Are you a product steward at a turning point in your career? Are you someone outside the field who wants to hire a product steward or even enter product stewardship yourself? Regardless, the Product Stewardship Society’s online Career Center can help you negotiate these sticky, tricky career stages.

“Our goal with the Career Center is to provide resources to product stewards to help them navigate their career paths or their career advancement within product stewardship,” explained Product Stewardship Society Director Adam Seery, CAE. These resources can help product stewards land their next jobs, employers find new product stewardship team members, or professionals develop their skills within product stewardship.

If I’m a product steward looking for a new job, how can the Product Stewardship Career Center help me?

Although the Career Center isn’t only a job board, one of its most significant services is connecting job seekers with employers. Companies looking for product stewardship talent can post opportunities to the Center’s platform, and likewise, product stewards can upload their resumés and apply for jobs directly. If a job seeker wishes, they can also set their profile’s preferences to allow employers to contact them if their resumé matches the company’s desired skill set. Alternatively, they can set the Center’s job alert function to notify them by email when a job is posted that matches their criteria—that is, in terms of location, skill level, salary range, and other variables.

The Career Center can also help you get an edge on the job-seeking process before you apply: everyone who creates a Product Stewardship Career Center account receives one free resumé critique. Reference checking and resumé writing services are also available through the Center’s platform.

I represent an organization looking to hire a product steward—how can the Career Center connect me with job seekers?

As mentioned above, the Center allows companies to search posted resumés for qualified candidates and to post opportunities on a forum where job seekers can find them. “If you’re looking for somebody with a product stewardship background, we have the audience of the talent that you’re looking for,” Seery said.

The Career Center also provides talent management resources that can help employers support the professional development of their product stewardship team members.

If I’m a product steward, but I’m not looking for a new job opportunity, can the Career Center help me with professional development?

Some users might be interested in building up their product stewardship skills by obtaining the Certified Professional Product Steward (CPPS) or SDS and Label Authoring Registry (SDSRP) credentials. In addition to providing information on these programs, the Center connects users to Stewardship OnDemand, a library of over 270 educational sessions covering a range of product stewardship topics, as well as to services such as career coaching and LinkedIn profile development.

Compared to similar services, the Product Stewardship Career Center benefits users by collecting product stewardship resources relevant to the whole of the profession on one website. Other organizations provide resources relevant to product stewardship within specific industries, but according to Seery, this content tends to be light on the topic of product stewardship as a concept. However, the Career Center’s information is applicable to users across the product stewardship profession. “Whether they’re in automotive or aerospace or consumer products or cosmetics, concepts of product stewardship can be applied,” Seery said. “And this is where they’re going to get the content for that.”

OK, but what if I’m not a product steward at all but a professional in a related field? What can the Career Center do for me?

Professionals with similar technical backgrounds, including toxicologists, industrial hygienists, and regulatory affairs professionals, might develop their careers with a move into product stewardship. Seery explained that these individuals would also find the Career Center’s professional development and job search resources useful. “Our career center is focused on the practice of product stewardship, and it’s really the only professional resource out there for individuals looking to grow within product stewardship,” he said.

Above all, the Product Stewardship Career Center was created exclusively help individuals at all stages of their product stewardship careers build networks and grow within the field. In fact, the Center is still growing itself. The Product Stewardship Society intends to add multiple new features within the coming months.

For more information, please visit the Product Stewardship Career Center webpage or contact Adam Seery.