This morning when looking at job listings I came across an ”Environmental Scientist" freelance role - a  relatively rare sighting at the moment.  Clicking through to find out more, I then read the role was to find factual errors in AI-written science content, and write “clear feedback” for the models churning it out. When I looked up the company behind the ad, one of the first results was an article titled: “Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs” (paywalled article). Months into the job hunt, nothing about that headline felt surprising. 


It’s not long ago that I didn’t have to search for work - I was fortunate enough that plenty of it came to me. When I left academia and started freelancing in 2024 I quickly found my time filled with paid projects and collaborations that felt positive, meaningful and a good use of my skills. But over the past year or so, the shifts have felt dramatic



Opportunities degrading

It’s no secret that the ‘job market’ right now is tough. In the UK there are over 1 million young people not in employment, education or training, and about 2 million unemployed people (and many times more besides) actively looking for work. Meanwhile, the numbers and types of jobs available aren’t matching the demand.  Many roles are also short term, casualised or otherwise precarious.


This decade promised a boom in “green” jobs, and it’s not hard to find openings that are very much styled as such.  But scratch beneath the surface of the advertisements and many-if-not-most aren’t exactly propelling us towards a sustainable and ethical future. 


Page one of the “jobs that match your profile” section on LinkedIn right now shows me:

🔥 Community & Education Officer… for the UK’s biggest carbon emitter 

✈️ Environmental Consultant… to support a company’s “growing aviation business” 

🫘 Writer/Journalist covering inequality and poverty… unpaid, two days per week.

🤖 Multiple roles training and expanding the use of AI (like the “Environmental Scientist” role above)


Alongside this I’m getting plenty of targeted advertising for unspecified career opportunities at oil companies* (and a few times for the military or the Metropolitan police). Let’s just say the roles out there and how I’d want to be applying my skills often aren’t a “good fit”, and I’m fairly confident that I wouldn’t make it as far as the interview if I applied. 


When there’s so much that we actually need to do to spread reliable information, protect our planetary health, transform our systems, and adapt to an increasingly unstable world, it’s alarming how few-and-far-between the roles aligned with doing this seem to be right now. 




Hiring procedures

This is not to say that there aren’t great-looking roles out there and positively influential organisations eager to recruit. But funding across many parts of the environmental sector has been drying up and there is high demand for any positions advertised. 


Some application platforms will tell you how many people have read the job advert and/or how many applications have been submitted.  And it's not uncommon to be amongst thousands of applicants, even for quite specialised roles. 


I feel for hiring teams having to filter and evaluate so many applications. I can also understand how such demand breeds processes that are less kind to applicants. These include:

  • 📋 Bespoke processes and complex forms. Gone are the days of firing off a standard CV and tweaked cover letters to several roles: each now asks for different information in different formats. I did one form that took 3 hours to complete even after I’d drafted the responses to the long-answer questions. 
  • 🤖 AI filtering or even AI interviews.  I now write applications knowing that there is a strong chance it won’t be a human who ‘decides’ whether I progress to the next round of the process.  
  • 🏋️ Work as part of the application. A task-based component to an application makes sense for a lot of roles and I’m seeing this become a lot more common. However it can really add to the time and effort required for an application. In the (rare!) best cases, tasks are paid/compensated as work… in the worst I have or wondered whether a real job opening even exists and the tasks are cynically used for free labour. 
  • ❌ No capacity for feedback. Rejections are almost always accompanied by a request that applicants not inquire further about them. †


Looking for work and being judged by prospective employers, funders or collaborators has never been fun, but it feels far more gruelling and impersonal than it ever has before.  I’ve been selective and only applied for roles where I meet all the criteria.  Each application is different, but they usually take me a day or two. Over the past few months I’ve applied for about 35 roles and have yet to progress beyond the first round. 




What now?

Knowing that freelancing would have peaks and troughs, I made preparations for periods without regular work. The reserves from last year’s projects alongside short term projects have allowed me to cover the time I’ve been using to apply for jobs this year so far.  It’s been stressful, haphazard and insecure‡ but it’s been manageable (and I have loved some of the projects I’ve been trusted to do). But I’m now at the end of those reserves and I’m not sure what to do.  


I didn’t write this just to whinge… I wrote it to explain how it probably feels to many people who are trying to find meaningful work in an increasingly hostile job/funding landscape.  My experiences are far from unique, and if anyone reading this is relating to them then I hope you know that you’re not alone, nor can you measure your worth by how easy you're finding it to land decent-quality, paid work.  I also wrote this to elicit any ideas and advice that might be out there. 


Specifically I’m looking for insights into:


  • How and where to search for opportunities. I’m on a range of job boards and mailing lists, and friends have been great at passing on listings they happen across, but are there other routes I might not have thought of? 
  • How to look for independent funding.  I’m really enthusiastic to create the kind of opportunities that I wish existed. I made a few applications to funding pots but didn’t get anywhere, so I’d be keen to hear ideas about potential funders and advice on how to increase the ‘fundability’ of proposals. 
  • How I present my work and approach.  Are there aspects of this that might be standing in the way of good opportunities?  Are there compromises I might want to consider? Are there skills I’d do well to invest in? 
  • Connections and support that might help this process along. I’m most interested in collaborative projects that use science, research and/or communication skills to help build a more sustainable and resilient future, but open to broadening beyond that. 




* My least favourite but most-consistently shown to me on social media earlier this year highlighted many ways Shell provides careers for women in STEM!

† One thing I think has improved in recent years is that I do generally receive a response to applications (rather than just having to assume silence means rejection).

‡ Not helped by several instances of not getting paid (sometimes for reasons beyond clients’/employers control)