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How to Transition to an Education Career Using Transferable Skills

how to transition to an education career using transferable skills

Learn how to transition to an education career using transferable skills effectively. If you are making a career change to a teaching, school administration, or any other education position, you will need to uncover relevant accomplishments and skills to show your value.

The biggest challenge when making a transition to an education career is creating a compelling education-focused resume. It may seem like a daunting task trying to enter the education field from another industry because of your lack of related experience. The solution to this is to highlight your relevant transferable skills to showcasing what you can do in the field of education.

Divide transferable skills into three different groups – people, data, and equipment. The category for people refers to your communication skills, teaching, supervising, and coaching, while the data group concerns record-keeping, translating, and evaluating data, budgeting, researching, and compiling documentation. The equipment category is about your skills in operating computers, SMART Board, and other industry-related equipment.

If you take the time to identify your transferable skills and evaluate your personal proficiencies, you can convey to possible school districts that you have the core skills necessary to excel in your new teaching career. Highlighting your transferable skills will communicate you are qualified for the position you which to secure. Don’t skimp on this step. If you do, your transition to an education career will be difficult and frustrating.

If you showcase these skills in your teaching resume, it can help the reader quickly identify a viable candidate to interview.

List the highlights of your transferable skills in the qualification or profile summary. You can start it with a section title: “Highlights of Related Expertise” and create a bulleted list of all your identified transferable skills that will be valuable in the field of education.

You can also support your list of transferrable skills with solid examples of how you could use them successfully in your previous work experience. You can state these accomplishments by completing the following:

  1. What are the main challenges you faced?
  2. What type of action did you take to resolve these challenges?
  3. What were the results of your actions?

Answering these questions will help build confidence. It will help you realize you have competencies in the field of education. The results from the questions above can discover accomplishments to be used in the job history section of your resume. Taking the time to identify your transferable skills can help convince potential employers that you have what is required to be an excellent elementary teacher job, librarian, school administrator, or any other education position.

Including achievements in your resume will help create a powerful and useful tool for your education job search. With the use of transferable skills, you will present yourself in an advantageous position where you can increase your chances of being hired and obtain the position you want in the complex world of education.

If you need help to transition to an education career, reach out to us for help.