I initially meant to use this interview as a Case Study, but I decided it was just too good to keep to myself, so I am using it as this week's podcast episode in addition to using it as a Case Study.
Listen to Jillian share how fast she is progressing just since getting her new job in April, and how she is enjoying the extra time she now has to be a better wife, mother, and friend.
I initially meant to use this interview as a Case Study, but I decided it was just too good to keep to myself, so I am using it as this week's podcast episode in addition to using it as a Case Study.
Listen to Jillian share how fast she is progressing just since getting her new job in April, and how she is enjoying the extra time she now has to be a better wife, mother, and friend.
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 disliking 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. 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 2:Welcome back to another episode of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. This week, I have a very special treat for you, and it's rather unexpected, which is why I needed to offer this special introduction. Recently, I had a client who was hired, uh, back in April and she had let me know since then, how happy she was in her new position and how well it was going. And I asked her if she'd be willing to be an a new case study, it's been a little while since I recorded the last case study of a successful client, she agreed that she would be happy to do that. And the conversation went so well that it occurred to me after we were done that perhaps I could offer the case study as this week's podcast episode. So you're in for a treat. What you're going to be hearing is conversation between Gillian and myself about her new position and how, how it all transpired. And I hope that you'll enjoy it and take some nuggets away with you from her particular experience, if nothing else, no, that she was not the only client that I had who got hired in April. She was one of three. And since then I've had another client who has been hired. The gist of that is that the economy is opening up. Jobs are available. And if have been working on your resume and cover letter and LinkedIn and all the other, moving parts, your interview skills, all the moving parts of the job search, so that you're ready to pounce. When the opportunity arise, it puts you in a tunnel, terrific position. However, if you haven't started yet to position yourself for the job of your dreams, the career change that you right now are only thinking, being about now is the time for you to start thinking in terms of what is it that you want to do next? And how can you position yourself if not for this year, to this coming year, to be your last year of teaching? Um, because it's already, probably too late where you're in July. So if you haven't already found another job, you'd probably going to be back in your other teaching position, but you could use this coming year to help you, uh, help yourself learn what you need to know to position yourself for a job that will be available during the school year, because you can always quit or after the school year a position position yourself for something that will start after the school year is done. So listen to what Julian has to say, and I hope you'll take takes, um, really good information away from our conversation to get it. So now I'll turn it over to the case study between Gillian and myself and that conversation enjoy welcome to a new case study that I am going to be offering to you today. My name is kitty Boitnott. I'm the owner of Boitnott coaching and the founder of teachers in transition, a company that specializes in working with burnout teachers who are ready to make a change in their career. And I have with me today, one of my former clients, Jill, actually, we're going to continue to have a relationship. So I don't know that formers an accurate description of Goen, but Jillian and I met a number of months ago when she reached out to me, wanting to know more about how I might be able to help her to transition from her current position as a and teacher and Texas, to something new. She was preparing herself for the human resources area, but she had a few more months to go in her program. And she was interested in working with me so that we could help along her job searching her career change. Jillian has been a band teacher, a mariachi teacher, and a color guard teacher, as well as an elementary music teacher for a combined 10 years in Texas, before finding I think the job of your dreams, right? Julia, at least so far,
Speaker 3:So far. Yes, it's been pretty great.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about how long have you been in your current position?
Speaker 3:So I have been in my current position for about two months now, just shy of two months.
Speaker 2:And you were just telling me, as we got on the call that you've already been given the opportunity to advance in the company, is that right?
Speaker 3:Yes, I have. Um, I was originally, uh, signed on to be a recruitment coordinator. So helping them run all of their processes in terms of bringing in the right person for the right role and organizing everything that goes along with a company that's got, you know, 5,000 plus employees. And when I got there shortly after I arrived, the benefits coordinator decided that the position was not right for her anymore. And my new company knew that I was interested in the HR field. And so they told me that they would give me a shot on assisting on some of these things. And as I have been working through that and helping them I've told them that I'm really interested in it. And we had a meeting just today, actually about me being able to move into a role as a benefits person. And I just that's unheard of, I thought it would be something that would be years down the line rather than less than 90 days,
Speaker 2:Less than 90 days on the job. Now you are a little bit unusual in that you interviewed for an internship and ended up getting offered a job. So tell people a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:So I actually found the role through another company. Um, and I didn't realize that they were an, uh, a placement company. I thought the role was with them. And so when I was interviewing with them the first time they said, oh, the role isn't with us, we help college graduates, uh, find placements. And what we do is you will work with the company, uh, for a short period of time, but we pay you hourly. And then if you and the company decided that this is a good fit, you convert to full-time with them, and then they pay you whatever your rate may be. And I thought, I just don't know if this is going to work with our budget, but it doesn't hurt to interview. I need to get back out there and get into that process, especially because it had been 10 years since I had interviewed for anything that was outside of the teaching world. And it's just it's different. So I did the interview and we found out that it actually was not an intern role. It was going to be a direct hire role. So, and then it was just another blessing that it was something that was in our budget. Something that we could afford for me to take as a pay cut and still do what we needed to do to take care of our family. So it was just unbelievable. And at the rate
Speaker 2:You're going, I think it's safe to say that at some point in the not too distant future, you will outpace what you were making as a teacher. Yes, it caused they're moving you so much faster than you would ever be able to move through. The teacher scales that crawl by year by year, by year with two and 3% raises in most cases. So the, the risk that you've taken in taking this particular position, I think will probably eventually pay off in the long run, not to mention that you've been happier in your new role, right?
Speaker 3:Um, believably happier. Um, my husband has noticed a difference. My friends have noticed a difference. And one of the things about teachers is it's just such an inherent part of who you are and what you do that it's really difficult to leave those daily stresses. And those daily things of is this student eating at home and is this student's parent going to lose their job? Because the student was telling you that things are rough at home, and it's just leaving those things at home is so difficult when you get to your house and you need to be a parent, a spouse, a friend, a partner, and my friends and my husband have noticed that I have more to give, you know, my, my daily work stresses are just that their daily work stresses. They're things that I can say, okay, well, it's time for me to step away from this and I can enter it
Speaker 2:Tomorrow. That's right. No dragging stuff home to do no planning, no grading, no planning, none of that other stuff that goes along with an average irregular teaching job. That's right. Absolutely. That is awesome. So I want to ask you back. I remember the day that you and I first talked during your discovery session. In fact, I remember sitting in my car, chatting with you because I was in transit to somewhere or coming home from somewhere when our appointment time popped up. And by the time I got home, we were still chatting away. So tell me when you made the appointment for that initial discovery session, you really didn't know anything about me, other than whatever you had seen online. What challenge were you facing at the time when you decided I need to talk to that woman and I'm going to make them appointment?
Speaker 3:So I had found that let me back up in the fall, fall of 2019, I had come to this point in my career where the environment that I was working in was just not good. It was a toxic, difficult situation. And I knew that I needed to leave. And while I had a temporary fix of moving to elementary, and that environment was better, it was more, uh, conducive to growth. It still wasn't the full fix that I needed while I, I wasn't feeling like everything I did was under a magnifying glass of everything you do is wrong. And you need to change everything about yourself to even be remotely, right. I just wasn't feeling that passion anymore. And I had been applying since the late fall of 2019 and things just weren't panning out. And I thought, there's, I can't be this poor of a candidate, something isn't right. And I need, I need help because I can't keep going on like this. I have to make a change for myself and for my family. And I found you when I was looking up how to transition out of teaching. And that was literally what I typed in. And I found your podcast. And I, I, I, that's how I started. I started listening and I was like, she just has a calm, demeanor and an air of somebody that knows what they're talking about, because it's been proven time and time again, that it's just something that you exude, you were coming from a place of. I've been there. I've been that teacher that was burned out and it, till you've been in that role, it's really difficult to truly understand what teachers are going through in this country right now. It just,
Speaker 2:And this past year has just sort of been the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of teachers. That pandemic was just the last straw with all of the different changes and different approaches and different. Some people were teaching in person full time. Others were teaching hybrid. Others were teaching virtual and others were teaching a combination of everything, which I guess was the hybrid. And it was tremendously stressful. Absolutely. And teachers took on responsibilities that they really should not have needed to take on kids who didn't have laptops. Didn't have wifi, didn't have broadband at home kids who were left to their own devices because their parents had to go to work. And so the kid might or might not take the initiative to log on even every day. Right. And so we lost track of way too many kids. Absolutely. The virtual teaching. And yet, you know, during the pandemic, there was nobody to blame. It was what it was. People were doing the best that they could and making the best of a horrible, horrible situation. So after we started working together, can you pinpoint a moment or a time of timeframe where you began to change up your approach and started to see a difference in the results that you were getting from your different applications?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So for me, I had started working ahead in some of the lessons because I already knew I came in knowing the field that I wanted to go into. So that discovery part for me was already done because I had spent a full year thinking about it and I just kept coming back, coming back to HR. Yeah. So at that point it was just the miracle of, oh yeah, you have to change your resume for every job that you apply for. And in hindsight, it's just common sense. But at the time when you've been out of it for so long, you don't know, and you don't know how to tailor specific things that you've done. You know, what did I do as a band director that I can apply to the HR field and knowing how to tweak those things that you've done, because they're truly, you've gained valuable skills and teaching. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's just a matter of translating the skills that you have into the language that the hiring manager for the job that you want can understand. Absolutely. And I think the biggest mistake teachers make, especially in the beginning of their job search, they began to catch on when they have applied for a dozen different jobs. And haven't heard back from anybody, there must be something wrong that I'm doing, but in the, in the beginning, most teachers think I just need a resume and something that points to all of my teaching accomplishments and boom, send it out and expect everybody to do the interpretation for them. Oh, she can do that. So she must be able to do this. She was able to achieve that. So that translates to this. And the truth is that hiring managers are busy. People, HR directors are extremely busy and the field is very, very competitive. So the average resume only gets an 11 second look, six, somewhere between six and 11 seconds. That's assuming that you've made it through the applicant system, which is where most teachers get their resumes thrown out right from the get go, because they haven't written their resumes with the applicant tracking system in mind. But even if they make it through the applicant tracking system, the average HR director is going to just eyeball looking for the specific skills that are needed for the job that they're looking to fill. And if they don't see them, they don't stop to interpret anything. They just move on to the next candidate. So as a teacher, looking to transition into a new career, it's up to the teacher to figure out the new language and speak that language in your resume in your cover letter, in your LinkedIn profile, so that you can make those connections between what you can do, what you have to offer as a candidate, to the job that happens to be open. And that's the key to the entire process. So, uh, you know, I, I'm glad that you've found me. I'm glad you were able to, to figure that out. What, if anything, were some other benefits that you might've experienced from working with may through the program?
Speaker 3:So one of the hardest things about leaving teaching and, and feeling like just the situation that I was in, I really seen my self-esteem and my self-confidence drop. And as I've gotten into this new role and, you know, been able to take on these daily challenges, it's so surreal to me to be in such a positive environment because I, uh, I've been there, like I said, less than 90 days, and I have received more praise for simply just doing my job. Then I could in the last, you know, four years of teaching at the high school and that's not to say, oh, look at me. I'm amazing. It's just that I was just, I was doing my job and to be recognized for you're doing great. And we're glad to have you here. And to know that that's being seen when I feel like a lot of teachers, part of the burnout comes from, you know, the kids appreciate you, but what are you doing all of it for? And it's not ever for the accolades, but knowing
Speaker 2:Nice. It's nice to be told. Thank you for your efforts. We appreciate you you're and not, and not for it to be just lip service or something that makes you feel like they're going through the motions to say, thank you. Uh, you, this reminds me of a client that I had who got a job a year ago, who emailed me in may. And the subject heading was I love my new job. And she wraps it eyes for a long email about how much happier she was and how working in this environment was like walking out of a dark theater into the sunshine. And she was still getting used to the idea. She was also getting used to the idea of being told how great she was doing and how much the people that she works with appreciator. And she wrote, even in the email that her husband had commented that school really broke you didn't today because she had not been recognized or thanked for any of the extra stuff that she was doing. She was not only working full time, but she volunteered to do a lot of the extra activities around the school and to plan some of their student events. And she wasn't getting the same kind of thank you and appreciation that she was getting in her new job. So it, it just takes a little bit to go along way, as long as it's sincere. Yes. And you know, that they actually mean it when they say it. Like I said, it's not just not just lip service. What, if anything, would you tell a friend or colleague who might be struggling with their own job search or who might be at just the very beginning of thinking about changing jobs? Would you, would you be willing to recommend that they work with me and, and, and investigate the program, or would you be reluctant to share with them? I
Speaker 3:Would not hesitate to recommend that they work with you. Um, you know, I spoke about this a little bit earlier, but just the, the kindness and the care that you put into each of your, uh, people that you work with each of your clients, you know, it's just, it shows through not just in the fact that people are getting placed, but the fact that people keep coming back to check in with you, you know, a year later that says something, the fact that you, you reached out to me, you said you had another, uh, client that was interested in moving into the HR field. And would I be willing to talk to them, creating that network of support? I think when you're looking at making a change, that can be just absolutely terrifying. You know, you're thinking, what am I thinking? Why am I leaving teaching? Am I losing my mind? No, you're not losing your mind. And if you're feeling like it's time to go, you're probably right.
Speaker 2:Right. And the community that does the group coaching calls at least affirm that you're not the only one who feels the way you feel. Absolutely. And so you don't feel quite so lonely. I hope that's, that's part of the reason that I offer the group coaching, just so that you can see that. Yeah. I'm not by myself and I, and, and the way I feel is the way a lot of other teachers feel. So thank you, Joey. And I really appreciate your kind words about my demeanor and how I help you. I hope it's true that I exude all of the things that you said earlier that I exude, I would be thrilled to think that that's the case. I know that I put my heart into the work that I do with my clients. I also put my heart into the podcast and into my weekly newsletters to communicate and try to inspire and motivate teachers who have decided for whatever reason that they're ready to make a move, but they're afraid they often feel stuck. They don't know where to turn and I'm, I want them to know that I am there for them. I have been in their shoes. I know what it's like. I also felt stuck for quite a while before I finally found my niche, which is what I'm doing now. And I know that I found my own purpose and passion, and I want to help other people find theirs. So thank you for your time this evening and sharing your success story. I'm so, so thrilled for you and the success. And I, I just know that this is just the tip of the iceberg for you. You're going to go far, far, far either with this company or another one, because almost every company of any size at all needs a good HR director. I worked closely with my HR director when I was president of the VEA and truly could not have gotten through some of the situations that we faced without her guidance. So I know you'll be there for someone someday in that same capacity. So thank you again. Is there anything you want to say in closing before we finish up for tonight?
Speaker 3:Uh, I would just like to thank you, you know, and I, I know I've, I've said that before, and it's like you said, it's not paying lip service because truly, uh, as you said, I felt stuck and hopeless and like, I was never going to be able to do anything, to be a better wife, mother, friend, partner, and making this change, moving into a career that brings me daily challenges. And daily joy has made such an impact on the rest of my life, because it's where you go every day. And you spend the majority of your day.
Speaker 2:Well remember work that feels fulfilling leads to a happier life. That is our mantra. So thank you so much. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening. Hang on for a minute.
Speaker 1:So there you have it, an episode of teachers and transition. I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back, please subscribe to teachers in transition so that 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 at kitty boy, not at boys, not coaching.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 and transition.