“A good sustainability story is all about targeting your audience and speaking in their language.” So said Bethan, one of my fellow students, to a packed boardroom of Masters students and representatives of the media, at the Guardian newspaper’s new headquarters.

We were in the middle of our fifth of six ‘post-placement events’. As the name suggests, post-placement events are held after each of the placements that make up the course. Each event is organised and facilitated by two students, and forms a significant component of those two students’ end-of-course assessment.

Reflecting on these events also shows how much we have developed into a group of leaders for sustainable development. Early on in the year when Nikki and I organised the post-placement event after our first placement it was clear that we could learn an enormous amount from our supervisors, but I’m not sure we could offer a great deal in return.

In contrast, Bethan’s comment above exemplifies the discussion at our latest event, following placements in the media. The Masters course has moulded us into a group who not only know our stuff about sustainable development but also can help each of our placements to understand what sustainable development means to their particular field of work. In the media this might mean targeting sustainability stories carefully, and ensuring that PR firms or journalists use a language with which their readers will identify.

So looking back over the year, it’s very exciting to see how far we have come as a group. Inevitably as we approach the end of the course this is also a time for looking forwards, particularly at job prospects in a depressed economy. In some ways my fellow students and I are guinea pigs – we will be the first cohort to graduate from Forum’s Masters course in a recession, where jobs are somewhat harder to come by than they have been in the past.

As a result I often get asked (and not always by my parents!) to what extent a Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development will make me more employable. I always reply (with my fingers crossed!) that I think the course will make us highly employable, for at least three reasons:

• After having been in six different work environments over the year, we have shown ourselves to be flexible enough to fit into a wide variety of teams and to bring our sustainable development expertise to bear quickly and effectively on a variety of projects.
• Each placement is, among other things, like an extended job interview; if a placement organisation likes you it is a low-risk strategy for them to offer you a job, or to look favourably upon any application you make to them.
• In whatever career we pursue after this course, we are likely to be sitting around a table with people from one or more of the sectors we have been placed in this year. For example if one of us is a civil servant in the Department for Energy and Climate Change, trying to drum up media interest in a sustainability initiative, we will understand what the journalist across the table from us needs to create a good story. Being able to see the world from the journalist’s (or businessperson’s, or campaigner’s) perspective will, I hope, make us much more effective advocates for sustainable development.

So yes, I think this course will make us employable, even in a recession. Not least because the recession has led to a new openness that the old economic model was horribly flawed, and we need to find an alternative. The economics of sustainable development can offer that alternative – in this sense there couldn’t be a more exciting time to be emerging as an expert in this field.

As the year winds on we are also seeing an increasing sense of urgency around sustainable development, and particularly around our responses to climate change. Given the fast-moving scientific consensus on the issue, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December. It could be the last opportunity we have to keep climate change in check. So in a way, I hope each of us on the course will balance our longer-term career concerns with a massive short-term collective effort to encourage a strong climate deal in Copenhagen (I’ve got my fingers crossed about that too!). Wish us luck or, better still, join us!