Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do. You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach. And I specialize in helping burn out teachers, just like you deal, not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day to day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you to join me for teachers in transition. In some episodes, I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes, I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track. These are questions that you need answers to, and I can help you find those answers. My name is kitty. Boitnott welcome to teachers and transition.
Speaker 2Welcome back to episode 97 of teachers and transitioned a podcast and YouTube channel. My name is Katie. Boitnott the owner and founder of teachers in transition and white, not coaching. If you've listened to this podcast before you know that I alternate topics each week, one week talking about stress management strategies, because I am a certified stress management coach and I'm alternating weeks. I talk about career transition strategies because I'm also a trained, it experienced career transition and job search coach. I specialize in working with burnt out teachers who are stressed out and ready to make a change in their career, or simply stressed out and need to figure out a way to make peace with staying in the profession. If that's what they need to do. Mostly though, I work with people who are looking to get out of the teaching profession and into a new line of work. One that maybe is a little less stressful. Although every job is going to have a certain amount of stress. Of course, and sometimes people are looking for a job that they can leave at work at the end of the Workday, if you've ever been a teacher or been married to a teacher, you know that child of a teacher, you know, that teachers are constantly working on schoolwork, even sometimes in their sleep. They are still dreaming of thinking of planning, preparing almost every waking moment of between the time school starts in the fall until some, some are finally gets here and the summer break begins. Teachers are either planning and preparing for classes and lessons and students, or they are grading and assessing, uh, the, the work that their students have done. And it's, it's become such a time consuming task, especially with all the added paperwork that's been put on teachers, oftentimes paperwork that feels mindless and useless, and they're not even sure anybody ever looks at it or uses it. So it's become an increasingly stressful job for teachers and January and February are generally the best times to be preparing for a new job. If you want this year to be your last year of teaching. By the time you get to June, it's already too late. In most cases to find a new job that will be in place in time to not have to go back or to have to break your contract in the fall. So now is the perfect time to be preparing for laying the foundation for setting the stage for whatever metaphor you want to use for your new job search. And that's what I want to talk a little bit about today. There's an article that I found just today from glass door, which is a reputable website that offers job search advice and lots of resources and information about the job search market and strategies that you can use. This particular article. Let me pull it. I'm sorry. Let me pull it up here. Real quick is entitled five tips for finding and landing a new job in 2021. This is according to glass doors, C E O. The article is written by Courtney Conley and it was dated January 7th, 2021. So it's very, very recent. And the first thing that the CEO of Glassdoor recommends that you do, if you are looking for a new job in 2021 is to take time to assess the things that are important to you. Now, I have to say for a lot of people, this initial period in the job search process is one people simply want to skip over. And I don't know if it's because they don't know that they should take some time in the beginning of their job search to really think deeply about what it is that they want to do next. But my experience is that people tend to, you know, they, they make a decision I'm ready for a new job and they hop right over from that decision to writing a resume. And I've made this analogy before. That is a silly thing to do because it's like booking your airfare and your hotel room before you've decided where you're going on vacation, writing your resume in the vacuum of perhaps your chronological work history and everything that you've ever done in your work past. That's one way to approach your resume, but it's not the best way. If you want to position yourself for a new job, especially if you're looking to switch lanes, be a career changer, find a job in a different industry because your resume moving forward needs to represent what you can do in terms of the new job, not the old job that you've had. If you write a resume that only sums up your teaching experience, because for most teachers, that's all they've ever done. It's a waste of effort and a waste of paper, frankly, unless you're planning to stay in the teaching field, a teacher resume will get you another teaching job, a teaching resume. Won't get you the job you want in another line of work. It just won't. You have to take what you know, from your teaching, what you've learned as a teacher, what you've done as a teacher, but you have to take those experiences and distill them into discreet transferable skills that are pertinent to the job you want to move into. And you have to use terms that the HR director in this unrelated to teaching field will understand if you use teacher jargon, the HR director will be lost. And in fact, for those of you who are determined to turn in a teacher, resume for a job outside of teaching, I can tell you right now that the HR director's response is going to be, Hmm, that's nice. She's a teacher. I wonder why she's applying for this job. And it's, that's the natural reaction because you, them to connect dots. She's a teacher, so she can do XYZ and ABC. She can multitask. She's a project manager. She knows how to work with people. She's a communicator, she's a trainer. She knows about professional development. She understands curriculum and instruction. Do you think that the average HR, director's going to think any of that, if you do, let me disabuse you of that notion. They're not going to think of any of that because they don't know to think that they're looking for someone who can do the job that they have posted, period. End of story. And if you can't connect what you do in your day to day life as a teacher, to the skills that are outlined in that job description, you automatically disqualify yourself for the job, whether you mean to or not, whether you want to or not, whether you even understand that that's what you've done, that's what you've done. So in the beginning of every job search, once you've made the decision that you're ready to make a change, and that's a major decision for most teachers, that's fraught with all kinds of guilty feelings about leaving your school and alert and leaving your community and leaving your students. It takes a while to get over the guilt. Frankly, you've spent all this time only ever wanting to be a teacher. And now you're, you're you feel like a trader almost you're, you're thinking gotta make a change. The fact of the matter is you can get over the guilt and you can move on, but you have to fill the void in between with some deep thinking about what is it that is important to you? What is it that you want to do next? And I don't mean to only think in terms of what are you qualified to do? What would, what would you be able to do that would just pay the bills? Keep the mortgage paid. What kind of work is important to you? What, what really lights you up? What gets you excited? What gets you out of bed in the morning? And it it's tough. It might not be teaching anymore, but what would it be if you could substitute something new for your current position? So initially you need to think in terms of we are priorities, you know, for some people it's financial for others, it's work-life balance for others. It's simply finding work that feels less like work and more like swimming with the current of the stream. Instead of fighting your way up the stream against the current finding work that plays to your aptitude, your strengths, your abilities, the things that you've learned, how to do well, the things you want to do more of in your next career. So you'd have to take time to take stock and do some internal work. Do some assessments know yourself? Well then once you have kind of begun to think in terms of a type of work that you think you might be interested in, you don't start applying. Then either you don't start writing your resume for that job yet, because you don't know enough yet. So you have to start doing research. Glass door is a great place to do research about different kinds of jobs. O net online.org is a great place to do research about different kinds of occupations. You want to Google, you can always just Google, but you need to start doing research. What is it? You know, I had a client a few months ago who sent me an email. She was extremely excited. She had just locked down. She was sure what it was that she wanted to do next in her career. And that was to become a copywriter. That sounded like a plan to me. I was excited for her. Good for you grant. Congratulations. What a breakthrough. Great, great news. A week later, she wrote me back, ah, that's not going to work either. I didn't really know what went into copywriting. I did some research and it's not what I thought it was. So you need to do your research so that, you know, for sure that what it is that you're looking to get into is what you think it is. You don't want to be jumping from the proverbial pot into the fire, right? Or the frying pan into the fire. So the sure. You know what you're getting yourself into and make certain that you really do want what ever it is that you decide that you want to do. Next don't commit too early. Do the research find out as much as you can find people who are already in that kind of work, who are working for the companies that you think you might like to work for, reach out to them through LinkedIn or through a mutual friend, ask them for 10 or 15 minutes of their time and conduct what is referred to as an informational interview. Now you're not asking them for a job. You're not asking them for a referral for yourself. You're asking them about what they do.
Speaker 3How did you get?
Speaker 2Let's just say you want to be a copywriter, you think, but you're not sure. Find someone who's a copywriter, ask them for 10 minutes of their time, all for them, a 10 minute, a$10 gift card, Amazon card or Starbucks card in return for 10 or 15 minutes of their time.
Speaker 3Set it
Speaker 2Up through zoom. If you don't feel safe to meet in person yet.
Speaker 3And
Speaker 2Page, reach out to them, asking them, if you can just don't, don't ask them if you can pick their brain that that has become so cliche, that it turns people off, but you just, you're looking for some information. Do you have a few minutes to discuss what it is that you do? I'd like to learn more about what it is that you do and then ask them, how did they get into that line of work? What is it that they do with the bulk of their day? What kind of skills did they have to learn? How did they get the job that they currently have? How did that even happen for them? Just ask those kinds of questions. It's not, don't grill them. Don't make them feel like they're being interrogated. Just interview them to find out as much as you can about that kind of work. And does it sound like work that you'd be interested in doing for yourself
Speaker 3Once
Speaker 2Done that once you've done your research and you're pretty confident that what you're about to pursue is actually what you want to be pursuing. Then you can start to update and personalize your rest and resume. Now you want to make sure you're following up at a resume template that will make its way through the applicant tracking system. You don't want anything that's overly formatted or has a lot of graphs or charts or anything like that. Leave off colors, leave off logos, just a straight up. Here's my information and what I can do in a resume, doesn't even have to be pretty. If you want to make a pretty resume to take in with you and your, when you're getting ready for an interview, that's fine. But to get through the applicant tracking system, just keep it simple and just keep it to the information that's relevant to the job that you're applying
Speaker 3For and make
Speaker 2Sure that you've included everything that you can think of that is related to the job description. And then you want to start applying for jobs. You use one of the job boards. So you create alerts. You try to find out about as many opportunities that are out there as you can. Now you want to be discriminating discriminating. You don't want to be just applying for everything. Some people, unfortunately, lots of time and effort applying for everything under the sun, and then wondering why they never hear back from anybody. And that's because they're not sending targeted relevant resumes for the jobs that they're applying for. So be more discriminating, less is more when you're applying, applying for jobs, apply for fewer jobs, but make sure that you tweak each resume for that specific job so that you're making yourself relevant for that particular position and then apply wherever you can find that that specific type of job is available. And then finally, and this, again, these are the five tips from the glass door CEO. The final tip is don't forget to network now, networking. These days is done virtually where they're not, they're not meeting in many places like they used to, you know, it used to be, you can go to a meetup or you could go to a book club or even a Toastmasters meeting where you would meet different people from different walks of life and different lines of work. Everything now is virtual, including Toastmasters, but I highly recommend that you find a Toastmasters club to join because you will use the skills that you'll learn in Toastmasters in your job, your job search the table, topics sessions, a section of each Toastmasters meeting will help you to improve how you think on your feet so that you can answer interview questions more effectively. So find a Toastmasters club and then network with the people who are in the group. But you can also network with alumni groups that are meeting online, uh, LinkedIn people that you can network with build, uh, build your own network. If you need to and find other networks that you can get yourself invited to or, or informed about. And the reason for networking is that there are going to be people in the groups that you network with, that are in the position to offer you introductions to decision makers. And that's what you ultimately want. Most people are not hired cold straight off of the applicant tracking system, most people. And this has been true since before the pandemic. It's probably even more true. Now, most people are hired because of the recommendation of someone that works in the company or outside the company who offers a high recommendation for someone it's a warm connection as opposed to a cold connection. So you need to get yourself networking as soon as possible and make the most of your networking so that you can get introduced to people who may be in the position to introduce you to other people who can be the decision makers in your, in your job search. So those are the five tips from the CEO of Glassdoor on how to approach your job search. In 2021, I will attach the link to the article in the show notes, along with my calendar link, which is my open invitation for anyone who might like to talk about whether or not working with me would be helpful to you as you begin your own job search moving forward, whether you decide to work with me or not. Let me just say in closing that if you've decided that it's time to make a change in your career, you need to get help from somewhere. Don't try to do it alone. I can tell you if it's not the same as it used to be. You can eventually figure it all out through the long and painful method of trial and error. But I don't recommend that as the best way to go. Even if it means making a financial investment, you will end up saving time and money in the long run, because you will avoid making mistakes that most beginner job seekers make. And you will be able to conduct your job search with a lot more confidence, a lot more poise, and a greater amount of ease than someone who is trying to do this all by themselves. You need help. I'm just saying, so that's it for this week, please stay well, stay safe. If you would, please leave me a review of this podcast that will help other people to find the podcast. It might be helpful for them as well. Leave a review, send me comments. If you would like to send me an email@kittyboitnottatgmail.com with questions or suggestions for future episodes, I'm available for that as well. Have a wonderful week, wear a mask and stay safe. See you next week.
Speaker 1So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to teachers in transition so you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode, I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me@kittyboitnottatboitnottcoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott and this is teachers in transition.