that I had ever done.