Summary: I helped 50+ people get new job offers this year. I’m grateful for the amazing TPLD mentors who make it all possible and everyone who trusts me to give them career advice. I’m putting a pause on my 1:1 meetings so that I can focus on scaling my ability to provide career advice.
Wow. What a year.
Recently one of my friends commented to me that I basically have my own fan club on LinkedIn which is really funny because I’ve always considered myself as just a regular dude on the internet lmao.
I’m definitely a LinkedIn catfisher because my profile picture is the ONE professional headshot I have of myself. When people connect with me they think I’m all business but then they join a 1:1 meeting with me and see my bed head, unshaven face, and a fuzzy blue blanket wrapped over my shoulders.
I’d attribute the fan club comment to the results of my work and the impact I’ve been able to make through TPLD. Helping people, especially teachers, with their career transitions is what I’m most passionate about in my free time. It’s like my one way to prove to the world that I’m still a good person now that I’m not a teacher any more. Well, there’s a lot to unpack there and it’s probably more appropriate to discuss with a therapist than you so let’s move on. I’m kiddinggg, I’m kiddinggg… ish.
I’ll start with some numbers, then share my own thoughts, and then tell you what’s next for me.
By the Numbers
- 52 people who I helped* get a job offer through resume/portfolio reviews and interview coaching; I’m only going to claim 0.01% of the total work done here because ultimately those people did 99.99% of the work themselves
- 144 one-on-one meetings with people looking for career help
- 108 total hours volunteered, at minimum; I schedule 30 minutes per meeting and it usually takes me 15 minutes to review a resume/portfolio and send pre-meeting feedback
- 6 weeks in advance I’m booked at any given time, on average
- $74,890 salary for new FTE job offers in L&D, on average; thank you to everyone who provided me with their own salary information which helped me negotiate my salary increase this year
- 3 people who received $90,000+ for their new FTE job offers in L&D; can you imagine making that much in your first corporate role? SHEESH. Well done, folks! (I only earned $55,000 in my first corporate role)
My Thoughts
The first thing I have to say is THANK YOU to Sara Stevick and the rest of the amazing mentors in our LinkedIn group Teaching: A Path to L&D (TPLD). Thank you for making this all possible and thank you for changing people’s lives for the better and all for free.
The second thing I have to say is THANK YOU to all of the TPLD members, friends, and random internet people who’ve trusted me to give them career advice so far.
I feel very confident about the career advice I give. The results speak for themselves. It’s easy for me to do resume/portfolio reviews and interview coaching because I say the same things almost every time. I’m consistent with my messaging and about what needs to be done. More on this later.
I have two guiding principles when it comes to the career advice I give:
- I want to get you from point A to point B (a job offer) as fast as possible
- I’ll tell you everything that I would’ve wanted someone else to tell me back then
What’s Next for Me
I’ll be putting a pause on my 1:1 meetings indefinitely. I have meetings booked through January which I’ll honor, and then I’ll decide when to open them up later in 2022. The primary reason is to protect my own time knowing that Q1 2022 will be a critical quarter for my team at work as we launch a big project as well as committing time to complete Instructional Design Principles for Course Creation run by Eduflow Academy. With the limited time remaining, I’d like to focus on scaling my ability to provide career advice.
As I mentioned in the section above, it’s easy for me to do resume/portfolio reviews and interview coaching because I say the same things almost every time. I’ve certainly helped a lot of people already, but I know that I can help even more. I’m thinking about creating self-led materials that I can send to people who are looking for feedback on their resume/portfolio. These materials would include videos where I share my own best practices and perform actual resume/portfolio reviews. They’d also include checklists for people to assess their resume/portfolio. It’ll be a trade-off: I won’t be able to provide direct feedback and coaching like I would in 1:1 meetings, but I’ll be able to greatly increase the reach of my work.
The way it plays in my head goes like this: Someone reaches out to me for resume/portfolio/interview help. I send them my self-led materials. They do their own work, and if they’re interested in meeting with someone else, then they can take their revised work to another TPLD mentor. I’m fully confident in my peers to provide quality career advice.
There you have it. 2021 was a big year for me as I helped 50+ people get new job offers. TPLD is an amazing community that lets me flourish as a mentor and continues to change people’s lives all for free. I’ve got a big plate as soon as Q1 2022 arrives so I’ll be putting a pause on my 1:1 meetings. I hope to scale my ability to provide career advice by creating self-led materials for people who are still interested in hearing from me.
Tyler Banh 