In a rapidly changing world, humankind is now facing a range of global social, economic, cultural and ecological challenges which in the long-term threaten a number of ‘planetary boundaries’. As a response to these challenges, the concept of sustainability has been introduced in the political discourse, and the need of a sustainable transition also have been described and recognized in the economy with a growing part of the global economy driven by sustainability-related considerations. Sustainability as a “business megatrend” also affects the labour market offering chances and introducing challenges at the same time. In response, an on-going professionalization can be witnessed by an increasing number of training courses and (higher) education programs as well as more elaborated job profiles. However, little agreement can be found about the nature and structure of a “sustainability job”, the range and number of such jobs and the specific demands on employees.

This was adressed in a twofold way: first a categorizations of established, “typical” job profiles dealing with different aspects of sustainability was conducted to structure the area, allow for an systematic overview of existing profiles and help to identify patterns of common profiles. Second, by competence identification, modelling and profiling key competencies to successfully master the demands of the different job profiles have been identified and analysed. Given the broad range and variety of jobs and careers in the emerging sustainability area, the study is focusing on a specific sample, often described as key agents of change (Tilbury 2004, Hansen and Lehmann 2006): it targets first higher education graduates of sustainability programs, which do not built upon a specific disciplinary program but are rather interdisciplinary and have not (yet) a specific, narrow focus, and second those who took an unconventional career path.

The twofold objective of the proposed research had an impact on the methodological framework of the empirical design. To fully explore the meaning and benefits of introducing competence profiles for sustainability jobs it was necessary to, first, identify trends and, second, to identify core professional challenges in this area. Furthermore, it was necessary to de-construct the competencies necessary to successfully manage the core professional challenges in different industry sectors and in society as a whole (Wesselink and Wals 2011). According to Mulder et al. (2005), the study considered two complementary perspectives so as to develop and study competence profiles: the performance perspective which recognizes that competence development and performance improvement are closely linked and calls for a  work- and worker-oriented focus that  recognizes the importance of skills, attitudes and knowledge for an excellent performance; second, there is the human development perspective which underlines the importance of roles and life-long learning and emphasizes a more individual-centered understanding of autonomous competence development.

This procedure opened new horizons for research into key competencies for a sustainable transition:

-   The development of a database of existing sustainability-related jobs and the coding against a taxonomy represents a first attempt at creating a generic classification of sustainability professionalism and describes key patterns of jobs with core professional challenges and related competencies

-   Linking competence profiles to present and future job patterns offers practical insights for an improved alignment of education and training programs with the learning needs within the profession.

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