I do have a clap, OK, we we're definitely live and I do have a
little clap there. They gave you a little sound
board, which is kind of cool. So I don't know if you can hear
that. Hi everyone.
We are live and we are so excited because tonight we are
talking about jobs and we have Chelsea Avery with us.
Who is I? I just call you a job curator
extraordinaire, because that's what you do.
And you run Skip Jobs, which I found about.
I think it's been over a year now and we chatted and we're
excited to get into it. Oh, the clapping's funny.
I got will not have to figure out how to figure out how to
stop it. Yeah, absolutely.
So, Chelsea, why don't you just tell us a little bit about
yourself, what you do with Skip? And then obviously, I have tons
of questions to ask you and we want to save some time at the
end for the audience as well. Excellent.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
I always enjoyed chatting with you and I am really thrilled to
be here and to have so many people listening on to be
excited about what the current state of the Ed tech job market
is. So I'm Chelsea, and I love the
job title of job curator extraordinaire.
So I'm not going to try to tap that.
And I may even change my LinkedIn to say that because
it's a perfect way of describing what I love to do with Skip,
which is share jobs and share jobs that are meaningful.
They do really cool things where we're actually helping students
transform their lives or educators transform their
teaching practices. And they're going to pay well
and give you work life balance. So that sense of not just
finding jobs, but finding really, really great jobs, the
curation part, something I love. So yeah, yeah, I just.
And I love the fact that you do. You do.
I know you're going to talk about this.
You do this with the, you know, a salary in mind.
And salary transparency is very big to people nowadays, and
there's a lot of laws and things surrounding that in certain
states. So I'm glad that you have a site
that does all that. And I've watched your site,
like, evolve from just posting jobs and now there's categories
and now there's coaching and all these different things that
you're doing. And I know we have a lot of
educators or transition teachers that are in the audience,
especially they listen to the podcast, they've listened.
Your episode is one of the top episodes of our show.
So what are the top three if you had to pick the top three remote
roles that educators are transitioning into that offer
that salary minimum, if you want to talk about that?
Right. Definitely so.
I may not be able to keep it quite to three, but I think
there are some major, major categories.
Customer success continues to be the top job skip that I see
people moving into or Edskip, that's my new, my new branding
is Edskip. So customer success, I'm seeing
it really consistently. It's a great fit for educators,
whether they're working directly with teachers or working more
with admin to create programming.
It's a really good fit. I've also seen a lot of
instructional design, that's of course your field instructional
design is. It does require that additional
upskilling, but it's something that teachers do really well and
they enjoy that creative aspect in continuing to develop
curriculum and. What I'm seeing really as an
interesting pattern is that the jobs are remaining pretty steady
and consistent throughout the couple of years I've been doing
this. I'm still seeing sales.
Initially, sales. Was this like meant to be an
entry level into Edtech? And now I think people are
really saying, wait a second, I think I would enjoy sales or I
wouldn't enjoy sales. So it's still very popular.
But one of the things that I'm really seeing now is people
interested in program management and program management, I mean
educators or program managers. That is literally what we do is
we develop programming for our students and so really being
able to recognize that that is what we do and then apply for
those jobs confidently. That's the big trend that I'm
seeing and I'm definitely seeing people move into that, both
people I'm working with individually in coaching and in
my larger LinkedIn audience. So yeah, Training, training.
I can't. Not say training, that one's
also important. So I mean there's so many great
options, There's so many skills they transfer so well that I
can't narrow it down to three. But customer success, program
management, instructional design, let's call it learning
and development. So it's instructional design
training. There you go.
So yeah, program management is definitely a huge part of L&D.
And you know, as an instructional designer, I
especially working in higher education, like I just thought
we were just creating courses and that is not the case.
That's totally not the case. And you know that you said
because you said of that upskilling of instructional
designers and what we have to do.
But I love the fact that you're the jobs that you're posting are
really a wide variety and you post jobs from companies with
with a mission that you're you're aligned with, that skips
aligned with. And it's just so like it's
nonprofit. It's companies we've heard of
maybe in the vendor space, but it's it's a wide array.
And I just. I just love that that's what you
do. Yeah, I love it too because
they're, I mean, everyday I find a new company and I'm like
there's somebody working on solving that problem for our
communities and our schools. And it's really nice because we
just don't have the capacity to solve everything in our own
communities and having resources that we can pull in,
particularly in area, I live in a rural area, so our resources
are limited. So it's really great to have
this expansion available. Absolutely, absolutely.
And gosh and it's sometimes it's so hard to kind of you know when
you're thinking about jobs and I'm going to, I'm going to kind
of join in kind of kind of combine some questions and maybe
go off script because you know once my mind starts going then
it doesn't stop. So one of the things that I
really want to know for educators like the tools and
resources why you provide the job listings and you work with
these companies to get the jobs on your site.
So what are some of the tools and resources that you provide
that can specifically aid, you know, educators who are looking
to transition into these fields that you just mentioned and
beyond, because obviously there's more than just those few
that you mentioned. Right, so there's the job board
that I do. I've also recently restarted my
newsletter. I let it let it fall, fall by
the wayside. But one of the things I loved
about doing the newsletter you did, I didn't, I didn't even
notice. I still get the the stuff, you
know, You know that's funny as a you say you you think you're
letting stuff fall by the wayside.
But I'm like, Oh my gosh, Chelsea is just on top of this.
She's sending another newsletter.
There's more information. It didn't fall by the wayside.
It still exists. Go sign up for it.
Yes, it does exist. And one of the things that I've
always loved doing is doing these like deep dives into a
particular field. So I did student success, which
is basically like the implementation role of customer
success. I did that last month and this
month I'm diving into program management and I'm really able
to say what are these questions I'm getting in my audience.
How can I answer them for everyone and not just for the
person I'm talking to at the moment?
Because these are questions I get all the time in one-on-one.
So I restarted the newsletter doing the deep dives, and that's
exciting. But part of what I'm doing in
the newsletter is also I'm doing skills analysis.
So I've launched this tool where I'm asking questions and they're
based on all these job descriptions I have.
I mean literally of hundreds of bullet points from companies.
And I have hundreds of bullet points from educators.
And I'm saying how do these align?
Because that's what I've always done really well when I do the
coaching, as I'm able to say, oh, you've got those three
tasks, they fall into this bucket, It's implementation or
it's training what have you. And so now what I'm doing is
actually starting to say, can I automate that process?
Can I ask questions that will help people discover this for
themselves so that they can quickly?
Answer a few questions and really identify this is what I
need in my resume. This is what I need to take out
of my resume. And then long term, I'm really
hoping to be able to add this is how I can indicate
accomplishments and metrics so that what you're really doing is
getting something that's very tailored and customized to
people in our field moving into the kinds of jobs that are
typical. And so the skills analysis is.
That's it's a coming up is a new product launch.
Once I really get my question made going, I'm going to be
implementing that as part of a coaching product.
So instead of having to do all that work yourself, I'll have
done the back end and you can actually just.
It's like TPT, but it's accurate.
Yes. And we've talked about this
before on the show. This reminds me of a
conversation we previously had when you got to these other job
sites and you're typing an instructional designer and
they're sending you something like, you know, graphic design
or that's not even. That's pretty close, but that's
not what an instructional designer is.
Or if they're sending you something like, Oh my gosh, I
don't know, like I have to save some of the funny ones so I can
share them with you like Masonry or something.
I don't know how, like the the algorithms like think I want to
be like a data entry specialist or or something along those
lines. It's just so crazy to me.
So it sounds like the product that you're developing and
that's about to come out is something that's really
personalized and really is going to know what you need and find
that niche. Like, that's one of the things I
tell people when we have these conversations is find your niche
where you want to be, what the program management, project
management, structural design, where, where, where do you want
to be? Yes, definitely.
And that's, that's the piece where I'm still working on the
product development that's trying to figure out.
There's so many different avenues you can use this
information for. You can use it to tailor a job
description or tailor your resume for a particular job
description to figure out career clarity in the 1st place or to
create that sort of master resume so you don't have to do
as much work. So there's a lot of
opportunities there. And I'd love to enter, I love
your point about the job boards because if I can integrate that
into the job board, then yes, you could have personalized job,
personalized job posts that came to you.
Because yes, the ones that stand out to me is you Google customer
success. Well, we throw in a LinkedIn,
you Google customer success on LinkedIn and you get product
manager jobs. And I'm like those are two very
different. Skills that are required for
that. One of them is, is something
that educators can do, and the other is something that you need
like three to five years of product experience to do.
And it's really frustrating that they lump them together.
But that's that's what happens when you're using these big
algorithms rather than curated databases.
You've got to start with something that really has the
right information from the beginning.
Absolutely. So all of your jobs that you
post on your site are remote work, so working from home.
And I want to know something before I actually dive into this
question. Do you differentiate between
working from home? Because to some people working
from home, you have to be in a in a certain location like
sometimes they'll list out like a state and remote work.
Remote to me means anywhere working from home means you
might have to be in a certain location.
Is that how you differentiate it or am I way off faces there?
I feel like that's something I've definitely heard before.
I'm not sure how many I've seen people do work from home in
parentheses, remote, and I'm like.
Are those different things? Are not.
It's confusing. I saw your poll too about This
is why I'm bringing this up, because I saw that poll on
LinkedIn. I'm like, it got me thinking,
Chelsea. Like, what do we call it?
I know there's no great, there's no great term for it.
I think of what I'm separating out right now is remote jobs are
jobs that are available anywhere in the US and I do just stick
with the US because once you go into international hiring, there
are a lot of complications and. Big, big potential problems for
compliance and things like that. So I stick with remote is us
anywhere nationally. So the jobs you see on the main
page of the job board are all going to be that and then I have
a small page. For, I think I renamed it
location specific jobs. Location specific remote jobs
was what I came up with. And the idea there is that some
jobs want you to be in a particular state because you're
going to have to travel frequently regionally.
So you need to be in Georgia because you're servicing clients
who are in Georgia and maybe across the line in Florida too.
But some states also the hiring laws are just so challenging.
And the tax laws, if you've ever.
Lived in two states for different parts of the year.
You may have paid double taxes like I did when I moved from
Georgia to Wisconsin. And the companies have that same
problem except that they can be personally sued as well the the
HR managers. So they can often really say,
wait a second, I need to make sure that I'm comfortable with
these state laws. I can't do every all 50 states,
but I have 10 state laws that are similar.
I can hire in those ten states. So a lot of times it just
depends on the capacity of a hiring manager.
And so I call this location specific remote jobs.
So sometimes that makes sense. Sometimes they're not.
So. So for people like educators who
are used to being in the classroom every day and seeing
their learners or seeing their colleagues, how, what are some
of the challenges that they might face when they get to a
remote work study? And it's like I see a lot of
posts when people do transition and it's like a relief, but then
sometimes there is there are those consequences to remote
work. Like you don't get to interact
with people every day in the sense that you're in person and
like the human thing is is missing.
So how do you think that what where, how can they overcome
these things? What are the challenges and how
can they overcome them? Right.
I think with remote work you have to be a lot more proactive
about building those relationships and really saying
hey, can we chat or even having like a particular reason to say,
I'd love to know about this project you're working on or I
think I might need to our projects might align.
Can we kind of talk about traditionally how these roles
have been connected to each other or ways that we can
support each other more so having like a really concrete
ask to say let's connect. And doing that strategically
throughout the organization, so making sure you're connecting
regularly with your supervisors, making sure that you're
connecting regularly with these teams that are sort of adjacent
to the work you do, and even your own team, your own team,
you probably already have that structure in place.
So really consciously thinking about places where you don't
have it. The New York Times just did.
A post on what we know about the dangers of remote work and one
of the interesting things that they said was that women in
general are finding it harder to get feedback if they're This is
specifically about engineers, but they were early career
female engineers and because there wasn't often.
A really easy way to to ask follow up questions they were
falling behind and I think that's something educators we
don't really worry about as much because we're used to working
independently and figuring out answers to questions.
But I think it does really highlight that need to make sure
that what you are doing is visible and making sure that the
challenges that you're overcoming are visible so that
you know it's it's your your work product is very much.
Your accomplishments in your mind, your metrics are very much
in the mindsets of the people who are not just.
They're making decisions about phases, about promotions.
So people who are really in charge of your career, the
people who they did hire you but now you're really thinking about
what are what are my, what's my five year plan, How do I
actually make sure that I am going to be able to accomplish
that and I'm not going to be in the same job in five years
unless I want to be. Yeah, absolutely.
And I would say too with remote work like you're saying to make
make it a purposeful to develop those relationships.
It might take a little bit longer and I noticed that even
how long have I been remote work since COVID, So almost three
years now. It does take a little bit longer
but one of the great things that we do in in pharmacy and we we
meet quarterly so we have off sites and things so that we can
be with our teams and that really rejuvenates us and that
has really helped to develop you know those relationships and
that cohesion with the team. I know not everybody has
afforded that opportunity but I would say if it's possible it's
it's interesting because some people with remote work you
don't realize it like Oh my gosh, like Nadia, my Co host.
She lives in Columbia, SC, I'm in Myrtle Beach.
It's literally a 2 hour drive and we we've never met each
other in person but we're going to because we live close to each
other and just if you can and you know like a Co worker go
meet up with them at a coffee shop.
It's it's really it's really fun.
Somebody else lives in Myrtle Beach that found me on LinkedIn
and we go meet up at a coffee shop.
You know it's just it's just crazy.
So there are some things like you're saying that we can do to
really kind of mitigate those challenges with remote work and
make us feel less like we're isolated and more like there we
are a team and there there's tons of different departments
within you know larger organizations that that we're
working for. Right.
And I think that's also one place where edtech is a little
bit unique in the remote environment is that so many of
the edtech companies always been remote first because their
audiences are nationals, so they're often going to need
people who are in particular locations, travel being one of
them. But also because you need people
have expertise and well, what's the difference between taxes
standards and main standards or just the culture of the school
systems so? Having that that remote first
environment I think means that a lot of these companies have
these practices much more standard than your your, your
corporation that went remote because of COVID and is now
trying to figure out what to do. Or are those CEOs who did you
see that stat? 63% of CEOs believe that
everyone will be back to remote work five days a week in two
years. Why did they say that?
No, I didn't see. That they wanted?
Yeah. Well, it is.
Well, I think there's that's another place where that
visibility, like what you're actually doing becomes important
is there's this fear that people are just sitting home doing
whatever they want instead of actually doing the job.
But being able to really say, hey, here is what I'm doing,
here's what I'm not doing, is really important, I think, to
make sure that companies, if they're not accustomed to this
remote work, that really these, these bosses can feel
comfortable. But it's going to be existing.
There's a lot of CEO pushback and there's a lot of work.
And so we're going to see a lot of changes over the next few
years. And that hybrid one thing we
aren't talking about is hybrid workforces, which kind of that
in person you're talking about in the remote.
We lose the ability to work where we live, we have to uproot
ourselves, but we do gain some of that that benefit of actually
having the in person connections.
So I think there's a lot to figure out with it.
But edtech companies are used to figuring out because a lot of
them, so many of them, were remote first before the
pandemic. Absolutely.
And I know a lot of my friends who like worked in the the
edtech industry like they were remote, but they would travel
quite a bit. You know, especially if they
were in sales and they were doing some sort of training
activities, they would, they would have to travel and that's
still the case. But you know at Amazon, I'm
going to speak a little bit about Amazon.
The the RTO because it's been across the news is to return the
office and you know, having to go in three days a week, I I
mean it's good, but not everybody can do it like because
I'm in a virtual location in South Carolina, but there's no
close office as closest as probably Charleston, but it's
not even like related to pharmacy and none of my
teammates are there like we're all over the United States.
So you have to be very like, you know, tactful about how you're
deciding to do this. And you know, I'm, I'm fortunate
enough that we get to meet quarterly, but I know there's a
lot of people who are just like, you know, I can't afford to
drive 2 hours one way to go into an office three days a week.
It's just too much so. Yeah, and it's there's not
enough of the benefit. I was talking to someone just
the other day. They're they're applying.
It's a local main company in Portland.
Are a nonprofit, and they're looking for a development
tractor. They've been looking for five
months. And they're like, this can all
be done remotely, except they occasionally need to come in the
office. And I'm like, how do you have
that worded? And he's like, oh, occasionally
you need to come into the office.
And I'm like, you know, if you set that up with like you have
to come to the office once a month or once a quarter, you're
going to get a lot more takers for that job because yes,
there's exactly. Something that's practical and
there's something that is just. Too open-ended to really make be
able to make decisions about your life and the kind of work
balance you want to have? Yeah, I was just going to say
that the work life balance with remote work is so much better
than it was when I had to go in the office every single day.
I felt really rushed on the weekends and sometimes I still
do, depending upon the workload of do getting done, Adult
responsibilities, and I know educators and people who are
transitioning roles can definitely relate to this.
Going from in person to remote, you're like, oh, I have time to
go throw a load of laundry lane and or I can go clean the
kitchen. You know it's like take a little
mental health figure, go walk around the block.
It's it's really nice. It's really advantageous, you
know, especially for mental health and things like that.
Yeah, that's what I did before our call.
I walked down a couple of blocks, took a look at the
really beautiful sunset over the ocean, and I walked back and I
was like, huh? Now I'm ready to talk.
That's awesome. All right, so one of the things
that you know, educators and other people who are
transitioning ask about a lot. I get a lot of LinkedIn
messages. I'm sure you do too, thinking
about the skills that we have and what makes them like
suitable candidates for these remote roles.
So what are some of those things you can identify?
Definitely. I wrote them down because one of
the things that I think happens is that we we're like, we have
so many skills and for starters, identifying which are the most
important ones, It's a challenge.
But I also, the ones that I tried to focus on are ones that
I often see people omit. So that's where these are.
Certainly not all of our skills or even they're important, but
not necessarily the most important, the ones that I
regularly don't see. Are things like project and
program management. So while that's its own career,
it's also something that we do in any job that we do.
That's that ability to take all of these moving pieces and put
them in this coherent organized system to develop curriculum
programs. All of that work we do, it has
these time management organizational and.
Coherence building activities going on.
Then we also have data analysis. This is something I rarely see
in educator skills and we're using data on a daily basis,
probably an hourly basis. And I think that ability to that
educators have to collect a lot of data to identify what's
meaningful in the data and then more importantly to be able to
use the data. So we're actually taking that
data and differentiating curriculum on a regular basis
for our students. And we're doing it informally,
informally. So qualitatively,
quantitatively. It's a lot of data and education
and we don't take full advantage of that when we talk about that.
And then there's also that doesn't even get us to
reporting. We're used to reporting it to
stakeholders AKA parents and communicating what that data
means and what's behind it and what you do and don't need to
worry about in terms of your students progress.
The other one, I went back and forth about what to call it.
So I think normally we would call it collaboration.
And as I was writing down the kinds of skills that I was
thinking about, I was like, this isn't collaboration.
So the skills I'm thinking about the ability to facilitate, we
underestimate the ability to facilitate.
But I'm sure you've had those meetings, you've LED that
everyone's like that was the best meeting ever and you're
like. That's just what I normally do.
As teachers, we're used to managing conversations, to
making sure people are heard, asking follow up questions that
actually get you to dig into what do you mean.
And we're also used to managing difficult conversations.
So when they start to go awry or their personality is involved,
those are things that we can manage pretty effortlessly.
And the reason I don't think we we think about that as
collaboration because it happens in committees and it happens in
groups. But I think what it really is,
is leadership. And I think that as educators we
need to actually name that, that we are leaders in what we do.
Yeah. So program project management,
data analysis, and leadership. Oh, I totally agree with
Absolutely those skills are necessary.
I'm going to go a little bit off topic because I just thought of
something and I know you've heard this too.
So the thing that's like the transitioning teachers on
Facebook, the the hashtag and like some of that got some
negative negativity around it. I didn't really engage in it.
I just saw some things that were happening.
And the thing too about coming across job postings that say
that teachers basically they're telling them they're not
professionals. And that's the thing I haven't
seen. This is not the case.
Former educators sitting right
here, We are all professionals and we are all, I feel like
teachers have a lot of imposter syndrome when it comes to
transitioning roles. Do you have any advice there to
overcome those things? Sometimes I think we're climbing
a higher mountain than some other people who've been in the
business world, you know, previously or have been have
more experience. We're kind of competing with
those. Those people have their roles.
Yeah, it was interesting because I was, I was kind of thinking
about. Just in general, what I would
talk about imposter syndrome was a topic that came up in a couple
of different things I was thinking about.
Because when when I started Skip, I started Skip partially
because all these companies, So these are companies like I'll
just name them Paper Varsity Tutors.
They pay their professionals sixty $80,000 a year.
They pay their teachers and their tutors. 10 to at the time,
10 to $12.00 an hour. I think now they're up to 15 to
20 and they distinguish between that based on the audience.
It's he are you working with adults or are you working with
kids? And I think that's really
something as a society we should not undervalue.
And I think that really it's interesting because you do see
that language a lot of times, like professional and then
tutoring and teaching. That's still professional.
But I mean we're doing those same skills.
The only difference is the audience and the pay.
So I think yes, that imposter syndrome is so much a part of
how as a society we view educators and also as women, I
mean, I am in a business women's group and we all gave kind of we
pitched our business and the feedback we got was you're
underselling yourselves. You are not communicating it.
That is true. I do that all the time.
We do that all the time. I know we do.
It's bad. It's so bad, it's not just
under. Yeah.
It's underselling. We're not used to we know what
makes us great but we're not used to putting it on paper.
And so I think some of that is just a habit and it's been I've
been thinking about this a lot and I'm I'm actually, when I
work with my coach coaching people lately I've been saying
you're underselling yourself because I'm like it's such a
it's the word really resonates. I think impostor syndrome feel
scary underselling though. Or like, oh wait, I can actually
see that. So what I've been doing with
people is saying, all right, you're underselling yourself.
Here are the actual skills that you have when you say, all
right, well, I'm just teaching kids, what are you doing?
You're facilitating, you're asking questions.
Again, that's that leadership role you're training.
Yeah, you're training, you're coaching or mentoring depending
on what role you're in. So really saying instead of
focusing on the audience, step back and say, well, what is?
What are the actual tasks that I'm doing?
What do those tasks require? What kinds of skills do they
require, and how great am I at those skills?
Let me tell you about that. Yeah, absolutely.
And Marnie was just saying in the chat that she, they get
really intimidated by the, you know, the, the, the experience
imposture and with all the business lingo.
I know at these bigger, if you're definitely on the
corporate space, there's so many acronyms, there's so many
different things like it's it's like learning a different
language sometimes when you transition roles.
And that's OK, that the learning curve is high.
I feel like and what you're saying Chelsea, and what I feel
like we're saying is that confidence is everything to
defeat that imposter syndrome and you should definitely be
confident in the skills that you have.
And I also feel like too, like when you say I was a teacher for
26 years, that's 26 years of industry experience.
To me, that's not anything you're not starting over.
You're not starting at 0, You might be starting at 0 in terms
of learning something new, but you're you have experience, you
have experience there. Yes.
Yeah. I agree.
And I think that's one reason why educators, when they get
hired, they tend to get promoted really quickly.
It's because we have all of those skills and those skills.
They may not show up in like the resume, but if we think about
like this, Ed Skip is like an entire process.
Once you get into the job and you're really able to
demonstrate what you can do, people give you more tasks and
more responsibility. And you know I I look at
people's career history and teaching 26 years and they move
into Ed tech and like every 8 to 12 months they are being
promoted going quick. They're going quick in the in
the industry it's you know it's maybe 1 to it's one to two years
and they're they're going fairly quick because they're organized.
They know what the expectations are.
They're going to outperform their counterparts just because
of the way educators think or you know other professionals.
So it's it's good to see that the that that sort of respect is
happening and that the recognition is there for them
because I feel like that helps you again develop that
confidence and just feel like you feel worthy, you know, like
teaching. It's a whole bunch of like
responsibility being laid on, you have to responsibility being
laid on. You're like, I don't know how
much more I can take, but in the industry when you're doing
things that are great, people are going to recognize you and
especially if you're in good teams, you have good managers
and leaders, it's wonderful. It's it's a fabulous feeling.
I'm saying that from experience. Well, and I hear so many
educators who are like, you know, I went to my first meeting
and I was trying to stay quiet because, you know, I'm the new
person. I'm just listening and
absorbing. And somebody asked me a question
like, what do I think? And I answered it.
And they're like, that's a great idea, let's do it.
And someone's like, I don't have to listen to you like that at a
long, long time. And I think yes, if you are at a
place where they're actually valuing your experience and that
listening can be so empowering. So, so are there any, if you're
looking at your the job postings that you're doing and you're the
things that you're seeing like the backgrounds, are there any
particular backgrounds in education, you know in any
subject matters that are particularly like in demand for
certain remote roles that you've come across?
Yeah. So it's interesting.
The Department of Education of course, funds a lot of
programming. And so a lot of the said tech
funding comes from the DOE, and lately that's been federal
funding. So as that's starting to fade
out, fizzle out what have you there, the Department of
Education is starting to give more guidelines about what you
should be looking for when you fund education and fund when
districts specifically are purchasing Ed tech products.
And so there's actually some interesting industry information
there. So what they're really talking
about? Is focusing on the problems that
we know we have. Students are falling behind in
math and literacy, particularly as a result of the pandemic.
So those are places where you're going to see a lot of job
postings, particularly in early literacy, so we can set strong
foundations for students moving forward.
I also definitely seen equity issues.
Coming in, so anyone who has experience with Title One
schools, which is a lot of the people I work with, Sure, Title
One schools that's an in demand skill set seems to be the wrong
term. I'm sure there's a better term
there, but I would definitely say that awareness, you know of
what that is and what that encompasses that environment,
that ecosystem, because we know it's it's different than the
schools that have it. All right, that's all that.
That's a. That's a simplified version of
it. Yes.
The other trend that I've seen and this is one, it's too new
for me to really have too much to say about it.
But I'm starting to see special education consultants a lot more
frequently and then starting to see special education teachers
and not necessarily in terms of like COVID, we just need virtual
learning. But Ed tech companies that are
really starting to say special education is a large segment of
our student population. Can we leverage that to make
money? That's the kind of crass way of
saying it. But I I think there's also a
sense of this is a place where there's a lot of burdensome
regulation and it's very challenging for educators.
Are there ways that we can start to make that experience and some
of the process, particularly that paperwork process, can we
make that easier for educators? So I'm starting to see.
A lot more special education managers even in like the last
month or so. So I think special education is
probably going to pop soon, but it's still again, it's a it's a
new trend, but I'm definitely seeing it much more frequently
than I was seeing it. And I'm starting to see special
education as like, subject matter experts the same way as
math and literacy are. Yeah, I was going to say have a
special educator on your Ed tech team to give you recommendations
about accessibility. That's gold.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm really glad to hear that
that's booming and that's, that's up and coming for
educators because you know, even though we're not as educators,
if we're not labeled special education teachers, we're still
very aware of what those are. You know, going through ieps, 5
O fours, those different kinds of things.
And those definitely can transition into skills and
knowledge for different roles. Right.
I definitely think special educators on some level really
should be looking at data jobs, data analyst jobs.
I'm not seeing a lot of people move into it because there's a
lot of upskilling there, But I think that they're the ones who
are using data the most, not that any teacher doesn't, but
special educators have a certain level of level of data
requirements. So the rest of the stuff,
absolutely. So I mean, we've talked about,
we've been dancing around Skip and talking all about it.
I posted links in the chat on LinkedIn live and in in
Riverside so that people can go check it out.
And managing the chat because I want, I want to get everybody in
the spotlight. I want you to answer all the
questions. I want them to hear from you.
This is, this is what I have to do in this hour that I have with
you. We have to get everybody
involved. So I'm doing all the things and
I'm totally engaged at the same time.
I don't know. It's something people say.
Multitasking is a myth. Sometimes.
I don't know what my brain does. It's able to do it.
So I'm grateful. So can you tell us like give us
like the origin story a bit, a bit more about how you started
Skip and like what drove you to basically I I kind of know
because I've had you on the show.
But like, what drove you to bridge this gap for, you know,
especially educators? Yeah, so I talked earlier just
about how frustrated I was with those companies that were
essentially gaslighting educators.
And not only were they paying like really, really poor wages,
like 10 to 12 bucks an hour, but they were saying that the wages
were competitive. Every single time I saw that
$12.00 an hour and the competitive wages, I was like,
wait, wait a second. I just saw.
Tutoring job that pays 20 or 35. Actually there were 35, some of
them were 50. Instructional coaching jobs are
paying that. And I'm like, wait a second, how
is this competitive? It's only competitive with very
few jobs. And so it just it just.
Made me very frustrated. I don't know if we can curse on
this. So I'll just say they made me
very frustrated and you can curse.
I'll just put us explicit content.
It's fine. But yeah, I I understand that
feeling. I get.
I get that. That's that's rough.
That's rough. And so I initially just started
sharing these part time jobs and then I was like, wait a second,
So what? Somebody who's working, say, 10
hours a week tutoring after working a 40 hour work week.
And then they still need to do all the other things as a
teacher, we need to do with grading and prepping because a
40 hour work week isn't enough. I was like, this doesn't sound
like fun. And the more I was hearing from
educators, they were like actually, you know what it's
like? It's just a full time job that
lets me do what I love and pays me for it and gives me time off.
And so that's when I started saying wait a second.
There are part time jobs like that, but there are also full
time jobs like that. And then I started sharing jobs
and it really snowballed from there.
And I think the coaching piece came in just because I have a
lot of experience interviewing people.
I spent eight years on doing that for my my local city and we
hire about 100 people or total and some of those people.
Sometimes people leave. So often we do a lot of first
turnover particularly in city city government.
And so it was it was the sort of thing that I was like wait a
second, I have a skill set that is really useful and I as I just
started offering advice it was like this is really something I
enjoy doing. I really do like having people
find something that they find really meaningful and that finds
them meaningful back and. As I've been doing it longer and
longer, I've also, I mean, it's really clear that Ed tech is not
going away. It's expanding.
We can do it responsibly as a society or irresponsibly as a
society, but we're doing it no matter what.
And so I would rather have people who have taught in
education be in those worlds. So I feel like this is a place
where we really do need to make sure that educators are moving
into Ed tech and that we're not just hiring.
People who have always worked in industry because then they're
going to be focused on industry metrics and not on all of the
student centered metrics and educator centered metrics, which
really make a difference. And that if you don't
understand, you're going to have a really hard time talking to an
educator about your product or helping them to really use it
effectively. So yeah.
So it's evolved over time to really to really be like this is
something that we need as a society and we need to be
thinking about very carefully that's that's really skip.
And then also, honestly, I just really love data.
And so being able to say how can I analyze all this data and
there's so much data here and it's unstructured.
I'm like, how do we structure this data and come to meaningful
conclusions? So it's actually a lot of fun,
so. Yeah, I can only imagine.
I wish I would have had your data mine.
I do have a data-driven mind, but I just love seeing the
little pie graphs and stuff and somebody else doing it for me.
And I do like doing pivot tables and things at work.
Those are fun to create and manipulate.
But anyways, that's the conversation for another day.
Yeah, pivot tables I don't understand.
Oh, no. There's so it's so I I honestly
thought it was more complex than what it really is, and one of my
coworkers taught me how to use it.
Hi, Dan. Thank you for teaching me pivot
tables. And it's awesome.
I feel so good about anyways you know, so using using that data
and that metrics to really inform like decisions or like
what the, what the latest trends and stuff are in the job market.
And I'm really glad, and I'll say this, that like
instructional design and Ed tech and all this stuff has been put
on the map because of COVID. Because before, people had no
idea what the heck I was talking about when I said I'm an
instructional designer. So they're like, you design
websites, you fix computers. No, like I'm not a technician.
I don't. I'm not geeks on call.
I don't come to your house, you know, explain that.
But now an instructional designer.
Like up there edtech like up there, it's it's recognized and
so many different roles. I mean finding the like the dot
like every so often an instructional design role even
in corporate was hard. Finding higher Ed even harder
needle in the haystack. But now plethora like you can
you know you when you're posting your jobs.
And then I do my postings, and sometimes I include your
postings. And LinkedIn doesn't have good
stuff for the other ones. They just they're a little bit
off. I do like 816 a week that that
was unheard of pre COVID that's really interesting and now I'm
starting to see that we we talked about this the last time
but that instructional design and now we're getting like the
management structure over the instructional design.
So it's it's becoming a full department and it's like is it
learning and development still? Is it something different?
Yeah, you know, that's a conversation like I always
haven't. Like I talked to my IS.
Is instructional design a part of L&D?
Ellen, What is L&D? What's the difference is that's
that's a conversation I'm going to definitely need to have with
more of an expert. Like I consider myself part of
learning and development because of where I work and my title.
But who knows? You know, L&D encompasses a lot
of different like it's an umbrella term for a lot of
different roles in a lot of different departments, right.
Yeah, because HR is often. That's that's the one where I
see a lot of overlap with instructional design, learning,
development, HR. I saw a job, yeah.
I saw a job that was. It said instructional design
manager, but it was an HR. Yeah, it said with an HR focus.
I had never seen that before. I had never seen that before.
Sales ones. That's also really, really
popular. You need the sales background
and the instructional design background.
So career paths. Yeah, it's really, really cool
to see how it's evolving. So are there any like additional
like trainings opportunities for upskilling that?
You recommend you know to make this transition more smooth for
people. I know you have some offerings
on your site. Do you?
You said you do some coaching, but are there any other things
that you can recommend to people?
So that's an interesting question because I was thinking
about it, I mean for instructional design, obviously,
because there are some really technical skills that you need
to learn. But we're starting to see a lot
more customer success trainings and for trainings that are much
more. Let me step back for a second.
So for instructional design, I think you definitely need
upskill. But this is another place where
I was thinking about that imposter syndrome that we're
talking about. And how often is it that the
reason we're looking at some of these courses for some of these
jobs that educators move into really regularly?
How often are we saying, oh, I need this training because I
don't have the right skills and I'm not really sure.
I think sometimes people do need to have skill, but I think
sometimes we also just need to say, wait a second, I need to
step back and identify my skills.
And sometimes I think that it's a matter of working on a
different scale in your existing school.
So for instance, if you're doing a lot of program project
management in your classroom, can you do that on your
department or in your school? If you're doing it at school
level, can you do it on your district level?
So really saying do I need something more or can I actually
use the systems I'm already working in and just do do what
I'm doing a little bit differently in order to pitch
myself more competitively. And so I think there are two
ways that I think educators should probably start before
they consider the upskilling conversation.
One is definitely figuring out what are some good data tracking
systems because we don't necessarily, we track a lot of
data, but we don't necessarily track metrics that are useful
for the job search. We track metrics that are useful
for our students. So really saying what are the
metrics I need to know this year, Let me actually track
those for myself this year. And then also saying what are
some ways that I can take what I'm already doing and expand it.
I've been doing a bunch of trainings, why don't I do a
training series? I need to know some of the
metrics about training. Let me start actually doing a
survey before and after and tracking that information.
So I think a lot of times it's less about upskilling and it's a
lot more about just documentation and using
opportunities that you're already you already have in your
own community. And that's another thing.
Volunteering. I think if you if people feel
like I don't quite have enough skills, you know where my HR
skills come from, Volunteer work, being on a being a board
president. I got a lot of project
performance improvement plans with executives and but also a
lot of intervening skills that all came from volunteering.
I didn't get paid for any of that.
I really should have probably for the number of hours I was
putting in on some of this. But I think that there are
opportunities for us to serve our schools and communities that
will be more rewarding for us than upskilling.
Which is not to say that the programming, the programs are
bad or not. I don't really, I don't really
know and I think that's the question that I have is do we
need them? Yeah, it it.
Like I get a question a lot too. Do I need to get another degree?
The degree is not going to get you the role.
Just like knowing all the technologies is not going to get
you the role. It takes a lot more than just
having the I mean here are all my degrees.
I intentionally put like they're not even hung up.
They're all back. Here's my very expensive pieces
of paper and I'm very proud of them.
I I work really hard. But nothing can replace real
world application and experience in a role.
And, like you're saying, volunteering or freelance.
Quick roles that give you like that 6 to 12 months experience
in a certain position. You know, find those things or
find like a good mentor who can teach you.
And I love the programs that incorporate the internship or
externship into their program. And it's not just at the end,
it's throughout the experience. So that the person is growing
not only as an in the academic space and as a learner, they're
also growing as a professional. At the same time that if I had
to give recommendations to higher education, every program,
it doesn't matter what it is, needs some sort of internship,
some sort of real world experience.
I mean, if you think about the different subjects, everybody
needs to have that like whether you're a chemist, A biologist,
instructional design, you're going into business management,
you you really need that real world experience because.
That's what's happening. That's where you get to see like
all the things evolving, the different changes that are being
made in the industry, the things that are specific to your
industry. So I mean those types of things
are invaluable to me. I agree.
And I think that really reinforces too, it's not just
the need to get that whole cycle going.
It's really important to be tracking your impact across that
cycle and being able to quantify what your value add is because
then you can talk about that. Then you can put that bullet
point in your resume. And that's like, that's why you
put your education last, because what's important is how you
applied your education, not. Exactly.
I know. Like, what is the ROI on this?
Tons of student loan debt, right?
Yeah, I don't know about everybody else, but it is for
me, all right. October hurts.
It hurts the budget this month.
But yeah, absolutely. Like, the real world experiences
is like nothing else. And I recently had an intern who
came from an institution that did what I just said, had the
internship, you know, throughout the program.
And then she got a role at a former where she graduated from
as an undergrad, as an instructional designer.
Yeah, it's really, it's really cool stuff.
Let's see, let's see what question we want to ask now.
I know we've kind of skirted around a lot of these questions
that I had. We we've we've kind of answered
most of them. I really do want to give like
10-5 minutes for Q&A. But I also want you to tell us a
little bit about what does the future hold for Skip?
Are there any things up and coming that you want to share
with the audience about what you're doing and where they can
find you and all those things. I already put your link in the
chat, you know I'm going to market you like crazy excellent.
So the biggest thing that I'm doing is revamping my courses.
So I have been doing a course which was a combination
self-directed, but I would come in and give feedback at certain
points like on a resume or on metrics and bullet points and
what I'm well a I'm sun setting that because the platform I'm
using is sun setting itself. So there's there's there's been
no choice. Well.
That that makes the decision real easy, right?
But the other thing is that I what I'm really learning is that
some of this stuff we can automate a little bit and it can
be much more fast, much just much more efficient of a
process. And so that's where the skills
analysis is coming in. And So what I'm really, really
doing is saying how can I take the skills analysis tools and
the one-on-one attention that people like and combine them.
So look for some new products where I'm really leveraging the
skills analysis to help you understand exactly what you need
to include in your resume, how you can frame it and thinking
about it in terms of particular job titles.
And not just, these are my skills, these are the things I
do, but these are the things that are best aligned for this,
for the jobs that I'm applying for.
So I'm in the process of revamping that and definitely be
making some announcements in the next month.
Depending on technology, it's really hard sometimes.
You know when you're like, I know how to do this and I know
how to do this, but I can't do this.
And so I'm trying to find the technology that will let me put
some things together. But I'm really excited about it
because I'm really hoping that it'll let me.
It will make things easier for people is at the moment, you
know, if you want to learn how to tailor a job, you really have
to read a lot of job descriptions and you really have
to go through a lot of work of reading your resume.
So this will help cut that time. Be a lot more specific to what
your high level skills are, and I think it goes back to impostor
syndrome. It will help people understand
that you have so many skills and they're so relevant.
Right. And the resume is just the first
step. It's.
Not the only step. People said put so much weight
on that and while it's super important to get you the
interview, this is a conversation for another time
because we're come back and talk about this is interviewing for
the roles and how that all plays, that all plays out and
and there's a lot of things I'll say right now going on in the
chat about like where can you find this real world experience,
like how do I get this having a lot of impostor syndrome.
I would say one of the other things to do too.
And where I've gotten a lot of my experiences through
networking and talking to different people who are doing
like smaller projects. And they're like, could you just
give me feedback on this? Or could you just help me
redesign this graphic? Or could you help me, you know,
put a put together like a outline of a course like that
kind of stuff, those those those quick little things give me
like, you know, insights into one skill.
So I would definitely say like networking and like LinkedIn is
my is, is my jam. It's like my Mecca for, you
know, connecting with people. And I've had so many
conversations and I encourage you not to feel scared to do
that, to have conversations with people.
And it seems like coffee chats are getting a bad rap on
LinkedIn. So have a little lunch and
learns or whatever you want to call them and just get together
and like just talk to somebody about what projects they're
working on and like what are their goals.
It's like. It's amazing how similar we
become in our in our approach and our our routines to, you
know, transition roles. But it's also amazing to find
out like, oh, this might be good for me to try this.
And you know, I really like that part of the networking.
Yes, indeed. And I I think that's something
Edtech companies could do a better job of of really there's
so much product development where they're reaching out to
educators for feedback and if they could actually integrate
the educators into some of those processes as a thank you for
participating on this, I I think that it would really be, it
would be beneficial for both sides because it is hard to find
find the people to network with and it's intimidating as well to
to reach out to. Us, especially when so many
people don't answer. They're like, you know, I I
can't tell you how many templates of LinkedIn.
In in mail messages I've gotten and and people are just like
they ask for things right off the bat and I'm like you don't
know me. You need to get to know me.
I want to know you. I want to develop an authentic
connection. Please just don't sell me
something. Please just just demand an ID,
skill or some review for me. Please ask me about myself.
Show me that you looked at my profile.
You know, I I try to do that when I connect with other people
and interact in the comments too because that's it helps.
It helps the person you're interacting with because it
shares with LinkedIn that it's interesting content.
And it also is a way that you know if you're asking a good
question you can build a network in those conversations and the
the question build a conversation.
And I've actually made some really nice connections with
people that it just started from a a little thread where we were
going back and forth about an idea and then we've created much
more of a relationship. So I think that and Facebook,
you can do that on the Facebook groups too.
It's interesting. A lot of industry conversations
happen on Facebook and Facebook groups, which really surprised
me that LinkedIn has never, LinkedIn has taken off for
public comments, but it's never taken off for private groups.
So yeah, Facebook. Facebook can be a little
friendlier sometimes. Absolutely, absolutely.
And I I know you're going to find where you're comfortable in
that space. All right, So we got about 3 1/2
minutes left of your time because I know you and I in
hours we could talk. Friendly We could talk, friend.
It went by really fast, and I'm so glad we have a wonderfully
engaged audience here who's asking.
They're asking a lot of questions and they're making a
lot of comments. Definitely people are talking
about impostor syndrome. One person wanted to know hers
and I'm not going to say this person's name right because I
have such an American southern mix of northern accent.
I think it's hers in I don't. But they're asking and tell me
if I said that wrong. I'm so sorry.
Please put the link linguistic. And I I I'm happy to shift and
make edits. So what?
What difference does it make whether you are teaching or
tutoring adults or children? Ask for pay.
Is there like a is there a difference in that pay?
Wait, I missed that situation. You say it.
One more question. So.
They're asking if there's a difference in pay between
teaching or tutoring adults or children.
Is there like a different, like higher, lower.
Yeah, I think that in general we.
So when I was thinking about that earlier, I was really
thinking about it in terms of training.
And I think the difference is really comes down to a business
sense. So when you're training adults,
there's a corporate business purpose and so you can generally
make more money with it because companies are are making more
money because their employees are either more efficient or
they have more skills and they can do more things.
Kids don't have that economic benefit.
And I think that's really where the difference lies is that when
a kid learns how to do math better, it helps them in 20
years and it helps our society in 20 years.
When an adult can speak a language differently that helps
them immediately because you can open up a new business market.
So I think that's that's kind of the distinction that I would see
is is what is the underlying revenue that that is a very sad,
sad truth I think. But it really, I mean that is
the The thing is that businesses even if they're a nonprofit,
education adjacent nonprofit we are really talking about can we
monetize the results that we get.
And that's the real difference from education.
And I think that requires us to shift our mindset into some
things that we think are really valuable.
If you can't monetize them, it's harder to make it a business
case for doing them. Absolutely, absolutely.
And one of the things Michael asked is what are some ways and
this is. I don't know if this is in our
wheelhouse, but maybe we can we can kind of figure it out.
What are some ways you can tactfully request feedback while
working remotely? I just ask.
We have things. So the 30/16/90 plan is
something I'm seeing a lot, especially in the corporate
space of like what you're going to do and you have to check in
with your supervisor. There's a lot of different plan
implementations and milestones that are put into place.
I would say regular one-on-one chats with your manager, your
team. Because feedback comes in all
forms, right? It's going to come back in the
form of what you're doing on your projects and and how you
are as a worker and as a teammate collaborative, that
kind of stuff. So I would just say ask for it
and also get familiar with what types of tools your company has
that you know you're where you're tracking those milestones
and you're tracking that information.
Right. And I think, yeah, I think it
can feel awkward to say how am I doing because that's such a
broad opening ended question. But if you come at it with some
really specific meal specifics that around benchmarking and
those metrics that Holly just mentioned, you can really say
you know on our last project, what were some things that
worked really well, What were some things that we can improve
on. And so framing it in terms of
really concrete steps to change, but also feedback around the
product and not the people makes people a lot more comfortable in
giving that feedback. So yeah, I think that's all the
questions we had in the chat. We had some, we had some really
engaging. We had a really engaging
audience out on the LinkedIn live space and a lot of like
claps and like you know, like jazzy hands.
It was exciting and that everybody's really grateful.
That this has been very informative.
So any last things you wanna share?
Any words of wisdom? People stepping into this space
looking for roles that they like What is the we can probably end
with this. What is the first thing you need
to do when you're transitioning into the role?
What's the first thing you should do when you're?
Trying to go to spot shifts, you're transitioning into a new
role. What's the first thing you need
to do? Have a 306090 day plan?
There you. Go No.
But I definitely think really making sure you talk to every
single person who is going to be on your team or adjacent to your
team in the 1st 30 days, just really start building those
connections. Because particularly in a remote
environment, the connections are harder to develop.
And just asking people really generally to tell you about what
they do. What do they see?
Who worked your job previously? How did they interact?
What did they really value about those interactions?
Get to know people and get to know the tasks and don't stress
about having to really perform the first.
I mean that whole 306090 day. It's such a brilliant structure.
It's usually at the end of 90 days.
You understand our organization well enough to do something so
it's a process and you don't have to hit the ground running
in a week the way we ask teachers to do or less.
Absolutely. And I tell people 20 minutes a
day, I'm like, don't. Do not make it.
Your full time job, looking for a job because you're going to
burn out and I'm I'm looking up your profile right now.
LinkedIn so I can tell everybody to connect with you.
Oh, yes. Thank you.
But it's really it's it. It really is difficult.
If you make it your full time role like you will, you will
become that person who's like, I've been searching for this job
for 500 years and I haven't found anything 20 minutes a day.
Yeah, yeah. And take time off.
I really feel that when I take time off, it just all the ideas
start to come out. And I think when you when you
take a pause, what you'll start to do is say, oh, now I see how
I could have framed my experience in that way or I
forgot that I always do that and wait, that's actually really
important. So give yourself time to rest.
And yeah, don't, don't make it. Don't make it something that
that overtakes your life because.
Because it can really fast Burnout is real.
Burnout is huge in the in the job industry.
Well, Chelsea, I always love talking to you.
It's always a great conversation and I learn something new every
time. And I know that people are so
thankful that you haven't sight like, skipping the mindsets that
you have for helping educators transition into roles and of
course to salary the 60 K plus most of your jobs are like.
Higher than that, the salaries that I see.
So that's really awesome. And I know sometimes you message
me like look at this one, it's it's so this is so awesome.
It's really great. So everybody needs to connect
with Chelsea on LinkedIn and go to Skip.
And if you have any questions, you know, definitely reach out
to us and this is going to, this was recorded, it's going to be
made into a video. It's going to be on our YouTube
page and it's also going to be made in audio episodes.
So it's going to go back, Watch, listen, learn some more.
You know, put it on repeat and share all the things with your
friends. So, yeah, thank you so much for
having me. I always enjoy our conversations
and our future conversations, the ones we're going to be
having. Absolutely.
You know that's coming.