Business Development Analyst, Impact Investing

Experience level: Early-career (0-2 years post-Bachelor’s degree work experience or equivalent)
Location: London, UK (or UK based with the ability to commute into London)

About BlueMark:

BlueMark was founded with a mission to strengthen trust in impact and sustainable investing, and to help bring more transparency and accountability to the impact investment market. We believe third-party impact verification is a key ingredient for establishing and maintaining trust between impact investors and their stakeholders. By providing a reliable resource for independent, third-party assurance of impact claims and practices, BlueMark plays an important role in advancing best practices and ensuring the impact investing industry scales with integrity.

Founded in early 2020, BlueMark has quickly become the leading provider of independent impact verification and intelligence for the impact and sustainable investing market. BlueMark closed its Series A funding round in April 2023, and has grown its team this year to 27 FTEs, with significant additional growth planned for 2024 and beyond. Our team brings unparalleled expertise in impact investing along with high commitment to excellence and integrity in everything we do. We value compassion, emotional awareness, a sense of humor, and an entrepreneurial drive in every new hire.

About the position:

This is a unique opportunity to help drive revenue growth and build out the business development function at an early-stage company in a dynamic, impactful industry. The Business Development (BD) Analyst will play a key role in driving new relationships and business for BlueMark (with an emphasis on the UK and European markets) through building and maintaining systems for business development activities, supporting outreach and follow-up with prospects, conducting outreach, and supporting relationship management. The role will provide opportunities to work with diverse impact investing stakeholders and help grow a new pioneering business.

You might be a great fit for this role if you are interested in both the people and the process sides of business development. The right candidate will be organized, flexible, and solutions-oriented, and will have some exposure to or a keen interest in learning about Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and/or impact investing.

This position is based in the UK, and candidates must have the ability to commute to the London office 1-2 days per week as well as authorization to work in the UK now and for the foreseeable future.

The primary responsibilities for this role include:

• Support research to identify new prospects and organize target lists

• Drive outreach to prospects, in collaboration with several other members of the team, through coordination of meetings, drafting of communications and prospect follow-up, synthesis of BD meeting notes, and generally oversight and project management of the steps in the BD process

• Support drafting of proposals and refinement of client-facing materials

• Maintain updates to the CRM system (Insightly, Salesforce) and other BD-related analysis and tools

• Continue the build-out of BD-related systems and processes and support ongoing improvements

• Identify and support implementation of enhancements to BlueMark’s end-to-end sales processes

• Contribute to BlueMark’s BD strategy, including defining and working towards key business targets

• Liaising with BlueMark’s other departments (marketing, R&D, etc.) to ensure BD efforts are integrated across teams

• Manage client data and support revenue tracking

• Collaborate with other teams to ensure that BlueMark is well-represented at conferences and other industry events

• Support closing agreements with clients and facilitating handover to client service teams, including reviewing and finalizing contracts and building process for smooth transitions from sales to service delivery

Desired qualifications and experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

• Experience or exposure to a sales or business development role, preferably in a startup environment

• Familiarity with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and impact investing and/or financial services preferred -- but not required, as long as you bring an eagerness and aptitude for learning!

• Ability to conduct market research and develop outreach strategies

• Aptitude for working in a small business environment

• Ability to manage multiple tasks with high attention to detail and organization

• High level of personal and professional integrity

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Entrepreneurial and collaborative disposition, with a bias towards action

• Demonstrated ability to exercise sound judgment and discretion

• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills

• Sense of humor and self-awareness

• Experience using CRM systems would be an asset, but is not required

• Flexible to shift hours as needed to accommodate an international business and team

Hiring Process FAQs:

What are some of the benefits and perks?

• Every other Friday is a "Free Friday"

• A professional development stipend is available for every employee to use towards improving their expertise and soft skills.

• Beyond providing a work laptop, we have a “Work From Home” stipend available for employees to help make their home working space better.

• Retreats: We hold retreats every year where team members get together in a beautiful location to brainstorm and just have a fun time.

• We close the office for the last week of December so everyone can enjoy time with family and friends during the holiday season.

• Since we are a small team, as an analyst you will be in direct contact with institutional decision-makers who are trying to create large-scale social and environmental change through investments.

What will the hiring process look like?

• Looking for a new job can be a daunting experience. Our approach is based in empathy and a desire for candidates to have a good experience. We want to give everyone an opportunity to display their strengths through their answers to our questions.

• Hiring Process: Our timeline from application close date to decision typically takes ~4-6 weeks. Below are the steps week by week:

• Week 1-2 - Applications are blind-reviewed after the application close date: Our process is designed to remove bias by having your application answers randomly assigned to our team for review. Two team members score the responses based on a set of guidelines. The candidates with the highest average scores get invited to the interview round. We do not look at resumes and we do not know whose answers we are scoring. We embrace a diversity of working styles and backgrounds and believe that limiting applications to resumes fails to capture the full potential of an individual. We also believe that answering a few short, tailored questions is a far better use of your time than customizing a cover letter.

• Week 2-3 - Behavioral Interview - The first interview is a 45-minute structured interview with non-senior team members.

• Week 3-4 Case Exercise - This is a timed take-home exercise.

• Week 4-5 - Senior Management Interview: The candidates with the highest average scores from the first round interview are invited to a second structured interview with Senior Management.

How would you describe your culture?

• Collaborative, inclusive, passionate, and fun. We encourage all team members to be their full selves at work. As a relatively small team, there are a lot of opportunities to have your voice heard. Our structure is relatively flat, and you are able to influence decisions, processes, and policies even as an analyst.

What’s your commitment to DEI to life in culture and workplace?

• We have an internal DE&I working group that is committed to improving DE&I practices, culture, and employee experience. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are core tenets of our culture and we place a heavy emphasis on constantly learning and improving our own understanding of what that means for our business. At Tideline, we believe that compassion, equity, diversity, and inclusion are fundamental to our success. Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion manifests in three key ways:

The mission and vision of BlueMark and its sister company, Tideline

Our firm’s vision of shared, sustainable prosperity is inseparably rooted in the credo of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive world.

How we conduct ourselves as an employer

BlueMark is an equal opportunity employer, and we value the unique contributions of each of our team members. Through our hiring, mentoring, and managing, we encourage our team to bring their full selves and individuality to our work.

How we use our influence

In our work with clients, we strive to be an enabling force in the equitable distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within our society.