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Skip's Weekly Newsletter is Back!
Chelsea Avirett
September 09, 2023
Thank you for reading the EdSkipper, Skip’s newsletter about skipping from education to education-aligned careers! Every Saturday, I send out a list of curated remote jobs. Premium subscribers receive two additional emails a month with industry insights and advice to help you apply more competitively to the jobs you’re passionate about.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before … the EdSkipper is back!
Over the last year (or more?!), I’ve restarted this newsletter twice. I’ve had engaging posts lined up and was excited to be able to dive deeper into topics than social media allows.
And then it all fizzled.
I’ve just had too much to balance: curating great jobs, managing the course and 1:1s, and building out the larger databases that underlie so much of my advice.
This time is really different!
One reason the newsletter has never been sustainable is that it takes a long time to write the kind of posts that provide value — unique advice you can’t find elsewhere, anchored in lots of research and data. Some of these posts take 4-6 hours to write, in fact.
With that in mind, I’ve created a new structure for the newsletter that will continue to provide value for you but also be sustainable on my end:
A free Saturday blast: this will include curated jobs, a weekly poll, and (often) advice for your job skip.
Weekly application advice for featured job(s) — examples: how to pitch your skills or determine whether you should apply for the job, the recruiter/hiring manager’s info, insight into the company’s current employee’s background, and so forth.
2 premium newsletters a month — here I’ll do my deep dives into data-driven application advice and industry insights. Readers who have been with me for a long time will recognize this kind of content!
Today and next week, every subscriber — free or paid — will receive the premium newsletter.
While you’ll get premium content this week, don’t wait to upgrade — early subscribers will save money for the entire length of your subscription. (Yes, even if I later add-on more benefits and increase the price!)
I’ve got some exciting premium content planned for the Fall. Doing some deeper data dives into the skills you need to apply competitively to Customer Success jobs and continuing my “50 Educator to X” series by exploring Instructional Design/L&D and Project/Program Management jobs.
And, if it’s not the right time to upgrade, you’ll still get the best curated jobs in your inbox every Saturday morning.
So glad to be back,
~Chelsea
This Week’s Poll: Application KPI (Application-to-Interview Rate)
One of the best ways to evaluate whether you’re applying to jobs that match your skills and whether your resume is competitive is to track how many interview requests you’ve received compared to the number of applications you’ve sent out.
To calculate the percentage, divide your number of interviews by the number of applications and multiply by 100. For this metric, only count multiple interviews with the same company as a single interview.
Next week I’ll share reader results and some industry norms.
What is your application-to-interview rate? |
This Week’s Jobs
FEATURED JOB
Merit America is hiring an Admissions Counselor who has strong soft skills (like relationship-building, project management skills, etc). The Admissions Counselor will primarily be responsible for three buckets of responsibility: communicating with applicants, managing virtual open houses, and applicant data management. $59k (4-day week). NB: If you’re interested in this job, apply this weekend — Merit America typically has a very small posting to interview timeline!
PREMIUM CONTENT
Next week this kind of content will only be available to subscribers! Remember, you can subscribe now with the launch price of $6/month (price changes 9/13).
How to Tailor Your Resume
Many jobs don’t require candidates to have specific industry backgrounds anymore. Instead, they’re focusing on specific skills they want candidates to possess. This is overall a great trend but it has one significant drawback: often the desired skills are soft skills that are hard to represent on your resume!
That’s the case with Merit’s Admissions Counselor position — they want candidates skilled in “relationship-building” who have an “entrepreneurial drive” and exhibit “professionalism” (and that’s just a few of the soft skills they talk about).
If you’re struggling to figure out how to showcase those skills in your resume, here are a few concrete suggestions:
Relationship-building: describe the procedures and systems you use to proactively manage and build positive relationships with both students and families. Think about how you start the year or orient everyone to a new procedure. Also think about how you track behaviors and create intervention plans (esp in terms of how many data points you monitor in student information systems).
Operational Excellence/Entrepreneurial Drive: I frequently see educators reference Covid as an example of how they’ve navigated ambiguity and fast-paced, ever-changing environments. But there are other ways to showcase this that are more specific to you — what challenges do you effortlessly juggle and what is the impact you have because you’ve solved those challenges? what challenges have you only wrangled into a manageable solution because of creative programming or other solutions? These make great bullet points (esp if you have a few examples and can state that you’ve created a number of programs, procedures, or policies to address certain issues).
Social-Impact Mindset: many of you work with Title 1 populations — and that means you probably have data to show that you’ve helped a certain percentage of your students improve multiple grade levels in a year through concrete programs and learning interventions.
Professionalism: educators are collaborators — we’re regularly meeting with colleagues to align curriculum, discuss particular students, provide informal mentorship, and share resources. Talk about what specific tasks you are known for in your department or Professional Learning Community or committees.
Data Management: I mentioned student info systems above but it’s also worth a separate category. This entire job description is full of “emphasis words” around data — they analyze tens of millions of job postings, they expect certain customer satisfaction rates from their Admissions Counselors, and they are looking for a candidate who can manage a large-scale application system. You probably track attendance, behavior, student performance, etc and each of those has sub variables too. That’s relevant work and you can talk about it in terms of how frequently you track and report metrics as well as how many you’re monitoring and where you input the data. Bonus points if you’re also creating (some of) your own monitoring systems!
CURRICULUM/INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN JOBS
Illustrative Mathematics is hiring an experienced Instructional Designer with a pk-12 curriculum and/or professional learning background. The ID will create both print and digital media instructional materials as well as accompanying resources (activities, assessments, multimedia, etc). $60/hour (25-30/hours/week)
Huckleberry is hiring a part-time Writer who has experience writing as well as knowledge of child development or parenting topics. The writer will create short-form, mobile-friendly content and work with SMEs to maintain content accuracy. 5+ years experience writing. $30-40/hour
DATA/RESEARCH JOBS
Amira Learning is hiring a Data Integration Specialist who will provide technical support to their clients, including year-round school onboarding support, diagnosing and troubleshooting issues, and providing training as necessary. Requires experience with Clever Rostering and providing customer support. $60-75k.
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT JOBS
Right to Be, which trains bystanders to intervene when they witness harassment, is hiring a Director of Training who has 5+ years experience in a similar position. The Director will be responsible for supervising 5-6 employees, program development and implementation, managing the training operations, and internal collaboration and external networking. $90-100k. NB: REQUIRES INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE
PROGRAM/PROJECT MANAGEMENT JOBS
The Alliance for Early Success is hiring a Community and Network Associate with relevant skills and knowledge of early childhood programs and policies. The Associate will be responsible for strengthening network relationships by gathering and disseminating resources and maintaining a strong database of connections. $74-91k.
Reach Out and Read is hiring a National Program Manager with 5+ years experience in ECE or related fields. The Program Manager will provide programming and implementation support to Reach Out and Read affiliates. This will require (mostly) virtual site visits, coaching and training, as well as program expansion and data evaluation and reporting. $65-70k.
Join the conversation