In this episode, Jess Lighthall, former high school and college English instructor of 13 years, talks about about corporate life and how it was an adjustment from teaching.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Adjusting to Corporate Life as an ID
Daphne Gomez:
Hi, Jess. Thanks so much for being here today.
Jess Lighthall:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Daphne Gomez:
Jess, I’d love to start a little bit with your experience working in the classroom. I know you were both a high school and college English instructor. So, can you tell me a little bit about both of those positions and how you got into teaching to begin with?
Jess Lighthall:
Sure. So, I taught for about 13 and a half years. I taught high school English, really all levels from freshmen through seniors, different electives. I think growing up I always just thought that I wanted to be a teacher. I enjoyed school, I enjoyed being a student, I really liked reading, and writing, and talking about books. And so, I think that just led me into pursuing English.
I got my master’s once I started teaching, and so I then began, a few years into my teaching career, also teaching the dual credit college English courses. So, they took place at our high school, but it was basically on behalf of the local community college and the students were … It was considered a college class and they earned college credit for taking those composition courses.
So, the last 10 years that I taught, I also taught composition 1 and 2, and so that I think was an interesting give me perspective of teaching those higher level classes. So like I said, I’ve been in teaching for about 13 and a half years. I actually was at the same district the entire time, so I student taught there, and then there was an opening and I got the job, and I stayed there until I left to move into the job that I have now.
Jess shares why she decided to leave teaching
Daphne Gomez:
Do you mind sharing a little bit about why you decided to ultimately leave teaching?
Jess Lighthall:
Sure. So, I’m a very introverted person, and so I think it just got to the point where I just felt like you have to be on eight hours a day and constantly … Sure, the students, there are things that are student led and it’s not always just you up there in front of the room teaching, but that was part of it. I just felt like it was getting to the point that I felt burned out on the profession. I also really wanted a job where I felt like I could have more upward movement. So, I am just not someone that personally is interested in going into educational administration. So, I knew that I didn’t want to do that next step, so I felt like there wasn’t … I was already teaching college courses and higher level courses, and I just didn’t feel like there was a whole lot of ways for me to move up and challenge myself, and just try something different.
And so, I really wanted to take the skills that I have and the things that I really enjoy doing, which is putting instructional materials together, and writing, and those kinds of things, but just in a different way that maybe better worked with who I am as a person.
Daphne Gomez:
Did you think about it for a long time, over the entire trajectory of your career as a teacher, about ultimately what your exit plan was?
Jess Lighthall:
I did think about it for several years. I would say probably starting back in 2016, I really started looking for a way out of teaching and what that next step could be. I didn’t really go about it in the right way. I was just scattershotting, randomly applying to places, and it really wasn’t until I started the Teacher Career Coach program that I got organized and knew what I was doing in terms of tailoring my resume, and upskilling, and all of that. So, off and on really for the last six or so years. And then I would say the fall of 2021 when I joined Teacher Career Coach, I got really serious about it. I decided I want to target instructional design, and that’s when I was successful with getting a job outside of teaching.
Jess explains how she chose to go into Instructional Design
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about that transition process. So, you’ve talked a little bit about your strengths and what you liked in the teaching profession. Did you just immediately get pulled into instructional design, or was there another path that you were looking at first before instructional design, or was that just always it for you?
Jess Lighthall:
So, I think I initially started looking at what could I do in maybe higher education? Not so much teaching, but whether it be like a career counselor, a career advisor. I even did go to a couple of interviews for jobs like that. Being totally transparent, the pay was less than I was making teaching and I wasn’t making much teaching. And so, that’s definitely something that I looked at as I want to be able to afford my house, and being able to pay bills and everything, and still live, be comfortable. And so, I wanted something that compensated me what I felt like was more fairly for the years of experience and the education that I have, and what I bring to the table. So, I moved away from those higher ed positions. I don’t even remember how I heard about instructional design to begin with.
I heard about it a few years ago, and when I looked into it I just fell in love with it and I was like, “I think this is something I’d be good at, and that I would also enjoy doing.” And that it would dovetail well with my strengths, but also challenge me and I would learn new things as well. And so, that’s when I started looking into it. And back then, this was pre-COVID, there just wasn’t as many remote opportunities and not many places around me locally seemed to have openings in instructional design. And then post pandemic, I feel like there were a lot more remote opportunities being offered in that field.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, absolutely. Did you always think of yourself as being tech-savvy? Because instructional design is one of those more tech-savvy careers.
Jess Lighthall:
Honestly, no. Honestly, I think a big reason that I became a little bit more tech-savvy was the pandemic, because when we went to remote teaching I did use technology. Our students did have the one-on-one, they each had their own Chromebook before that, but just having to make everything online I ended up going out and learning some of those new programs myself and then teaching my colleagues. And so, I feel like that’s what got me more interested in using technology and made me realize, hey, I can learn new technology totally on my own if I needed to, and still understand it well enough that I could teach somebody else how to use it. So, I think that’s one of the only benefits maybe, but a benefit that came out of the pandemic.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, I think so many, especially those of us who identify as women, downplay our tech savviness and assume that it’s something a lot more complicated or a lot bigger than it really truly is. I do find myself a tech-savvy person now because I’ve forced myself to learn all these tools. But I’ve talked to so many teachers who right off the bat tell me, “Oh, I can’t do something like that. It’s tech-savvy and that’s not me.” And I’m like, “Okay, how did you feel when it came to this tool, this tool, and this tool during COVID?” And they’re like, “Oh, those are super simple.” And I was like, “That’s basically what you would be using for this specific situation.” Not necessarily instructional design, but for the thing that they were discounting themselves on being able to do, which I just feel like is part of why it’s so important to get your hands dirty and really start trying. How long did it take you to start learning instructional design and start to get your hands dirty with the tools during the process of applying for the roles?
Jess Lighthall:
The process for me actually went pretty quickly, I think a lot quicker than will happen many times. So, I always kind of say that, it’s not indicative of what every job application process will be like. I was upskilling, I mean, pretty much using all my spare time after school, well into the evening, all day on the weekends for about a solid two and a half months I would say. And it was just I think the right job hosting at the right time. It’s mostly remote, I work four days at home and only one day in the office, but it ended up being a local position that wanted someone with a background in education and preferred somebody who was local, and it just was exactly what I was looking for. And I applied, and I was hired a couple weeks later. So, I think it did go pretty quickly for me.
Even after actually I was hired, I still kept on working on building my ID portfolio, and putting together some of my assets on that because I knew that going forward in the field I would definitely want to have a portfolio. I still wanted to learn articulate storyline and some of those tools. So, even after I had the job offer, I still kept working on that for a couple of months after.
Jess tells Daphne how she ended up in a remote ID position
Daphne Gomez:
Let’s talk a little bit about that new role, and especially because you said that it is one day in the office. So, I’ve always said remote jobs are going to be the most competitive, especially if they’re 100% remote, you’re up against everyone else in that specific state or within if they’re open to all states applying for those jobs. But when there’s at least one day in the office or multiple days in the office, you’re going to be more limited to people within a driving distance. Were you looking for something 100% remote when you found this position?
Jess Lighthall:
So, I was looking mainly at remote postings, knowing that the further out that we got from the height of the pandemic, that probably fewer and fewer of those would get posted. When I started the position, the company was still completely remote, and then they had a return to office thing. And I think it’s really kind of dependent on each individual team as to what they want to do. And so, right now we’re hybrid with one day in the office most weeks. There are some weeks if it’s by a holiday or whatever that we don’t go in that one day. And still a lot of flexibility if you’ve got somebody coming to the house to do work that day, or you have an appointment or whatnot, very flexible even within that. But yeah, I think I was looking more for more remote than not.
So, if it was a hybrid position, probably more days at home than in the office. When I taught for 13 and a half years, I actually commuted almost an hour one way for that whole time. And so, it was just a lot of leaving the house at 6:00 in the morning and getting home after 5:00, and just having a little bit more time at home to enjoy being with my dog, and some of those benefits, being able to get up and walk in the morning or whatever before work. All those things that you don’t really think about until you do start working from home.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the transition to working remotely, because you definitely talked about the pros right now. Have you found any cons or pain points with that transition?
Jess Lighthall:
I think the biggest thing for me is just you don’t realize how sedentary you are when you’re working from home. It’s not like I taught PE or something, but even just the movement that you get during the day, walking around and helping the kids, and just walking from your room to the copy machine and all of that. And now I sit in front of a computer in my home office all day, that’s where I do my work. And so, I’ve definitely had to be more conscious of building in time to get up and move around. I did invest in a standup desk attachment so that I can stand up during meetings or if I’m working on something, and just setting reminders for myself to go refill my water, go take the dog outside for a couple minutes, that I can get sucked into working on something and pretty soon it’s three hours and I haven’t moved out of my chair. And so, that was I think a big change is just it’s so much more sedentary now, and you don’t really get that built-in movement during the day.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, and it feels like, you know the phrase champagne problems. Like oh, we got what we wanted. We’re now working at home. But the lifestyle creep sneaks up on you, and I struggle with the exact same thing where I have one of those watches that yells at me, like, “You haven’t moved. Move.” When I used to feel like I was getting enough activity just on a day-to-day basis with my role. How do you feel about your productivity and time management? Is that something that you struggle with, or you’ve always been really good at?
Jess Lighthall:
I feel really good about it. I think a big change from going to teaching is, from teaching, I should say, when you’re teaching you might have a little bit of a prep period if it doesn’t get taken away for something during the day, but otherwise it’s mostly done outside of work or you’re trying to get everything done in every little spare moment that you have. So oh, I’ve got five minutes at the end of lunch, so I’m going to try and grade these quizzes or whatever. And you feel like you can never really get ahead. And in my job now, I mean, you’re paid to do work. They don’t want you working outside of your contract hours or when you’re getting paid. And I actually have time to do the tasks that I’m given to do. And so, at first it was weird because I’m so used to …
I do a good quality on everything, but I felt like I had to constantly be running from one thing to the next and I never had time to breathe, and here you definitely do. And so, I was getting through all of my tasks very, very quickly, still doing a very good job on them, but I felt like I don’t have to just sit here and not move all day because I can’t leave for a few minutes because I have to get everything done so quickly. It is definitely a mindset change between teaching where you feel that way in a corporate job.
Jess explains what the onboarding process was like
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, I’ve heard of people who struggle with I know I did all my work and I know I did it well. Am I not doing enough? How am I done all already? Or am I in trouble for being done already? Did you have a lot of feedback and handholding during the onboarding process, or was that kind of a culture shift for you as well?
Jess Lighthall:
I definitely had a very supportive team and boss, and we’re on Teams all day. Even though you’re at home, I don’t feel isolated from anyone. If I ever have a question, someone’s always there ready to help. It was a mixture of things at meetings, and things that my teammates or my boss would go through with me. And also going through some of the onboarding activities on my own, at my own pace, which I found very helpful. So, it was kind of a mixture of the two.
Daphne Gomez:
What were some of your biggest concerns or fears going into a corporate environment, and were they true?
Jess Lighthall:
Definitely. I mean, it was scary to make the transition because teaching was all that I knew. I felt very secure in my job, I knew that I did a good job at my job. And it was just always … I mean, I had part-time jobs and things in high school and college, but in terms of being an adult it’s the only job I ever had, and it was the only district I’d ever worked at. So, it was the first time I really made this big change. And it was scary. Like am I going to do a good job at this? Am I going to be successful? Am I going to enjoy it? Is it going to be a good situation for me? And none of my fears came true. I love it, I love my team, I love what I do, I love where I work, and it’s definitely been probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself honestly, was to make that transition.
The way I looked at it is no decision has to be permanent. So, if you do go to a job outside of teaching and it’s not for you, whether it’s that company or the job itself, you can always either go back to teaching, you can go to a different company, you can pursue something else, the job doesn’t have to be permanent.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. So, it sounds like you did have some of those common fears of what if this is worse?
Jess Lighthall:
Sure, yeah. Just the unknown.
Daphne Gomez:
Do you feel like, because you’re doing instructional design but I know you have some elements of corporate training involved in your position, correct?
Jess Lighthall:
Yes.
Daphne Gomez:
Do you feel like this is a better fit for someone who is an introvert?
Jess Lighthall:
Definitely. So, I don’t lead the full training sessions, so I do train the trainers. So, after I’ve built training curriculum for either a new product or a new process, or made a large update to something training curriculum that we already had, and it’s all remote. The people, the trainers are actually not even in the U.S. so it’s definitely all just on the computer. I’ll go through and train them on it. And then a lot of times we’ll sit in on the actual training sessions, like the first one or two that they lead, and then they do the rest after those first couple. So, even though there is still some direct teaching or training going on, I would say from my job at least it’s probably about 5% of what I do. I know that there are training facilitators that that’s their whole job, but for me it’s still I would say most of the time if I’m not in meetings, most of the time that I’m working independently it’s just me working on building the curriculum myself.
So, it’s a nice mixture of interacting with people and definitely it’s a team effort and collaborating with my coworkers, but still also having a lot of time where I can just really buckle down and work by myself, which I really enjoy.
Jess shares what it is like to work in her remote ID position day-to-day
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. Do you mind sharing a little bit of what does a team structure look like when it comes to subject matter experts, trainers, and you as the instructional designer? Who do you work with most often, and who do you train usually?
Jess Lighthall:
Yeah. So, on our team we have a smaller team that I’m on. We have training specialists, quality analysts, and then also knowledge specialists. And as of late, I’ve actually been doing some knowledge management as well. So, that’s been kind of cool. And that’s one of the things that I love about moving to a corporate job is you also get to try your hand at other things as well and add some other skills to your resume. And then I’m part of the larger team has business development consultants, like data analysts, support engineers. And so, when I’m building training on a new product that we’re going to support, my subject matter expert is typically the support engineer and the business development consultant who’s working with that product.
And then they sometimes will also have to go to the next tier up to get information if the questions that I have for them, they’re not able to answer. And so, I work with them very closely when I’m building training, but I also work with other knowledge and training specialists on my team. There are some times that if we have a bigger project, we might collaborate and both work on something. So, I also do work with them frequently as well.
Daphne Gomez:
Working with an international team, are you translating something into different languages or is it all in English? Or are you using a translation app or another specialist who is bilingual?
Jess Lighthall:
Yeah. So, everything I do is just in English, but my company does have a translations department. And so, there’s a whole process for getting something sent through translations. But absolutely a lot of our products and websites are translated into several different languages.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. I love how you talked about how you get to try to put your hand in other cookie jars, because that was something that I loved working in corporate environments too, is being able to, okay, let me play on the marketing team. I want to go over and see what sales does. And that helps me shape and get clarity on what my next roles could be, what interests me the most, what I think I would be more skilled at. Are you looking at instructional design as a long-term career for you, or are there other roles that you may want to grow into or transition into over the course of a couple years?
Jess Lighthall:
For right now, I think in the short term, I am enjoying being in training and instructional design, but I’m definitely open to where my path might take me. One thing that I really love about working at this corporate environment is they’re so encouraging of go out and do informational interviews with people in the company that have other jobs that sound interesting to you, and get to learn about those. And helping you like, “Hey, what are your career goals? What do you want to do next? How can we help you get there?” And I felt like in education, it was almost like, “Oh, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m possibly looking at leaving. What are they going to think?” And I feel like here it’s just so welcomed. Like, “Hey, we know that people are going to want to probably move on, and move up, and do other things. How can we help them get there? How can we help them in their career journey?” And they’re so encouraging of that and of looking into other departments, and meeting with people in other departments, and finding out about those other positions as well.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, that’s really interesting to think about, about how you’re shamed about thinking about not being in the classroom. I mean, there’s even this unspoken office versus classroom teacher. I can’t think of the word, but when they’re arguing or fighting with one another. Rivalry. Yeah. So, I feel like there’s this office versus classroom teacher rivalry that’s unspoken of like, “Oh, the people who left, that now they’re working for the district as instructional coaches.” And in a good corporate environment with a good culture, that’s not the case. I’ve worked at corporate environments where it had the exact same thing where they watched someone come from sales go into training, and they just said, “That’s where I’m more aligned.” And ultimately what’s best for the company is to keep people who are passionate about the company, and being able to keep people who are interested.
There’s so much that’s put teachers’ shoulders of you just have to do this. This is what you have to do, and you don’t really have any other options because this is what we need and we’re desperate, where it just isn’t the same amount of heaviness in other environments.
Jess Lighthall:
Absolutely.
Daphne Gomez:
The last thing I wanted to ask you about, because this is something that I feel like is mixed with instructional design, is whether or not you feel like you are an excellent graphic designer or if you just are coming in with you can make something look nice, but it doesn’t have to be completely polished.
Jess Lighthall:
Yeah. I think for me personally, I’m not an expert graphic designer. I learned a lot during the upskilling process learning about universal design, and the best design practices, and I did a lot of LinkedIn learning on things like that, and just did a lot of practice where I would make a job aid or I would make a training, and then I would get feedback from people in the field on those kinds of decisions. One thing I love about my team is the team of training specialists and our training supervisor will have every quarter we do trainer upskilling. So, one of the things that we are learning about is some of those design principles. And so, there’s people on my team that have been working in the corporate training environment for years, but just always that mindset of, hey, we can all grow and we can all get better.
So, I think definitely accessibility, and readability, and considering the end user is so important in instructional design and in training. I don’t think that for most jobs you have to be expert in graphic design on day one. I’ve definitely learned a lot since being on the job, just whether it’s from those intentional upskill sessions or just learning from my peers just very informally and seeing things that they’ve done and being like, “Oh, I should try that. That looks really nice.” So, definitely I’ve grown a lot in that aspect since I started the job.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah. One of the biggest mistakes that I feel like happens with teachers very early in their trying to become instructional designers phase is they throw all of their classroom materials and call it a portfolio for instructional design. And I know that that feels intuitive, like this should translate, because overall it mostly does. However, a hiring manager is going to look at kiddie fonts, kiddie clip art, and they’re going to check out and say, “You can’t make something for grownups if you haven’t shown me that you can make a PowerPoint presentation that looks appropriate for grownups in a portfolio, I’m just going to check out from it.”
Jess Lighthall:
Right, yeah. And thinking about what is the business problem that I’m trying to solve? And I think that’s another big thing in corporate is it comes back to that, and what’s our business case for doing this? And so, that’s also a shift from teaching. Obviously we have ways to measure success in teaching and giving lessons as we do in training, but just the why. Just because we have a gap doesn’t always mean it’s going to be training. Maybe this could just be a job aid. And I think that’s one of the biggest things too. One of the best books I read in my upskilling was Design for How People Learn, by Julie Dirksen. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to go into training ID. Honestly, even people teaching still. I wish I read it as a teacher because it goes through the different how to identify gaps and then how to build training to tackle those gaps. And that’s been really instrumental for me.
Daphne Gomez:
Yeah, and the biggest way that corporations work, they’re looking for what’s the biggest return on investment. They don’t want to set someone down for an entire hour for the sake of having a training, they want you to be able to prove if X happens this is how X is going to bring in money. Or make things more efficient, which means we’re going to be able to do more and make more money. But it’s not necessarily, hey, it would be cool if everyone knew this because it would help them know more. It has to be aligned with ultimately doing things more efficiently or being able to do things that bring in more revenue.
Jess Lighthall:
Yes. Absolutely.
Jess tells Daphne what she has learned about herself through the transition process
Daphne Gomez:
And I think that that’s the biggest thing for teachers because teachers have to train on basically everything, of here’s everything and we’re just supposed to hit every single bullet point in this entire book, and we can’t just say, “Oh, here’s the greatest hits. We’re going to skip two thirds of this. It’s not necessary.” I’d love to ask you my favorite question before we go, which is, what did you learn about yourself in this process? Because it takes a lot of work, and there’s probably a lot of highs and lows, and I feel like everybody learned something about themselves. So, how did it affect you?
Jess Lighthall:
I think I just learned that I am braver than I thought I was, that it was such a scary thing and totally out of my comfort zone to change careers like this, and I felt like it was a big risk. And I was proud of myself that I did it. The hard work part of it, I did my master’s while I was full-time teaching, I’m not afraid of putting in hard work. But just taking that leap and that I guess trusting that everything would work out okay, and if it didn’t, I can try something else. I could go back to teaching, whatever. So, I think that’s the biggest thing is that I just feel more confident now in my abilities, and just I’m not as afraid to take other risks going forward in my career.
Daphne Gomez:
I love that, and I feel like that’s very common with people who. . . This is the biggest Band-Aid that you will rip off completely pivoting careers, because the first time’s going to be the hardest. And then after this, you know you have this really valuable experience from this new company, and it’s just going to be easier and easier, especially with your new-found confidence. Jess, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us and for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure to meet you, and to hear your story, and I’m just so excited for you.
Jess Lighthall:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such an honor to be here.
Daphne Gomez:
I want to give a huge thank you to Jess for coming on the show and sharing all of this information with this audience. Now, if you are interested in a learning and development job and instructional design, or training position, we have so many past podcast episodes that you may want to go check out. So, if you have not yet actually subscribed for this podcast, this is a really good reminder for you to subscribe so that you are reminded of new episodes when they launch, and you’re able to really quickly go back and find all of our great past episodes on careers you’re interested in. You can find the podcast really easily at teachercareercoach.com/listen, or just share that address with other teachers who are looking for this type of support. We’ll see you on the very next episode.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
- Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course (If you are a Teacher Career Coach Course member, you can also sign up for our one-on-one Career Clarity calls.)
