I resigned from my job as a high school art&design teacher and I’m trying to pivot into something that I can grow with in the tech industry, but feeling overwhelmed with what even exists anymore. Doing career quizzes are not helping. Things I like and am good at, in no particular order: + Mentoring and leading teams and individuals + Giving and following up on meaningful feedback (fine with those “tough” conversations and I can handle them with grace) + Working with customers + Project management skills but no official Project Manager experience (I ran an artistic engineering summer camp for 3 years where we teach kids how to use power tools and lead them in building whatever crazy moving sculptures they want to build; it’s a lot of project management of different levels) + Basic structural engineering and power tool use + Teaching people ages 8-80 new skills, meeting people where they are + Copywriting and written communication — wrote a lot of training manuals. + Being generally pleasant and open to feedback + Drawing and sketching visual ideas + Storyboarding +/- Solid foundations of graphic design and Adobe products, but I lack the finesse of finer designers (I’m told I may lack confidence here, but there’s a difference between teaching high schoolers the basics and actually working in industry) + I coded my friends’ MySpaces and LiveJournals and back in the 00s, and that is the extent of my coding skills - Can’t stand sales or dealing with the customer funnel. With this kind of background and skillset, what do you think I could pivot into and grow? Job titles, places to start, anything is helpful. Happy to put in the effort to grow adjacent skill sets on my own — I’m doing a coursera for Project Management now but not sure if it’s the right direction. I’m nervous to put myself out there without real experience in another industry — running up against that ol’ chestnut of need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience. Salary isn’t a huge deal for me, I just want to do something that makes people’s lives easier/better and get back into working. Previous TC as a teacher was 42k (lol). Located outside Denver CO.
best way to learn about careers in tech is to start somewhere. people switch between roles often. and as you learn more about industry, more you'll figure out where you fit in better. sounds like project management or product designer roles might be a good start. or maybe even talent development
That’s a helpful insight, thank you!
You should look into Learning & Development, specifically Instructional Design.
Hadn’t thought about that yet, thanks!
How about customer success?
Honestly it’s as good a starting place as any, right? Can I get in on my existing customer service background or do I need to learn anything specific?
You can also become recruiter
I’ve thought about that! That’s in a HR track, right?
Not necessarily. IMO hr abd recruiting should be two separate functions . On most tech org they are abd lot of times recruiters are contractors working on commission.
Good luck! I’d recommend finding some non-technical role in marketing or project management. You could always try your hand in sales too since that requires good people skills. Out of curiosity, what made you resign? My end goal is to be a hs teacher when I can quit tech.
Thanks for the response! Public school teaching is an absolute shit show right now — teachers are micromanaged and mistrusted while also being asked to do more and more for kids and their districts. I *loved* teaching, working with kids, even working with parents was fine. But there’s so much BS that takes up so much time just to prove to the districts that we’re actually doing our jobs got ridiculous. Throw a pandemic on top of it, a union that wouldn’t stand up for their teachers, and 40 unvaccinated kids in one classroom and I was done (and so were a lot of my colleagues). /rant I do hope our public school system gets better. The kids deserve better.
Agreed, it seems like it’s been a rough year for teachers. Thanks for sharing!