Sustainability at the Careers Service

The University of Oxford Careers Service’s mission is to enable students to make well informed decisions about their career. As part of this, we are actively exploring ways to help students learn about organisations’ approaches to sustainability.

Accessing employers' sustainability credentials

Drawing on the Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment, the Careers Service has introduced a set of questions for recruiters, that allows students to find out more about a recruiter’s sustainability credentials. Students are able to easily access an organisation’s stance on the climate crisis, its plan on how it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050 and remain profitable, and other relevant credentials in the area of sustainability. In future, students will be able to search on those employers who have answered sustainability questions in specific ways.

Any recruiter wishing to post a vacancy on the Oxford University’s CareerConnect system, will be prompted to answer the following:

1. Does your organisation recognise the climate crisis, agree with the science, and confirm that it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050, or earlier?
2. Does your organisation have a specific, publicly accessible plan, that lays out how it will achieve Net-Zero by 2050 or earlier? (Provide web address if available)
3. Does your organisation have a plan for how it will remain profitable while achieving Net-Zero by 2050, or earlier?
4. Does your organisation have any other relevant credentials in the area of sustainability of which you’d like to ensure students are aware? (Eg, B-Corp, use of renewables, etc) (Open text box to describe other credentials)

You can see what individual recruiters have responded to the questions above by visiting the organisation profile on CareerConnect.

Note

Please note that because of the character number restrictions in CareerConnect, the questions above appear abbreviated on the organisations profiles. The abbreviated versions of the questions are only visible after the organisation has submitted the answers to the full-length questions above. 

1. Does your Organisation recognise the climate crisis?
2. Have a publicly accessible plan on how you will achieve this? 
3. Plan allows Organisation to remain profitable achieving this? 
4. Any other relevant sustainability credentials

Employer responses

Since we have introduced this initiative in February 2020, more than 5,000 recruiters have logged in to the CareerConnect system and have had to answer our 4 questions on sustainability. Below is an overview of the responses we have received so far (data recorded in September 2022):