Answering your questions on promotions, career transitions, and more!

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Resources of the Week!

1. Check out our curated community job board!

2. I shared some insights with Fast Company on career growth and getting promoted - check it out!

Answering YOUR Questions!

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🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer a few of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

This question is probably relevant to many of you given that so many have taken jobs that may not be their first pick in this job market.

This is where using a “Career Accomplishments” or “Summary” section can be useful. Focus that on your experience with adult learning, name-drop the companies you worked at, and you can also note the pivot into Kinder Care as a unique opportunity to build their platform. This section is the first thing recruiters will see and will contextualize the rest of your experience for them while also highlighting any of your biggest wins in previous positions that may be more relevant.

You can certainly try to hide it by using an acronym, especially if it’s commonly used. But they will generally want to figure out what it was you were doing and if KLC doesn’t show up as any sort of search as they are trying to figure out where you worked, it could raise more questions. IMO if they plan to hold this against you, they’re going to do it either in your application or in the first conversation where they find out where you currently work. So it’s better to be clear about where you worked, and focus more on why that move makes you a better candidate and what skills you built while in this role.

Realistically most employers may not view that as ID experience even if you did train adults as an AP.

My suggestion would be to focus on L&D roles with school districts, charter networks, or organizations that train teachers. Non-profits, ed tech, etc. In these fields, your experience in the classroom is likely a non-negotiable so you aren’t up against people with industry experience, and they will better understand how your work translates to their context as well.

I would also make sure to highlight a lot of your training and design experience on your resume - focus more on that than on student learning for example when applying outside of education since this will be more relevant. Link to content you’ve created so they can see how your work stacks up with what they’re looking for.

My suggestion is to list the last 3 years as your own consulting project. You do not need an LLC or anything to “prove” you had an official agency or anything of this sort.

Simply list “Your Name Consulting” (or come up with a more fun title!) and then list the various contracts underneath. I would only list what’s relevant, and dates in this case don’t matter - they don’t need to know if it was a 3 week project or a 6 month one. This makes the move look much more intentional, and does not flood your resume with lots of short stints.

Most employers consider both business need and performance in making these kinds of decisions.

Are the people being promoted doing the same job as you or different ones? It’s possible other workstreams warrant promotion while yours doesn’t.

But if it’s the same work, then I would consider whether they are doing something different - are they producing better results? Are they more involved? Have they had more experience in your workplace even if they have less overall experience? Is your manager able to give you clarity around what skills you need to demonstrate or around why you aren’t being promoted?

Personally, if your manager can give you clarity around a path to promotion and what factors are considered, then I would work on those things - whether it results in promotion at your work place or simply makes you more competitive on the market, it will pay off.

If your manager can’t give you any guidance or clarity around these decisions while others doing the same work are getting that recognition, then I might start my job search at this point since it seems like this employer may simply not be the best fit for your career growth.

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