2022 Year in Review

Summary: I helped 70 people get new job offers this year. I got promoted to Manager and my team won an industry award for our work. I’ll continue to volunteer my time to provide career help for my friends, family, current connections, and limited new people despite my public calendar still on pause.

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Update on Volunteering

This year there were 70 people who I helped* get a job offer through resume/portfolio reviews and interview coaching. Like last year’s post, 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. What surprised me about this year’s number is that it was greater than last year’s number (52 people) even though I removed my public meeting calendar. I think there are a few reasons for this. The first is that there were people who I started helping in 2021 who didn’t get job offers until 2022. The second is that there were major layoffs which impacted my family, friends, and people who I’d already helped. My favorite success story from this year is how I helped my younger brother get a new job which paid him $50,000 more in base salary after he got laid off. (Fuck you, HidrateSpark. Failing company.)

I didn’t get around to creating any self-led materials for resume/portfolio reviews like I initially planned for this year. I didn’t even write any posts for my website this year except for this one. The main reason for this is that I spent the majority of my time and energy on work which I’ll talk about in the next section.

I’ve been very quiet on LinkedIn this year. I think LinkedIn is too noisy now for career transitioning teachers, and I don’t want to add to the noise. I could write a whole post on this. There are career transition professionals (read: people who get paid) who do this sort of work. Generally speaking, those are the people who are much more likely to have the “right” opinion than teachers who may have made career transitions themselves (like me). I can’t vouch for any of these paid professionals because I’ve never received any of their services or used any of their products. What I will say is that you should do your research, see examples, ask around, etc. before you pay anyone for their services or products. For the record, again, I’m not a professional. I’m still just a regular dude on the internet.

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Update on Work

This year was the most successful year of my career.

In February, my team launched a new Learning Experience Platform (LXP) worldwide to our company. We had spent the previous 6 months with our implementation phase and early pilot launch. This was the biggest project I’ve ever been a part of. I won’t share any of our metrics publicly, but our success is evident with the Gold Medal we earned from the Brandon Hall Group for the category “Best Approach to Implementing a Learning Experience Platform (LXP)”. It’s so cool to say that I’ve done industry award-winning work.

In October, I got promoted to Manager, Digital Learning. My previous job title had been Senior Specialist, Digital Learning since I joined the company in April 2020. I knew that I deserved it with all that I’d accomplished so far and all the additional responsibilities I’d been taking on. I felt completely supported by my manager, our team director, and our Chief Learning Officer. It’s been only four months since the title change and there’s already plenty of things I could write for my “In my first year as Manager, I struggled with…” list. But it’s all part of the process, and I’m excited to grow more comfortable in my new role.

In November, the contractor who I’d been supervising since February got offered a full-time role on our team and he accepted. It validated that he performed at a level where there was a long-term value-add and that I’d developed him well enough to get there. While I’m not a formal people manager yet, this was a valuable experience that confirmed to me that I do want to be a people manager someday. I’ve learned so much about trust, communication, etc. Like all relationships in life, I think it ultimately comes down to mutual respect.

As for an update on salary, my base pay is now $102,500. I’ve worked in corporate L&D for 4 years and my first salary in 2018 was $55,000. Six figures is really nice and I now make 111% more than my last year as a teacher ($48,500).

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What’s Next for Me

Here’s what I can say for sure— I’ll continue to volunteer my time to provide career help for my friends, family, current connections, and limited new people. I think more layoffs are imminent so more people will continue to need my help. I’ve done a good job at setting my own boundaries, and I still feel very confident about the career advice I give.

Beyond that, I’m not sure. I do still want to create those self-led materials for resume/portfolio reviews like I’d planned to do this year. There’s also more career transition topics that I want to write about. I don’t feel good that I’ve only written two articles in the past two years. It’s like the absolute bare minimum.

I’m worried that I’ll have to spend the majority of my time and energy on work again. I’m expecting to face the normal challenges of a first year Manager, and then there are some initiatives that I’m leading which haven’t really been done before at my company so those will be big challenges too. It requires thinking and that’s kind of the issue— I’m more of a doer than a thinker.

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There you have it. In 2022, I helped 70 people get new job offers. While the job market isn’t hot anymore, qualified people are still getting job offers. This year was the most successful year of my career with my promotion to Manager and an industry award for my team’s work. I’ll continue to provide career help where I can, and I anticipate a challenging year ahead at work.

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Bonus Content: My First Professional Conference

I had the pleasure of attending my first professional conference at Cornerstone Convergence 2022 in Las Vegas, NV. I truly felt valued by our vendor for covering our registration expenses and treating us well and by my company for covering my travel expenses. I was in full networking mode, and I met a lot of great people from our vendor team as well as people who were also clients of the vendor. My in-person social skills are STILL a work in progress post-pandemic. It’s like on Zoom I only have to read facial expressions but in person I have to read body language too. Then there’s not a set meeting time (e.g., 10:00am – 10:30am) so I gotta figure out when’s a good time to wrap up the conversation and move on.

Our vendor took us out to dinner one of the nights and allowed me to order a $240 tomahawk steak for the table. Talk about extracting value! I’m drooling just thinking about that steak again. Here’s a picture of me and my manager having a great time.

2021 Year in Review

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.

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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.

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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)

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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:

1. I want to get you from point A to point B (a job offer) as fast as possible
2. I’ll tell you everything that I would’ve wanted someone else to tell me back then

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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.

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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.

Learning Needs Analysis for Teachers

Summary: A Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) identifies performance gaps within an intended audience. There are a multitude of ways to collect quantitative and qualitative data for a LNA. You have plenty of experience (probably even an expertise) with conducting LNAs for your students.

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I’m trying to write more about topics that teachers aspiring to be instructional designers should know. It’s a struggle to try to translate the K-12 classroom experience to a corporate setting. They’re so different in so many ways. Yet that’s the challenge that teachers have to overcome when they’re applying for instructional designer roles.

In this post, I’ll explain what a LNA is, what it looks like in a corporate setting, and how you already do it as a teacher.

Note: Learning Needs Analysis and Training Needs Analysis are often used interchangeably. Some people don’t consider them to be exactly the same. I’m not going to get into the specifics there. I use LNA because it’s my preference.

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What Is a Learning Needs Analysis?

According to snhu.edu, a LNA is “the comparison of the current skills and competencies inside an organization against the skills required for the company to succeed.” The goal of a LNA is “to identify gaps in the skillset of the current workforce.”

All proposed projects should start with a LNA. For instructional designers, a LNA is the primary component of the Analyze phase in ADDIE. At a minimum, it should help you determine:

• the intended audience
• the business problems or performance gaps to address
• the knowledge, skills, or abilities (KSAs) required to perform the tasks
• the recommended courses of action

So, ultimately, the output of a LNA is a recommendation on the courses of action to help a particular audience learn KSAs that will solve business problems or performance gaps. Pretty fancy term for such a common sense idea, right?

Ideally, a LNA would confirm that a learning experience or training course is the correct solution to the business problems or performance gaps. Then you could move to the next phase of your project.

What Does a LNA Look Like in a Corporate Setting?

As an instructional designer, you’ll be approached by a senior business leader or a Subject Matter Expert (SME), and they’ll say something like “We need a training course for X topic.” Then naturally, you’ll ask “How do you know that?” To which they might reply “Because I said so.” Just kidding HAHA. I hope that doesn’t ever happen to anyone. More realistically, you’ll start a dialogue about why a learning experience or training course is needed, and that’s where a LNA comes into play.

The LNA, like all parts of your project, will be a collaboration between you and the senior business leader or SME. Together, you’ll run through a checklist of questions that will clearly define: the intended audience, their characteristics, and expectations; the business problems or performance gaps of that audience; the set of KSAs they need to learn to perform their tasks; and the recommended courses of action to address the learning needs.

The LNA will require both quantitative and qualitative data. Some of the data you’ll already have, some you’ll need to get from the senior business leader or SME, and some you’ll have to collect additionally. Here are a few common ways to get the data:

• HR or LMS reports: These might be performance reviews, exit interviews, and learning activities (e.g., online courses completed or ILT sessions attended).
• Observations: You can follow a rubric and document what you see. Just approach this delicately… you know how it feels to be observed by your principal.
• Self-assessments, surveys, interviews, or focus groups: Sometimes the best way to identify the learning needs of your learners is to ask the learners themselves. Go figure!
• Work samples: This could be anything that employees produce in their roles.

There’s a lot of variability when it comes to how different companies, teams, or projects conduct their LNAs. What you’ll find is that the more time and effort you invest into the LNA, the better defined your learning solution will be. You might even find that learning or training isn’t the solution for the problem!

How Do Teachers Do It Already?

While you probably don’t call it a LNA as a teacher, I guarantee that you’ve done every part of it already. These are the things you determine during your “teacher LNAs.”

• The intended audience is the students in your classroom. Whether it’s less than 10 students or more than 30 students or somewhere in between, you’re still responsible for meeting the learning needs of each individual student. And you have multiple classes a day, and each one of those has their own classroom dynamic.
• The performance gaps you have to address are your students’ proficiencies evaluated against learning objectives, department/district benchmarks and standards, Common Core State Standards, etc. You know what proficient looks like in your subject area, and you know where each of your students is in relation to that.
• The KSAs required to perform the tasks are outlined in your scope and sequence as you map out each unit for the school year. As the school year progresses, your students learn more and are able to do more. That’s the hope at least.
• The recommended courses of action are all of the instructional decisions you make on a daily and weekly basis, from what activities will best help your students achieve the learning objectives to how much time to spend on each one.

The ways that you collect quantitative and qualitative data during your teacher LNAs significantly exceed anything that an instructional designer, senior business leader, or SME does. Here’s a short list to illustrate:

• Formative and summative assessments: All of the student work that you evaluate during the learning process and at the conclusion of the learning process gives you a close pulse to where your learners are at and where the performance gaps are. Your students demonstrate their learning to you on a daily basis.
• Classroom observations: The interactions between you and your students and between themselves provide you with plenty of qualitative data about their learning needs. It could be that confused look on their faces when you introduce a new idea. Or it could be the vocabulary they use to teach each other. Those observations give you instant real-time feedback to adjust your methods.
• Historical student learning data: You have access to your students’ past class grades and standardized test scores (or someone in your school district does). You can also talk to their other teachers and past teachers as well. This historical student learning data helps you understand what academic successes or challenges your students are coming to your classroom with.

You spend 180 days a year with the students in your classroom. By the end of the school year, you’re going to know them very well. It’s not just their proficiencies and performance gaps related to LNAs. It’s their personalities, family lives, social lives, extra-curriculars, and everything else too.

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There you have it. A LNA compares the current KSAs of an intended audience to the required KSAs for their success. It identifies the performance gaps and recommends the courses of action to address the learning needs. In a corporate setting, there are a multitude of ways to collect quantitative and qualitative data for a LNA. As a teacher, you’ve done every part of a LNA– and to a higher degree– than any instructional designer, senior business leader, or SME would be expected to do.

Net Promoter Score for Teachers

Summary: You can use Net Promoter Score to measure your students’ experience with you and quantify how well-liked you are by your students.

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I always knew that I was well-liked by my students. I could tell by my interactions and conversations with them and what other teachers or parents told me. I could tell other people, like you reading this post right now, my friends, and even job interviewers that I was well-liked by my students. But how would they know?

I had plenty of stories to share, handwritten notes, emails, pictures, and small gifts to display. Still, I felt something was still missing– numerical evidence. As a math teacher, I wanted to back this up with numbers. I just didn’t know how.

In this post, I’ll explain the concept of Net Promoter Score (NPS), make a case for why you should use it as a teacher transitioning to a business career, and give an example to show how you can practically measure NPS in your classroom.

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What Is Net Promoter Score?

According to netpromoter.com, Net Promoter Score “measures customer experience and predicts business growth.” It also “provides the core measurement for customer experience management programs.” Here’s a short YouTube video from TemkinGroup to help you understand What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

I learned about NPS at my current company. We use NPS for everything. I mean everything. I’m fascinated by NPS because of its simplicity. The first question “How likely are you to recommend X to a friend, family member, or colleague?” defines close-ended numerical responses while the second question “Why?” allows for open-ended responses.

As a teacher, I could’ve asked my students “How likely are you to recommend Mr. Banh to a friend, peer, or another student at this school?” and “Why?” I’d have a number for my NPS and a list of positive, neutral, and negative feedback to act on. NPS is one way that I could’ve solved the problem I described earlier: I didn’t know how to quantify how well-liked I was by my students.

Okay. Let me pause here. I feel like I HAVE to address this because I’m trying to balance being precise with my words and, at the same time, keeping the concept simple… I’m equating an NPS to how well-liked I was by my students but the actual measurement is how likely my students were to recommend me. They’re NOT exactly the same thing. I just want to put it in human terms for you. And now I’ve unnecessarily extended the length of this post I’m sorry I care this much!!!!

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3 Reasons Why You Should Use NPS

Let me give you three reasons why you should use NPS as a teacher. Maybe I can convince you.

1. You can quantify how well-liked you are by your students (their “customer” experience) and get their feedback in a simple way. Oh, how the tables have turned! Now you’re the one who doesn’t want to open the report card and see what you got. You’ll hear this a lot from proponents of NPS: It’s not so much about the number– it’s what you do with it.
2. You already survey your students anyways. It’s not extra work. Every mid-quarter I’d set aside five minutes at the beginning of class to give my students time to answer a short two-question Google Forms survey: “What is one thing Mr. Banh does that helps you learn?” and “What is one thing Mr. Banh could do to help you learn better?” It would’ve been easy to just add the two NPS questions after them. (I don’t think I would’ve replaced my two original questions entirely because, to me, they were the right questions to ask.)
3. You get practice translating your teaching experience to a business context. I know you’ve felt stressed thinking about how you can advocate the value you bring as a teacher to interviewers who might not fully appreciate the value of teachers. I bet it’d be impressive for a teacher to walk into an interview room and casually talk about NPS.

If you’ve read these three reasons and you still don’t want to do it, then that’s okay. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and nothing lost.

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A Teacher Example

Suppose I could go back in time to add the two NPS questions to my mid-quarter survey. I send my survey to 120 students and get the responses below:

So what does that mean? Well, mathematically speaking, there’s a difference of positive 51 points between the percentage of students who are my Promoters versus the percentage of students who are my Detractors. Okay…

In reality, it wouldn’t mean too much right now. It’s just a number. Considering an NPS can range from -100 to 100, I’d generally be happy to see a positive score and know that I have more Promoters than Detractors. That is, there are more students who are extremely likely to recommend me (9-10s) than there are students who either are neutral or not at all likely recommend me (0-6s).

Like I said earlier, it’s not so much about the number– it’s what you do with it. I’d look at my NPS and read my students’ survey responses. Whatever my Promoters said they liked about me, I’d try to keep doing. Whatever my Passives or Detractors said, I’d try to improve their experience with me.

Maybe at the next mid-quarter I send the same survey to my students again. This time I get an NPS of 63. Then I could say something like “I increased my NPS with students by 12 points quarter over quarter.” Sounds good, right? I just quantified an improvement on how much my students like me– more specifically, their “customer” experience with me.

Maybe I’ve given the same survey for the past four mid-quarters and received an NPS of 51, 63, 57, and 58, respectively. Then I could say something like “I maintained my NPS with students at 51 or higher for the past four quarters.” How about that? I just quantified my ability to get students to like me and keep them liking me.

I’m fascinated with how I could’ve used NPS to measure how well-liked I was by my students beyond my stories, handwritten notes, emails, pictures, and small gifts. For you reading this post now, are you at least a little interested?

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Limitations of NPS

Let me get off the podium now. I’m not going to argue that NPS is a critical measure of your success as a teacher. You’ve succeeded without NPS until now; I’m sure you could continue the rest of your teaching career without thinking about it ever again. As much as I’m personally fascinated by NPS, I also recognize its limitations.

1. NPS is often used to benchmark against industry competitors. A company might say “You should buy our product because we have a customer NPS of 15 and our two primary competitors have an NPS of -21 and -5, respectively.” As a teacher, you wouldn’t want to say “I’m a better teacher than my colleagues in this building because my students like me more.” Not kosher. Beyond that, you wouldn’t even be able to find other teachers who measure their NPS.
2. There are so many reasons why a student might give you a certain 0-10 score, and a lot of those reasons might not be related to learning at all. Maybe they like you because they think you’re cool. Maybe you let them sleep in class. Maybe you throw the best classroom holiday parties. Just because a student is extremely likely to recommend you doesn’t mean they’d recommend you because you help them learn.

Those are two immediate limitations if you choose to use NPS. It’s one way to measure your success as a teacher, but certainly there are other (and probably better) ways to do that.

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There you have it. In the business world, NPS is a core measurement for customer experience. In the classroom, it can be used as a measurement for student experience. I suggested NPS as one way that I could’ve measured how well-liked I was by my students. By adding the two NPS questions to a mid-quarter survey, I could’ve quantified how likely they were to recommend me to a friend, peer, or another student at our school.

So let me ask you: What’s your NPS as a teacher? How likely are your students to recommend you to a friend, peer, or another student your school? Why?

If you have questions about NPS or how you can measure it in your classroom, then send me a message and we can set aside time to discuss it more.

Resume Help: Bullet Points

Summary: When you’re writing your teacher bullet points for your resume, you need to prioritize beating the ATS with an ATS-friendly format and exact word matches. You also need to highlight and quantify your top 4-5 most significant results.

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Disclaimer: I aim to be transparent in my writing on this website and in my personal conversations with other teachers. When it comes to posts about resumes, I gotta be extra clear about it.

Here’s what I am: A regular guy in real life. A current instructional designer with two years of experience. A former teacher with four years of experience. A person who owns the words I write and the words I speak.

Here’s what I’m not: A hiring manager. A recruiter or HR professional. A paid resume writer. Any sort of credentialed person that you must absolutely listen to.

As with all of my posts and conversations, please, I encourage you to take what’s useful and to talk to as many people whose inputs and feedback you can trust.

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Resume Basics

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about this, and I think there’s plenty of resources out there. Here are 10 Resume Writing Tips To Help You Land a Job from Indeed that I shared in a previous post. I also like this YouTube video from Devlin Peck on How to Create an Instructional Design Resume.

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This past month I’ve been helping several teachers with their resumes as they apply for instructional designer roles. I have such a different perspective now that I’ve been working in the field for two years, especially at a company where there’s a hyper-focus on measuring and quantifying results. You’ll see what I mean as you read this post.

When I scan through resumes for the first time, almost every time, the first thing I’ll think is “You need to quantify your results.” In fact, when I picked up own resume again, I thought to myself, “How did I get a job with such weak results?” Weak results as in how they’re written on my resume, not that the actual results of my work were weak. HAHAHA. I was forced to revise my own resume because I didn’t want to come off as “Do what I say, not what I do.”

In this post, I’ll share two POVs on how you can write better teacher bullet points for your resume.

Point of View 1: Prioritize Getting Past the ATS

Prioritize getting past the ATS first. That means having an ATS-compliant/friendly format. Don’t use stars or checkmarks as your bullet points. Just stick to the plain bullet points. That means optimizing exact word matches and not cluttering your resume about how you became a vegetarian after watching the Netflix documentary The Game Changers.

Understand what you’re up against. You’re probably applying for jobs on LinkedIn or other similar websites which probably have hundreds of applicants for each one. (There were 284 applicants for the job where I got my first offer.) Recruiters are not going to sit there and read through every single resume. There’s not enough time in the world for that!

So of course your resume is going to go through an automated program before it reaches human eyes. Of course it could reject you from a job that you were fully qualified for. Of course that’s going to make you feel like shit.

Write your teacher bullet points (and entire resume) so that you can get past the ATS and have a fair chance to represent yourself in a human conversation.

I like this YouTube video from Self-Made Millennial on how she Got My Resume Through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with a 95% Success Rate! You’re a human. Talk like a human when you get the chance to talk to a human. Don’t try to talk like a human to a computer.

My Point of View 2: Focus on the R in STAR

You did sooooo much as a teacher. I know you’re tempted to list 8-10 bullet points to try to cover it all. Don’t. Instead, highlight your top 4-5 most significant results. A lot of teacher bullet points that I see will address the Situation, Task, and Action (what they did), but they’ll completely omit the Results (what they achieved). I was guilty of the same thing.

On the topic of significant results, find a way to quantify those results. Make them tangible. This takes extra work. It means identifying what useful data you already have or what you need to additionally gather. Then it means getting close to numbers that you’re confident about.

For example, instead of just saying “Taught mathematics to 120+ students a year” you could say something like “Developed and implemented daily lesson plans for 120+ students a year with a 98% student passing rate.” See the difference?

Or how about this: “Analyzed learner data and designed quarterly formative assessments to address performance gaps which increased state test scores by an average of 12% per learner.”

You already dig into your students’ learning data to inform your teaching. Now extend that data analysis to measure your own results as a teacher.

My Teacher Bullet Points

I’ll share my own teacher bullet points below. I’m in a good spot and a bad spot. I’m in a good spot because I’m already an instructional designer so prospective employers would care more about my experience as an instructional designer than as a teacher. I’m in a bad spot because I’m two years removed from being a teacher and having access to all of the data I need to write great teacher bullet points. So this is what I’ve settled with:

• Designed, developed, and implemented daily lesson plans by applying learning theories, teaching methodologies, and learning technologies to achieve at least a 93% student passing rate annually
• Analyzed historical learner data to identify Student Learning Outcomes and evaluated learning with formative and summative assessments to increase state standardized test scores for 100% of students annually
• Differentiated instruction for two Response To Intervention (RTI) Tier 2 classes annually which enabled 100% of students to pass their Tier 1 class
• Served on the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) team to promote positive school behavior and increase academic achievement, evidenced by the reduction of tardiness and discipline referrals to less than 10% of the student body

My Rationale

I emphasized two POVs in this post: Prioritize getting past the ATS and focus on the R in STAR.

I use plain bullet points as part of my ATS-friendly resume format. For exact word matches, I hit each word of the ADDIE acronym once: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. I keep my teacher bullet points to four for the reasons I mentioned earlier– my instructional designer experience matters more now, and I don’t have the data I need to write great teacher bullet points. The results that I quantified are guaranteed for me. I can confidently explain them because they’re true.

But I’m not gonna act like my bullet points are what every teacher needs to have on their resume. If I explained the data analysis behind them, I promise that you wouldn’t be impressed haha.

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There you have it. The first way to improve your teacher bullet points on your resume is to prioritize beating the ATS by using an ATS-friendly format and getting exact word matches. The second way is to focus on the results you achieved and quantifying those results.

Would you like to meet to discuss your teacher bullet points? Do you have suggestions on how I can improve my teacher bullet points or other achievements I could list? Let’s connect and help each other out.

2020 Reflection

Summary: I shared my 2020 reflection with my colleagues at work during a small group activity. Getting a new job at Bain & Company was the most significant thing that happened in 2020 for me. I experienced an abundance of money which led me to achieve more financially.

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A few weeks ago, I participated in a small group activity during my department’s (virtual) end of year meeting. It involved building Legos, which brought out the kid in me, and I thought it was super fun. The first part was to choose one of the designs in the instructional manual and build it– a warm-up of sorts. The second part was to alter the build from the first part to represent something significant in 2020 for you.

I shared my response with my colleagues during the wrap-up of the activity, and they were especially moved. I thought I’d share it here too, since I feel strongly about my truth for 2020.

Part 1 Task

I chose to build the alligator from the instruction manual because it looked like the easiest one to build. It was mid-December, the last full week of work before the holiday break, and I’d had a hectic past few months at work. I didn’t have much mental energy to do more than what was asked.

It was simply a fun time, getting paid to build Legos, and nonchalantly bonding with my colleagues. I told them “I’m more of a doer than a thinker,” which some related with and they all laughed.

Check out the alligator:

Part 2 Task

When we were given the prompt to alter the original build to represent something significant in 2020 for ourselves, I felt a little anxious. First, I don’t consider myself to be a creative person; it’s one area that I could develop more personally and professionally. Second, I had to think, and like I said before, I’m more of a doer than a thinker.

So I thought, just keep it simple and be honest. That always works. I took my alligator and put him on one end of a land piece. Then I added little dots in a pile to the other end of the land piece.

Check out the alligator altered:

What I Shared with My Colleagues

The most significant thing that happened in 2020 for me was getting a new job at Bain & Company. I built an alligator in the first part and then for this second part I put him on some land and he’s moving towards this pile of food over here which is supposed to represent abundance. 2020 was a year of abundance for me.

Let me start by acknowledging my privileges. In 2020, I’m happy to be alive and healthy and still have a job. And in my life, it has never been my goal to acquire as much money as I can nor has money ever been a life or death matter for me.

I started my career as a high school math teacher. As you know, no teacher works because of the money. I managed my money well and I lived within my means. As a single person with no kids living in suburban Wisconsin, it was pretty easy. I left teaching to go into this field of digital learning partly because I wanted to get paid what I was worth. That’s all I ever want is to get paid what I’m worth. Then I moved to Chicago and worked at Omnicom Media Group for a year and a half. Thanks to a slight salary increase, again I was able to manage my money well and live within my means despite a higher cost of living now. But by the end of my time there, I felt dissatisfied. It’d been a year and a half with no performance review and no salary increase in sight. I only ever wanted to get paid what I was worth.

In March, I was contacted by a recruiter at Bain, and fast forward two weeks, I got an offer and accepted to work at Bain. Now I’m definitely paid what I’m worth, and I was able to experience an abundance of money. My spending habits didn’t change; in fact, I spent considerably less this year because of COVID-19 since I didn’t travel or go out any more.

I’d always been good with my money. I knew how to live comfortably and for myself. But with my salary now, I was able to achieve financial goals I never even imagined. In 8 months at Bain, my total 401k contributions were 50% more than in my 1.5 years at Omnicom. I also opened a Roth IRA for the first time in my life and maxed it out in 5 months. I even had money to open a personal brokerage account. I saved enough money to buy an engagement ring for my girlfriend next year. I can actually see myself affording to buy a house and supporting a family with my income and taking care of my parents as they get older.

That’s why the most significant thing for me in 2020 was getting a new job at Bain & Company, and this year was a year of abundance for me. I’ve very very very privileged to say that.

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There you have it. My 2020 reflection was overwhelming positive with my new job and how I was able to able to achieve more financially. Make no doubt about it, every day I look out my window and I’m grateful for everything that I have.

FTE vs. Contract

Summary: As an aspiring instructional designer, you should apply for both Full Time Employee (FTE) roles and Contract roles to gain more practice with interviews and increase your chances of receiving the right offer. Ultimately, the best outcome for you is probably a FTE role.

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When you’re looking for jobs to apply to, you’ll mainly see two types of roles: FTE and Contract. Early on, I recommend applying for any FTE and Contract roles that you feel qualified for. It’s obvious that practice makes better, so the more reps you can get with interviews, the more confident and prepared you’ll be for the next one. In time, with enough applications and interviews, you’ll land the job offer that’s right for you. That’s the hope at least.

Do What’s Best for You

Here is an article from Udacity that briefly summarizes Contract vs Freelance vs Full-Time roles. Here is an article from Workplace Round Table that lists Contract vs. Full-Time: 10 Pros and Cons. The guidance is clear from both articles– you need to do what’s best for you.

Now that you’ve gotten that message, let me offer my insights for you to consider.

Why I Think You’ll Want a FTE Role

While the first article mentions Freelance roles, I won’t discuss them any further in this post. I don’t think most teachers have the technical/creative design skills nor the business acumen to succeed immediately in a Freelance role. So that leaves FTE and Contract roles for me to discuss.

Here are just three of many reasons why I think you’ll want a FTE role over a Contract role.

1. Benefits (insurance, 401(k), and others): The United States is the only industrialized nation without universal health insurance. DUMB. I won’t even say any more haha. You probably need an employer-sponsored insurance plan to make healthcare costs somewhat affordable for you and your family. You probably also need a 401(k) plan with employer matching to maybe have a chance of retiring comfortably. Any other extra benefits would be nice.
2. Teamwork and collaboration: Think back to your early years as a teacher. How many veteran teachers in your building did you rely on for ideas, advice, or support? The same thing goes for a new Instructional Designer. You will find people on your team and in your company who are willing to help you develop your craft.
3. Costs of programs, tools, and learning: Your company will already have licenses for the programs and tools you that use as an Instructional Designer. If not, just submit a request and they’ll get it. Additionally, if there are additional learning opportunities you’re interested in, your company will likely reimburse it fully or partially.

In a Contract role, you basically have to figure everything out and pay for everything yourself. I’m not saying you can’t do it; I’m saying, as a new Instructional Designer, you probably don’t want to do all that yet. Go for a FTE role for now.

If All Else Fails

I don’t like the proverb “Beggars can’t be choosers,” but that seems to be the bottom line here. Any job as a new instructional designer beats not having a job. If you’ve been applying for FTE and Contract roles and only received offers for Contract roles, at some point you probably just have to take one. At the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself and your family, pay your bills to live, and get into this field somehow.

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There you have it. You’re likely to see and apply for two types of roles during the job search: FTE and Contract. Both have their pros and cons, and you need to make the decision that’s best for you. I think you’ll have a better start to your new career with a FTE role.

How Much Do You Make?

Summary: I make a lot more now than I did as a teacher, that’s for sure. My salary was $48,500 when I left, and my salary is $75,000 now.

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There are a wide range of opinions and perspectives when it comes to discussing your salary. Here’s what Monster.com has to say about the Pros and Cons of Sharing Salary Information.

I’m all for discussing salaries as you can tell by this post. When I was a teacher, I would tell my peers and community members my salary if the conversation ever came up, and I would tell them the exact number. First, the information was publicly available (if you know where to look; see side story). Second, it would prompt an immediate internal judgment from them like “Damn, that’s not much.” Yeah, teachers are underpaid. Water is wet.

Side story: Every year, the question came up from students: “Mr. Banh, how much do you make?” I’d just tell them with a smile, “You can look it up on the internet.” It was my way of helping my students use their available resources while not explicitly withholding the information from them.

Obviously, no one is a teacher for the money. I’ve never met a single teacher who did it for the money or thought they were paid enough. HA. I just laughed to myself while imagining that. I think it’s fair to assume that if you’re considering a career change outside of teaching that money is probably one of the main issues.

My Salary Then

My salary was $48,500 when I left teaching after my fourth year. I taught in Wauwatosa, WI, and lived in Waukesha, WI. It wasn’t bad for a single adult without children, but I don’t see how you could raise a family with that. If (that’s a BIG IF) there was a way for money to change my decision, that number would’ve had to be at least $60,000. There’s no way any school district could give a salary increase like that, so really there’s nothing my school district could’ve done to keep me, and I also don’t blame them for not being able to. Bernie Sanders wants to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000, among many other items, under his Reinvest in Public Education plan. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries.

My Salary Now

I moved to Chicago, IL, in the late summer after I finished teaching summer school in Wauwatosa. After I looked up the average salary of an instructional designer in Chicago (Glassdoor: $60,080 as of today’s publish date) and factored in an expected increase in cost of living expenses, I determined that I would not accept an offer below $55,000.

Eventually I received and signed an offer of $55,000 to be a Jr. Instructional Designer at a marketing communications company. The original offer was $50,000, but I explained my rationale and negotiated with the recruiter, who thankfully got the approval of the required stakeholders. I was pretty happy with this for awhile. Being a HS math teacher, I naturally wondered “How long would it have taken me to make this salary if I was still a teacher?” I calculated that answer to be about 7 more years. Crazy.

After a year and a half with my salary of $55,000, I became discontent with it. Before I say more, let me acknowledge this: I’m very privileged to say that money has never been a life or death issue in my life, and it’s not my goal in life to acquire as much money as I can– I just want to be paid what I’m worth.

By serendipity, another recruiter reached out to me and within three weeks, I received and signed an offer of $75,000 to be a Senior Specialist, Digital Learning at a management consulting company. I did the math again. It would have taken me about 22 more years a teacher to make my salary now. Fucking crazy. I’m definitely paid what I’m worth now, and I’m definitely earning my keep here.

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There you have it. I made $48,500 when I left teaching after my fourth year. I made $55,000 in my first job as an instructional designer. I make $75,000 now.

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Bonus Content: How I Calculated the Math

The context: My salary was $48,500 back then. I got a 2% raise from my school district every year. My salary is $75,000 now.

The question: How many years would it take for me to go from $48,500 to $75,000 if I got a 2% raise every year?

The solution: Use an exponential equation y = (a) (b)^x where y is the current salary, a is the starting salary and b is the raise written as percent increase. Then solve for x which represents the time in years.

Top 3 Priority Items

Summary: The top 3 priority items for me, in order, were to update my resume and LinkedIn profile, learn more about Instructional Design, and learn how to use eLearning authoring tools. In this post, I’m only providing general recommendations to give you a start in the right direction. More detailed posts with tactical recommendations will come later.

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When I reflect on those three months of job searching, it really makes me wonder “How the fuck did I even know where to start?” I didn’t know anything about professional careers other than teaching. I didn’t know any Instructional Designers. I didn’t even know what Instructional Design was!

I suppose the most immediate need was to update my resume, which I had to use for every job application, and my LinkedIn profile, since I primarily found jobs to apply for on LinkedIn. Then upon looking through initial job descriptions for Instructional Designer, I saw that all of them asked for knowledge and skills I didn’t have yet– adult learning theory, the ADDIE model, and eLearning authoring tools. So I knew I’d have to learn those things to catch up to the playing field.

Below I share my general recommendations for you.

Resume and LinkedIn Profile

If you’re like me, then you probably haven’t applied to a new job in awhile. Teachers don’t go bouncing around from school district to school district. And you probably don’t used LinkedIn at all. I created my profile during my freshman year of college when I was procrastinating from studying for finals, and– I’m not exaggerating– I didn’t log in again until 8 years later.

Here are 10 Resume Writing Tips to Help You Land a Job from Indeed and here is How To Get STARTED On LinkedIn In 2020 from Professor Heather Austin on YouTube.

As you work on these items, be sure to get continuous feedback and advice from people you trust and other qualified professionals. At some point, I absolutely recommend finding a professional resume writer to transform your teacher resume to instructional designer resume. I paid HarvardCV $110 to write my resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn. After a month of job applications with no responses, I got two interview requests within the first week that I used the products he wrote for me. Take that for whatever it is. (Full disclosure: This is not an advertisement or referral in any way. I do not have any sort of relationship with HarvardCV beyond the initial service I paid him for.)

Instructional Design: Adult Learning and ADDIE Model

When you click on a job posting for Instructional Designer, you’ll find a long list of roles, responsibilities, requirements, qualifications, etc. It’s overwhelming. And most of it is just copy-pasted shit. (I’d share more about that on a phone call, but I won’t put any more about it in writing haha.) So let’s just focus on task at hand– filling in knowledge gaps. You need to take your teaching expertise and experiences and translate it to business language.

I recommend that you activate your free trial of LinkedIn Premium and start taking LinkedIn Learning courses. If you’ve already activated your free trial before or it expires before you land a job offer, I think the $30 monthly subscription fee is still worth it. Once you start your new job you can deactivate LinkedIn Premium.

Devote time to learn. Take notes on your computer so you can review them before interviews. LinkedIn Learning does a really good job of displaying only the important text. Here are four courses, in order, that helped me learn about Instructional Design.

1. Elearning Essentials: Instructional Design
2. Instructional Design: Models of ID
3. Instructional Design: Adult Learners
4. Instructional Design: Working with SMEs

Obviously, you can find additional articles or videos about these topics on the internet for free. However, two big value propositions that LinkedIn Learning brings are that their eLearning production is top-tier and that you can add Certifications to your profile when you complete the courses.

You taught 100-150 children every single day for 8 hours a day. I guarantee you that teaching adult learners won’t be harder.

eLearning Authoring Tools

In addition to filling in knowledge gaps, you’ll also need to learn new skills– technical skills, especially. Now before you dismiss this field entirely or doubt your own ability, let me remind you: You have learned and used all sorts of technology already as a teacher. Whether it’s instructional tools like SMART Board, standardized testing websites, or god damn Infinite Campus, you’ve done plenty of technical learning in preparation for this.

There are three programs that I recommend for you to learn: Articulate Storyline 360, Articulate Rise 360, and Camtasia. You can download a free trial of Articulate 360 for 60 days and Camtasia for 30 days. Only do this when you have time to commit to learning them. I’ll provide brief guidance for each one.

Tool	Purpose	Learning Difficulty	Learning Priority
Articulate Storyline 360	Software-based course editor. Sandbox environment. Whatever you can think, you can practically build. Best for highly-customized eLearning courses.	Hardest	Top
Articulate Rise 360	Web-based course editor. Put some “Blocks” together and publish. Makes you and your boss look good with not too much work. Best for getting eLearning courses out asap.	Super easy	Pretty high
Camtasia	Screen recording and video editor. Professional-looking videos with attention-grabbing features. Best for creating screencasts.	Kinda hard	Not right now

Articulate Storyline 360 is the hardest one to learn but the top priority. Every Instructional Designer should be proficient with it. Follow along and complete this course and this course on LinkedIn Learning, and you’ll know enough to publish a decent project.

Articulate Rise 360 is the easiest one to learn and probably suitable for most projects. It’s by far my favorite. By the end of taking one course on LinkedIn Learning, you’ll know enough to publish a great modern-looking project.

Camtasia would be a “nice to have” skill right now, but not a “need to have” skill. Given all of the learning you have on your plate for Instructional Design, I wouldn’t worry about this for awhile. I didn’t learn this one until I was working as an Instructional Designer.

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There you have it. If you are a former teacher applying to Instructional Designer jobs, then these are my three general recommendations that will give you a start in the right direction. Again, I have to reiterate that everything I write is based off of my own experiences. I’m not an expert nor a salesman. I encourage you to take what’s helpful for you and ask around to see what others might say.