In this episode, Laura Zimmerman, former early childhood teacher now working as a recruiter, shares how she’s able to still help people and gives her best job hunting tips.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
From teacher to recruiter
Laura:
Hey, Daphne. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Daphne:
I’d love to start off just learning a little bit about your experience in education. How long were you a teacher for? And what ultimately made you think about leaving the classroom?
Laura:
I was a teacher for like three and a half years, so I had to student teach in the fall of 2019. My college required it, and when I kind of wrapped up my student teaching, my school really liked me and I really liked my school at the time. And so, they hired me on a little early. They really needed a second special ed teacher, but they couldn’t find one. And so, they kind of hired me on as a teacher that kind of filled that role, but I wasn’t special ed. I didn’t have that label. I didn’t get that pay raise, all that stuff. I just kind of helped and would pull small groups of students who needed support. So I kind of did that into the spring. And then, COVID happened. And then, they offered me a third grade teaching position, and so, I went full-time in 2020.
Daphne:
And so, you went full-time teaching in 2020, and were you already thinking of other jobs at that moment? Or did it take a few years before you started looking elsewhere?
Laura:
It wasn’t until maybe October or November of that year where I was getting really overwhelmed, I think because maybe I had started previously and I had shown my worth, that I just don’t feel like I got the support I needed. And I tried to ask for help and ask questions, and everyone’s overworked and burned out. But it was like, “Hi, I need a little more help here. I’m still just a first year teacher.” I remember our instructional coach sitting down in a meeting for me at the end of that school year in ’21 and being like, “You’re a first year teacher?” And I was like, “Yes.” And she’s like, “I would’ve had no idea by the way you act and the things you do.” And I’m like, “Yes, I’m still a first year teacher.”
Daphne:
I think that that’s something that ends up, no matter how long you’ve been in the teaching profession, ends up being kind of a common gripe of teachers. And one of the reasons why so many are leaving is, if you come across confident, if you are a “good teacher” and that’s how other people perceive you, even if you are saying, “I need help,” people look at you and say, “No, you don’t. You’re okay. You have this figured out.” You are articulating, “I need something, I need support.” And you wouldn’t be asking for that if you didn’t actually need it. But people are using that as a little bit of an excuse, “No, I’m seeing you. You seem fine. I’m going to go somewhere else.”
Laura:
Yes. And being like, “Oh, but you’re doing so great.” It feels good in the moment and it pacifies you, but then, the problem’s still there.
Daphne:
And as the new teacher support, I do feel like it’s such a strange way to be onboarded into a totally new profession, because yes, you go to school for it. But ultimately, as far as my schooling goes, it didn’t really prepare me for the job itself. I felt like I went into the role, and everything was totally different than what they had taught us to expect in college for it. Was that your experience as well?
Laura:
Yes, 100%. Even though it was, I would still say, still very recent, yes. And even student teaching didn’t, because I still didn’t bear all the weight. I still didn’t do all the planning all the time, and I still didn’t do all the grading all the time. And I still didn’t always do all the teaching all the time and all the other things that came with it. It was still shared with another adult.
Laura shares what it was like for her to transition from teaching
Daphne:
Yeah, I feel like the project management piece, dealing with 1000 upset or emotional guardians all at one time, all of those things are not really addressed. And those are some of the things that are the most overwhelming in the career. But let’s talk a little bit about your transition and how long it took you to transition outside of the classroom. What were your next steps? You decided, “Okay, I’m going to look for something else,” what did you do then?
Laura:
Yes, so I taught ’20 to ’21, then did… Or what was it, ’21 to ’22. And at the end of ’22, I told my husband I was fed up, I was done. I was literally, I went to my team lead, who I knew she was leaving, and she was going to take a coaching role, instructional coach role, with a different district. I was a shell of a human. I had no personality, didn’t know who I was, and I was like, “I have to get myself back.” And so, I did a lot of self work, and I was like, “I’m just going to stay one more year with this school district and then, I’m going to leave and I’m going to take that time to find something else.”
And my husband kind of convinced me, “Well, let’s try a different school district, different grade.” And so, I left, and I went to his school district. And I thought, “Okay, it’s smaller, there’s less oversight, maybe this’ll be better.” But by November, I was back in that same thing, where I’m like, “No, I’m just done.” And that’s when the transition started, and I was way more proactive. I wasn’t just wishing to get out. I was actively seeking a way out.
Daphne:
So you started around November. What were your first steps?
Laura:
I think I had been following your Instagram account for a while, so truly, it was going to your account. And I kind of started at the webpage, because I was like, “I don’t know if I really need the whole course.” And so, I kind of started with the podcast and reading the articles, and that’s where I kind of saw, “Oh, you should upskill.” And I started reading some things about resumes. And so, I started trying, but I didn’t get a lot of success. And I applied for lots of jobs, didn’t hear things back. And I got one little contract role, where I could kind of do some education stuff and do some stuff with standards. And I thought, “Okay, maybe this is my upskill.” But I think, by Thanksgiving, I was like, “I’m going to need way more help.” So I think you had the Black Friday sale, and I bought the full course and dove in at that point.
Daphne:
And did that help you move a little bit quicker in your career transition, once you had access to all those resources?
Laura:
100%, because it was more scaled. It wasn’t me just reading, going through the articles, and piecing it together. There were the steps, and then, I could always refer back to a step. So the big takeaways for me were the resume parts, following up after an interview, and then, how to utilize networking and LinkedIn. Those were big things I had blown off as a teacher. I’m like, “Oh, I don’t need a LinkedIn. And oh, I can just apply to this.” And I didn’t realize how important networking was.
Daphne:
And I think that’s one of the things that it’s almost like there’s this really amazing teacher transition community, because teachers want to support one another. But there are so many people who do not have corporate experience, who have kind of grouped together and taught each other, “This is how we’re going to use LinkedIn, and this is best practices.” And they have this hashtag, teachertransition. And a lot of what is happening public facing on LinkedIn is, ultimately, what could be potentially red flagging them from getting any interviews. Because their activity is very much like, “Oh, I’m really struggling. I’m not doing well with interviews. I can’t get an interview.” Or just things that you really don’t want to necessarily put on LinkedIn, but they don’t realize the difference of how LinkedIn really works. Do you feel like, when you went into LinkedIn, you had a very clear strategy? And what was your strategy?
Laura:
Not really. When I kind of got into the course, it was December, and so, it was a little slow. And then, at Christmas break, I kind of picked up and was more serious with it, and that’s when I was like, “Okay, this is my time, where I’m going to really sit down with my LinkedIn.” And I was like, “I’m not going to post anything. I’m not going to be big about that, but I’m just going to clean it up, have a better profile picture, have a better header, kind of clean up my jobs.” And I didn’t put a lot of detail, but I just trying to make sure it didn’t look so messy.
And then, I kind of turned it on to where recruiters could see that I was open, but I wasn’t fully open, in the hopes that, maybe these next few months, something soft will kind of come landing my way. But I wasn’t super active, because I was just, by the time I got it all done, the next semester was starting. And I was like, “I know Daphne says it’s two months when you’re getting to the end, so I’m just going to be slow right now and search for potential companies I want to look at.” But I wasn’t super active on LinkedIn, and I didn’t really have a strategy. I just kind of cleaned it up a little.
Daphne:
And I think that’s a misconception that many people have is that you need to post and that’s what’s going to help you get a job. And ultimately, what is going to help you get a job is a really good resume that you’re sending to careers that are aligned with that specific resume, so spending more time focusing and finding the careers, making sure your resume looks great, and then, submitting it. Posts, I feel like there’s such a low rate of that ever being successful. Yes, there are times where you get laid off and you write, “Hey, I was laid off” post, and you get a DM and you’re able to actually make a connection that way. But those are few and far between.
Laura talks about what recruiters want to see on job seeker LinkedIn profiles
Where the real strategy on LinkedIn is you just have to have it to match it up with your resume. And I know I’m jumping ahead a little bit, because you are a recruiter, so now, you’re actually using LinkedIn probably to look at the people that you’re starting to hire or to put onto the candidate list. Do you look at their posts to see what they’ve been posting? And how does that impact your decision, from a recruiting standpoint?
Laura:
No, I rarely look at their public profile. I mostly look at them on the recruiter side, and then, I will go over to their public profile and connect with them to show them “I’m not a bot. I’m a real person. I’m truly trying to get your attention.” And I might glance through it, but it’s basically the same on both sides. But on the recruiter side, obviously, I don’t see their posts. I see more their work history, and so, no, I don’t engage with their posts. I don’t really look at it. I may just look at it if something was concerning, but not really.
Daphne:
And there’s always going to be different strategies for different people. Just like every teacher is different, recruiters have different strategies, but ultimately, most recruiters that I’ve talked to have said, “If anything, I look at it, and then, I’m more concerned if they overpost. Because it seems like, “Oh, they don’t understand company culture.”” Oversharing on LinkedIn looks like you are just learning how to use LinkedIn, which scares people that you might not know how to use Slack or email or communicate in an office, if you don’t necessarily know how that platform works or how other people engage on it.
Laura:
Yes, and so, yeah, it’s almost keep like posting to a minimal, if anything. I don’t think I’ve even made my own original posts, except to thank people when I moved into my new role. That’s my only original post. I’ve only just shared things that I felt like were appropriate and safe and wouldn’t red flag me.
Laura explains how she found herself in a recruiting role
Daphne:
So let’s talk a little bit about your role as a recruiter. How did you ultimately find this position? And what was that interview process like?
Laura:
So with LinkedIn, like I said, I kind of opened it to only recruiters to see. So that kind of hoping maybe softly something would happen, but I truly didn’t expect anything to happen. And like I said, I just kind of cleaned up my LinkedIn profile, and I just kind of left it. I wasn’t ready to actively begin looking, because it was only the start of the new semester, it was January. But at the beginning of January, an internal recruiter for my current company reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I came across your profile. We’ve actually had lots of teachers come to our company and be super successful. I’d love to speak with you.” And I reached back out, and I was like, “Hey, I really appreciate your time. I’m interested. I didn’t think I would be in a recruiter role, but I’m interested. But I won’t break my contract. And so, if this role can wait for me by the end of the school year, I am open. If it needs to be now, I hope you think of me in the future.”
And he goes, “Well, obviously, for the right person, it can wait, so can we talk?” And so, I was like, “Yep, you can call me tomorrow, let’s talk.” I called him on my lunch break. It went really well, and I was like, “Yeah, I’m really interested.” And the night before, I researched the whole company the night before, was digging into it and looking at their page. And I came across a picture, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I know that girl. I went to high school with that girl.” So I reached out to her to learn about the company, and I went ahead and, that night, knew I was interested.
And I tailored my resume, so that, when he asked for it on that phone call, I was like, “Yep, I can email it to you right now.” And he goes, “Great. We’re going to set up an internal interview with our internal person, and she’s going to take it from there.” And so, the next week, I did an interview with our internal person. It was more just getting to know me and my personality and what kind of person I was. And then, a month later, I had my in-person interview with the office that I would be working in. And a week later, so at the end of February, I had a job offer.
Daphne:
And that’s very rare that someone would reach out and then, also, hold the job for that long. But that’s amazing that that happened. There’s always an exception to every, “Oh, this doesn’t often happen,” there’s always going to be an exception, a best case scenario, when it does. And I feel like you really lucked out with this. When they were asking you questions about becoming a recruiter, did you have to connect the dots for them on how your skills were transferable into a recruiting position?
Laura:
A little, but they’ve had lots of teachers come before, so I didn’t feel like it was super difficult. It truly, I think, in the end, for this company, they’re just looking for a certain kind of mindset and they’re looking for certain personality traits and they’re just looking for a really person who has a lot of integrity and is kind of gritty and will work hard. And I feel like I just exemplified that, and it just worked out.
Daphne:
Were you able to get an internal reference from that person that you knew from high school? Do you know if she pulled any strings for you behind the scenes also?
Laura:
I’m not sure if she did, but I do know, when I mentioned her name, they recognized her.
Laura shares LinkedIn best practices from a recruiter’s perspective
Daphne:
Most likely, I would assume that they probably asked her, like, “Oh, do you know this person? Can you vouch for them?” if they’re on the verge of hiring you. But it never hurts. And that’s also why LinkedIn is so important, and I know you know this from the course and also from your recruiting position, but there are all of these, like I said, people who are teaching kind of made up best practices of like, “Hey, here’s this thing called Social Saturday, add 500 transitioning teachers to your feed, so that you look like you have a lot of connections on LinkedIn.”
And that hurts what LinkedIn is actually for, which is you should be able to search [inaudible 00:18:09] technology and be able to say, “Oh my gosh, I know this third connection of someone, who knows someone that I actually know. I can reach out to that person I actually know and say, “Hey, you know so-and-so over here.”” You can’t ask those 500 teachers that question, because they have 499 other strangers who are probably asking almost the same thing. You really have to fight through the noise in order to make authentic friends with strangers. It’s just going to be more challenging, and it’s going to clog up your feed and your LinkedIn profile.
Laura:
Yes, and I will say, nobody looks at how many connections you have. That doesn’t matter.
Daphne:
From a recruiting standpoint, you’re not like, “Oh, this person only has 15 connections. They must be a real loser. We’re not going to hire them.”
Laura:
That doesn’t matter at all. I’m just looking at your skillset.
Daphne:
Do you look to see if people have taken LinkedIn Learning courses or anything like that? And I know we haven’t really talked about your role specifically, what types of roles you recruit for, but when you’re looking, are you looking for those types of certifications on LinkedIn profiles?
Laura:
It depends on the role I’m on. So if the role wants those kinds of things and it’s a pretty hard set, like they must have it, yes. If it’s a nice to have, maybe I’ll glance at it, because it could be the turning point of I’m like, “I think their skills match. I think they might be a fit, and I see they’ve done this certification” or “I’ve seen they’ve done this course, they might be someone I need to talk to,” and I can kind of figure it out from there.
Daphne:
One thing that I know we had mentioned when you were going to do this interview is just being open to jobs that are outside of your comfort zone. Do you feel like recruiting was one of those positions for you?
Laura:
Yes, 100%. I never would’ve thought I would do recruiting. When that internal recruiter reached out to me and that night, I was digging into their website and I was looking at all the people, my husband’s like, “What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Well, this is what happened today. And tomorrow, I’m going to get on the phone with him. And this is what’s going on.” And he’s like, “Really? A recruiter?” And I was like, “Yeah.” He goes, “I don’t see you doing that.” He’s like, “I don’t know how I feel about it.” And I’m like, “Well, I’m just going to give it a shot. I’m just going to see where it goes, because not really in the position to say no. And I’m curious.” And the company looked really amazing from reading about it. And then, like I said, I reached out to that girl I knew from high school, and she had wonderful things to say. And so, I was just like, “I’m just going to give it a shot. I’m just going to see where it leads.”
Laura talks about how she is still able to help people as a recruiter
Daphne:
Yeah, I feel like it’s so hard to leave teaching, because everybody has this idea of what a teacher does, you know what a teacher does, you know what the day-to-day is going to be like. And you also have this really big emotional attachment to it. But then, when it comes to other job titles, there might be some that you have emotional attachments to immediately. And then, there are others that you’re like, “I don’t even want to read the sub context of that. I don’t even want to read the definition of what that does, because it sounds, “Oh, that’s not something that a teacher would do.”” But then once you actually start to get your hands dirty, you realize there are teachers in basically every other role and they’re still using their transferable skills and they’re still good people and finding happiness in their new job. How do you feel like recruiting still kind of fills that bucket for you?
Laura:
I’m still helping people. I still work with people. I’m still helping people. I’m still connecting with people, even if it’s in a different way. I’ve always loved my students. It was always a joy to be with them, but I also really loved connecting with their parents. I worked in our afterschool program for the previous school I was at. My new school didn’t have a program like that, but I was the secretary for them. And I loved… I was like, “Man, I wish secretaries just made better money,” because I loved that job. I liked getting to interact with the kids when they would come in and when I call them in, because their parent was picking them up early, but I didn’t have to plan anything. There was nothing extra. It was literally just having the relationship and then, just having the relationship with their grownup, just being a positive face for them, that adult came in to the office, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m picking up so-and-so.”
I can be like, “Oh, hey, how are you? How are things going?” And I try to remember things about them and ask them things and strike up a conversation. And so, I kind of get to take that over into recruiting that… I miss the kids, but I still get to connect with adults and learn about them and learn about them as a human. And when I get to work with them, I humanize them as a candidate. I don’t just shoot over a resume, and I’m like, “Here you go.” I humanize them as a person, and I highlight their skills and why they’re a good fit and who they are and why they should truly be considered.
Daphne:
There are some hard moments as a recruiter as well, where you ultimately have to tell someone that you moved on to another round of candidates or that they didn’t make the cut. Is that part of your job?
Laura:
Yes, it is, and I recently had to do that with a candidate earlier this week, but he was super understanding and very positive about it. I just kind of tried to keep it positive as well. Not to say, in the future, there won’t be someone who’s pretty upset, but I just try to keep it positive, like “Hey, I’m really sorry. I’m not calling with some great news. This is what’s happened. But if you’re looking…” Whether they’re still actively on the market or they’re just kind of softly looking, I’m like, “I’ll still be thinking about you. I won’t forget about you.” And so, I even actually just reached out to him today to run another role by him, to see if he’d be willing to consider it. So just keeping in touch with them also shows that you were sympathetic when things didn’t go through.
Daphne:
And that’s why it’s so important to not burn that bridge when someone does give you that news, because you can be an amazing candidate and still not get the role. And ultimately, I’ve been in the position of hiring as well, where, because of what it is that I do, I did the thing that recruiters and hiring managers often don’t do, which is, “Hey, I will give you some feedback of what it was that ultimately led us to choose someone else, just to help. I’d like to help coach you for the next interview, so that you’re able to prepare a little bit better.”
And it didn’t hurt me more than it hurt the other person, who really wanted to work for us, but it clearly upset them and got some defensiveness and an emotional response, which is totally normal when you’re going through these feelings of stress. However, from a recruiter standpoint, if you’re working with all of these other candidates at the same time, you don’t have the bandwidth to give feedback like that and then, have to deal with responses, unsolicited responses, or continuing to coach back and forth. It’s just not something that you necessarily have time to do or something that you get paid to do. And that’s the unfortunate reality, and I think that that’s a misconception from people outside of the hiring world of like, “Well, why don’t they do that?”
Laura:
Yes. And sometimes, yeah, it’s just there’s not enough time. I know my company really tries to emphasize the last hour of our day should be what we call consultant care, which is following up with those people, checking in with them, giving them feedback, or telling them, “Hey, we haven’t received anything yet. I’m still thinking about you. I haven’t forgotten.” Or giving them interview prep. We try to be on the forefront of it, but things slip all the time.
Daphne:
Absolutely. That’s such a good work environment to have too, because it truly shows how your company does care about the candidates and the candidates’ best interest. I’m not saying completely ghosting and never telling anyone what’s going on is the right answer, but I do see, with these companies that are much larger, that are going through a lot of different candidates at one time, how it is a struggle to, “I’m not going to tell them that because they could get offended, and we’re just going to say, “Hey, we went with a different candidate, because they’re more qualified,” and not say, “You should know that, when you said something wild about you’re leaving teaching because you hate your boss or whatever it is, it just felt a little unprofessional.””
Laura:
Yeah, we try to encourage to give the honest feedback. Sometimes you do have to kind of tie it up with a prettier bow and not be so specific, but we do try to be honest. And I just try to remind myself, whether it’s giving feedback or just calling somebody for the first time and they get aggressive with me, it’s just over the phone, they can’t hurt me. The worst they’re going to do is maybe say something mean, and I can always leave that conversation. Or the worst they’re going to do is… I think the worst so far I’ve had is someone just straight up hung up on me, and I’m like, “That can’t hurt me. It’s okay.”
Daphne:
That’s part of how you said your company was looking for someone with grit, being able to prove, “Oh, this is the kind of feedback I got as a teacher. I have a thick skin. I’m totally okay with taking some negative feedback.” Because there are some people who would say, “Hey, this little bit of a negative response towards me, I am in such a heightened stress of PTSD from the school environment that I’m leaving, I cannot be subject to any more abuse and this would not be a good position for me.” I know that there are so many teachers who may hear even this little bit, “Absolutely not. I can’t take any abuse.”
Laura:
I was worried I would too, because I worried about it from parents and even from students. So I worried how I would deal with it. And I would say, I’m not very far into it, so things change, and I’ve heard from other people how people have spoken to them, but so far, I would say most of my interactions are really positive. Even if they have no interest in speaking to me, I just try to be as polite as I can, and that seems to work. I’ve had some people be straight up like, “Nope, I don’t want to speak to you.” And I just go, “Okay, thanks for your time.” I try to just kill them with kindness, and it’s almost kind of like they’re like, “Oh, okay, thanks too.” And so, it can be like, when that individual hung up on me, I was a little like, “Oh.” But I was like, “They can’t hurt me.”
Daphne:
It’s a really good attitude to have. It sounds like you found a really good role that’s a good fit for you. You’re a positive person, and you sound like you’ve found something great. And I’m really excited for you. I’d like to ask a couple more questions before we have to go. And because you are a recruiter, and this is advice that I have given so many times on as much as I can, for people who are looking for well-rounded career advice, usually look for hiring managers, recruiters. These are the people that our team work with at Teacher Career Coach. It’s the former teachers that have worked on our team, some of them are recruiters, some of them have worked as hiring managers. Some of our old team members have. And these are the people who hire for the wide variety of positions.
Laura explains why recruiters want teachers to optimize their resume
They’re able to scan a ton of different types of resumes, and they actually have that experience from a hiring standpoint, instead of one person who’s done it in one situation. Because that one situation may have been skewed with one hiring manager’s opinion, instead of kind of a generalized best practice. But because you are a recruiter, that’s a long tangent for me to go on, but because you’re a recruiter, I’d love to hear, what advice would you give for transitioning teachers that they may not know right now? Maybe they’re not inside the Teacher Career Coach Course and they haven’t seen all those resources, but what advice would you give them, that you’re seeing them making a mistake of, that you wish, from a recruiting standpoint, they understood?
Laura:
Definitely the cleaning up your resume, the keywords, because it’s going to go through some kind of tracking system. And maybe you get lucky and someone does look into it. I try to really look at people’s resumes and I try not to just glance at them, try to understand their work experience, but definitely have those keywords in there. And don’t just put keywords whatever, because if someone like a recruiter calls you up and starts asking you and then, you don’t really have a lot of experience with it, you’ve kind of wasted your time and their time.
Daphne:
I’ve seen so many people that I think are doing it with the best interest. It’s like a game of telephone of like, “Oh, I think I saw someone who got a job, and this is their resume.” And then, it’s like someone copied it, who copied it, who copied it, and none of these people are experienced in recruiting for that position. And me looking at them like “That’s just a bunch of corporate words that actually don’t make sense.” It would be like, from a teaching perspective, if you had a bullet point that said, “Increased 75% IEP for standardized testing for GATE students and differentiation for professional learning communities,” or something like that, which is just like, “That’s just a lot of words, and it makes you look like you don’t understand this job at all.” But I feel like I’ve seen that more and more commonly with people just trying to fill in the blanks.
Laura:
Yes, just kind of throwing them out there. So definitely make sure it’s something you truly feel like a skill you do possess, whether that’s a soft skill or a true technology skill. And the format you gave us on the Career Coach, that is just so much easier to read. There’s lots of advice out there on how a resume should look, and I definitely, in the beginning, fell into that camp where I was definitely using the wrong format of resume. And sometimes people get lucky and those resumes will maybe get through, but for readability, it is so much easier if they are just very simple, very plain, and they go from left to right.
Daphne:
Yeah, so you feel like the Teacher Career Coach Course set you up for success when it came to writing your resume and all the verbiage that we give in that classroom to corporate translations piece in the module, and then, also, with the resume templates?
Laura:
100%. I straight up used the template and then followed the advice on how to kind of word it and kind of take that corporate lingo, and I felt like my resume never looked better. And then, now, as a recruiter, again, I try to give every resume a chance, because I remember being on that side of things and probably sending out 200 applications. Again, just looking for upskilling work, not full-time work just yet, so I can’t speak to full-time work, but never hearing anything back or never getting anything and being like, “Is this my resume? Is it not?” And just knowing I had, once I got into the Career Coach, knowing that my resume was just straight up trash, was like, “Oh, it’s really bad.”
Daphne:
I feel like so many people have that exact same experience of like, “Well, I don’t want to invest in this program, because I’m not getting any results, which means that it’s impossible. I’m already doing all this. I already did all this work, and that’s showing me that this is impossible and I shouldn’t put in any more effort.” And then, it’s like, well, opposite may be true. You may be putting in all this effort blindly with something that’s just not helping you make progress, if you don’t know what you don’t know about this totally new world.
Laura:
Yes, it’s something they do not teach you and you’re not taught it in college. There was just so much I just didn’t know and that I thought I could kind of figure it out on my own, but I definitely could not. And so, I was so glad when I finally got into the Career Coach and got into it, and it was nice to be able to… It’s all in one place, so I could always refer back to whatever I needed. So when I needed to go back to that template, so when I cleaned it up for the recruiter role, I went back to that. I went and got that template and filled it in and used that advice and did the same when I was like, “Okay, I’m going to follow up after my interview.” “Well, she provided a template in there, let me go back.” And I was like going back and looking. I was like, “Okay, this is what you say and this is what you do.”
Laura shares what she learned about herself through the transition process
Daphne:
I’m so happy that you found so much value in it. I’m always excited to talk to a success story from the Teacher Career Coach Course, and I feel like I could ask you a million questions from a recruiter standpoint, but I have to end it. But I’m going to end it with my favorite question, which is, what did you learn about yourself during this process? Because it is a hard process, and you probably went through a lot of really big emotions. What did you really learn about yourself, that may have surprised you?
Laura:
I don’t know if it surprised me, but that I have really high expectations for myself and that sometimes it’s okay to take a break and that I needed that reminder. But I also learned that I don’t give up as easily as I thought I did. Because I felt like I started, so many times in the previous year, thinking about leaving teaching when I got in and was like, “This is not what I thought it was going to be. I’m not happy. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t see myself here long-term.” That, once I actually put my mind to it, I was just really proud of myself that, once I finally committed to it, and again, the Career Coach made it a lot easier to commit to, because there was very clear steps, that I could actually stick with it. And I was just really proud of myself for being able to stick with it, but it just showed me how hard I was on myself as well.
Daphne:
Yeah, kudos to you. It is a big project. Completely transitioning careers is a really big project, and it takes a lot of grit, which you have shown throughout this podcast interview, that you are the type of person with a lot of grit, and I think so many teachers also have a lot of grit. But Laura, I’m so happy that we got to connect, and I’m so happy that I got to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Laura:
Thank you. I really appreciate you having me. I’ve followed the account for so long, and I engage with it occasionally. And so, when I sent in that little message about, “Oh, I’m a recruiter and I’m a grad,” I did not expect anything from it, because I’d engaged a couple of times and was just trying to be a positive follower. So I was so happy when they’re like, “Hey, we want to interview.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh. Yay.”
Daphne:
Well, thank you so much for jumping on and being so quick to do this interview. By the time this airs, we’ve announced that I am pregnant, but I just was looking for former teachers in a variety of different roles, so that we could batch as many as possible, so that I would have them in case I needed them for maternity leave. So thank you for that as well.
Laura:
Oh, love that. That is so great. And yeah, my big thing to end it with is just be willing to see where things can take you. Like I said, I would never have put myself in a recruiter role. I did not think I would like it. I didn’t think it was for me. Even my husband was like, “I don’t know about that,” but it really has turned out to be the greatest thing.
Daphne:
Well, congratulations and thank you so much for being here.
Laura:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you, Daphne. I appreciate what you’ve done. I appreciate your team so much and just the whole community.
Daphne:
I’m going to cry. I’m emotional. I’ve got hormones. Thank you.
Laura:
No, it’s all good things. Just you are such a great person and your team is so fantastic. You’ve found such great people to support you, and this is such a good thing.
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.)
