Freshwater resources are under pressure due to the unsustainable use of resources and the constant increase in demand. Climate change is creating additional pressure by negatively impacting the demand, quantity, quality, and accessibility of freshwater which will gradually intensify as global warming increases. In this factsheet, you will understand the connection between fresh water and climate change, the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on freshwater resources and the link with water stress.

As we learned in factsheet 1.1, climate and water challenges are inextricably linked. Even though the main pressure on freshwater resources is human activity, climate change has an impact on the water cycle, leading to devastating water-related events such as droughts and floods. In this factsheet, we will present you with an overview of the main challenges we are currently facing regarding climate change using a water management lens. We will explain why it is essential to consider these two sectors while developing policies, adaptation and management plans.  

In this factsheet we will present you with list of European and International organisations from the climate & water sectors that you might find interesting, along with information on their area of work, their vision and their mission. Having access to this database will hopefully give you some initial ideas on what type of organisation matches your unique skills and professional needs and which one you could picture yourself working for (if working for an organisation is what you want) (see excel).

There are many players that make up the water and climate community and who are working towards a common goal: improving the current and future state of our environment by making it climate resilient and water secure (refer to factsheets 1.1 and 1.2). We understand that it can be daunting at first for young professionals to make sense of these two interconnected sectors and to fully grasp who does what as well as the roles and responsibilities of different actors. We equally understand how important it is for young professionals to network and connect with different stakeholders to kick-start their career and to find the right role for them.  This is why we have dedicated this section to explaining (or rather showing) how the sectors function, with the hope that this will help young professionals be better prepared when job hunting – once readers can better visualise the water & climate work landscape and make more sense of it, they will find it easier to approach job hunting in a more strategic and efficient manner.

In the previous factsheet (1.3), a number of organisations were identified that work in, or in close association with water and climate. Entry level opportunities were also highlighted for some of these organisations (see downloadable material in module 1.3). In this module, we will delve a bit deeper and go through different career path options as well as possible entry points into different water & climate work areas.

As you work towards finding and building a successful career path, you first need to take a step back and reflect on what does career success mean to you and how will this guide your future decisions?

Identifying your key elements of success and your own objectives are not easy tasks but it is essential to help you find an environment in which you can truly feel fulfilled and become a real change agent. Knowing the objectives and definition of success of your teammates is also important from an organizational/leadership point of view to maximize the engagement and impact of employees and teammates. Everyone has a different meaning of a successful career; this factsheet will aim to give you some tools to reflect on yours.

More than ever, we need powerful and impactful leaders to help our society face the water and climate challenges of our century. Everybody agrees that leadership exists but there is no consensus on how to define leadership. When we think of leaders, we often think of impactful figures such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Gandhi, but leadership is much closer to us than we might think; it is all around us and presents itself in several different forms. This factsheet will help you understand the different types of leadership that exists by presenting the Head-Heart-Courage leadership model and will help you reflect on your own leadership. This factsheet will help you identify your strengths and your blind spots and propose ways to develop your Head-Hearth-Courage leadership.

Whether it be at the office with our colleagues or on the field with partners, we face different types of conflicts every day. Conflicts may arise when competing over scarce resources, when you have different preferences and ideologies or when competing for power.  Sometimes conflicts are necessary and can be beneficial, but if not well managed, they can be destructive for the organisation and the people within the organisation. Because we might come from different countries, speak a different language, have lived different experiences, have different values, ideas, or motivations, you and I might naturally manage conflicts in a different way. In this Module, you will be brought to reflect on your own style of conflict management as well as the different types of conflicts.

At the end of this Module, you will be able to:

• Identify the advantages and disadvantages of conflicts.
• Identify the levels of conflict.
• Identify your most dominant interpersonal style of conflict management.

Communication is unavoidable. We learn to communicate at a very young age and use communication daily to express our needs, to socialize, to persuade, to play and to discover. That said, communicating effectively is not an easy task. 

Learning to communicate effectively in a professional setting will allow you to stand out in the water and climate sector. Good communication skills will enable you to easily explain your innovative ideas, establish long-lasting relationships with colleagues and minimize misunderstandings. Good communication skills can also allow you to transmit your passion for the water and climate sector to others.

In this factsheet you will learn to:

• Determine your most dominant communication style
• Establish the principles of effective communication including active listening
• Avoid potential triggers for miscommunication
• Optimize your written communication

In this factsheet you will learn why it is so important to know yourself and what sort of lifestyle fits well with your unique personality, needs, abilities and limitations, in order to find a job that allows you to have a healthy work-life balance. You will get some tips and tricks for identifying a work-life balance that works for you as well as how to avoid blurring the lines and what to do if you don’t think the balance is right. We will introduce some hypothetical scenarios that will help you better understand the importance of respecting a healthy work-life balance.

Building an innovative and efficient team is no easy task. It can be a lengthy and challenging process which requires defining and coordinating different strategies, skills, goals, values, and experiences. In this regard, it is imperative to know what methods to resort to in order to build a strong team as well as having a clear understanding of the characteristics that constitute innovative and efficient teams and the different development phases these will undergo. This factsheet will help you understand what constitutes a work team and will explain the various stages of a team’s lifecycle.

As we realized in the past model “Characteristics of teams and team development”, a lot of the magic that allows innovative and effective teams to function is a mysterious mixture of individual perspective, group dynamics, and organisational structure and support. We developed this model to act as your practical guide on how to gradually bring these various elements together during the five stages of your team’s lifecycle and to use them approprietly to build an effective and innovative team.

In this factsheet you will be introduced to the concept of social innovation and social entrepreneurship as promising pathways for improving our societies and protecting our ecosystems. You will also be introduced to the importance of understanding a problem properly before attempting to solve it. If you are an innovative individual who can easily see the bigger picture and understand the interdependencies of the bigger picture then social innovation might be an interesting path for you to explore. If on top of this you also happen to have an entrepreneurial spirit then social entrepreneurship might be the right career for you.

Do you want to utilize creativity and innovative thinking to solve complex problems, develop new strategies, and drive change towards a more sustainable and water-secure world? Great! You are in the right place. This factsheet will introduce you to one of the most innovative solution-oriented approaches that promote placing the human needs, requirements, environment, and contexts at the heart of the process, in this way allowing you to develop a deep understanding of the needs of your target groups within their particular context.

As we learned in the Developing Innovative Solutions I factsheet, adopting a User-Centred Design while developing your projects enables you to focus on delivering an innovative needs-oriented solution to solve complex problems. It also allows you to develop new strategies and drive change towards a more sustainable and water-secure world. A User-Centred Design can be used by anyone, from students to professionals, to develop projects that address a specific problem. In this factsheet, we will continue exploring this participatory approach by giving you detailed information on its five different stages: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Are you eager to drive social change and address some of the growing global challenges through  projects within the water and climate sectors? Great! This factsheet will help you understand how to develop and use creative and sustainable business models that provide you guiding lines to overcome the most challenging bottlenecks you are going to face when developing your project. Concretely, this factsheet will present the Sustainable Business Model Canvas (BMC) tool and its main components.

As a young professional, who aspires to tackle some of the most urgent issues in the water and climate sectors worldwide by developing an innovative and creative project, you will need to be prepared to take every opportunity to gain interest in your project from potential target groups, end-users, customers, investors, partners, and/or associates. If you want to grow as a company you will need to network and invest efforts into connecting with potential stakeholders and clients. Networking opportunities can arise in a variety of settings such as in formal meetings, networking events, conferences or even during improvised conversations on a train, at a party or in a lift. It is therefore absolutely vital for you to have an interesting and concise pitch (speech) ready that summarises your project’s overarching mission and vision and use it to get your listeners on board with your project, whether this is through supporting, investing, or becoming one of your future target group/clients/end-users. This factsheet leads you through the process of creating and fine-tuning two of the most used types of pitches that can be adapted to any situation and audience.

In order to promote your project´s vision, mission, benefits and overall contribution to the water and climate sectors, you will need a solid marketing strategy. In marketing we talk of the 4Ps of marketing: product, place, price and promotion. These four elements are intricately linked to each other and should be used as the foundation for building a successful marketing strategy. This factsheet will provide you with the essential information needed to build up your project’s marketing strategy using the 4Ps approach.

A project cannot be developed in isolation and without considering the market environment that it operates in. When developing your project you have to consider the current market size, its potential for growth, prices, costs, needs and expectations of your target groups, as well as any societal trends that could influence your project (directly or indirectly).  It is also crucial to assess who your current and potential competitors are so that you can avoid them getting in the way of you reaching your customers. This factsheet will help you understand how to develop a market and competitor analysis which can increase the likelihood of your project success and long-term sustainability.

Getting to grips with the basics of financial management is vital if you want to start your own business initiative in the climate and water sectors, it will help you to take better decisions and convince potential investors to invest in your business. This factsheet covers three important methods for keeping your new business’ financial activities in line: the basic accounting methods of profit and loss (P&L), statement and the balance sheet. It will give you an overview of the most important financial terminology and will go on to explain how liquidity planning works, a task that should be carried out on a daily basis.

This module  will guide you through some typical job profiles in the water and climate sectors. After completing this factsheet we hope that you will have a better idea of what the organizational structure of a typical water and climate organization looks like. This should make it easier to identify where you picture yourself within an organisation and what type of job you are most suited to.    

You have been successful in your interview and have been offered the role. You are starting your new job soon and you are a bag full of nerves. This is perfectly normal and healthy, so long as you learn to manage these nerves and make them work to your advantage.  The first few days and weeks at a new job will be both exciting and challenging and you are likely to be exhausted from having to meet both professional and personal expectations – you want to do your job well, but you also want to build good relationships with your co-workers. Although it is important to be yourself at your job you also want to be respected as a professional who is good at their job, so we recommend that you maintain a certain level of professionalism, especially at the beginning when you still haven’t had the chance to gage what the dynamics in the office are. You’ll have plenty of time to show your colleagues how great you are as a person but for now be a good contemplator and act friendly and authentically but with a pinch of humility until you have built trust with those around you and can let the guard down a bit.

In this module you will get some insights and tools for being productive in your new job as well as good practices to leave a good impression.

Finding a job is never easy and it can be a hard and lengthy process. That said, job searching is also an opportunity to meet new people, learn new skills and challenge yourself. This module will give you key skills and tips for your job searching process.

• Why is it important to target your search?
• Where to find potential job opportunities in the water and climate sector?

How to prepare your resume and cover letter?

This factsheet serves as a support to other factsheets focused on job searching. You will look at the hiring process from the other side to understand how HR specialists think when they look for the best candidate.

The onboarding of a new employee involves much more than a simple box ticking process. It is a critical time to showcase your organisation’s culture and corporate values. A warm and timely onboarding experience makes new employees feel cared for and gives them an immediate taste for how you treat your fellow colleagues.

This module will highlight some steps you as the employer should take in the onboarding process to ensure that every new employee feels welcomed and has a good first experience of your company.

In this module we will go through some useful tips and tricks that will help you in any future job interviews. Even if you have already gone through the job interviewing process before it is still a good idea to re-evaluate how you interview and identify the things that you could do better – there is always room for improvement! Want to become a master interviewee? Then scroll down and carryon reading 