Talent Stacker | Education

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Education Professional

While being an educator can be a very rewarding career, it can also be a difficult one to maintain long term. High stress, job instability, and lack of work life balance can all lead to burnout and the need to explore a new path.

Your skills and experience as an education professional make you a great fit for a Salesforce career. We invite you to check out the important resources below to learn more.

Hear from others just like you!

Education as a profession is more than just teaching kids. It's navigating school politics, dealing with parents, managing multiple projects at once, all while guiding your students through their most formative years. And all the skills you learn through teaching are what will make you a great Salesforce administrator!

Translate your skills to match what the employers are looking for in their job descriptions. Get creative. You spent years grading papers (evaluating products), handling discipline (used research-based strategies to improve performance), contacting parents (direct and clear communication, sometimes with clients whose primary language was not your own), adjusting to last minute schedule changes (adaptable project management)…. And on and on.

Focus on your transferable skills, and practice highlighting them during an interview. Get involved in your local Salesforce user groups. This is one of the best ways to network with Salesforce professionals.

You will have to learn the business side, but you have so many soft skills that companies are looking for!

Transfer Your Skills

Check out how some of our Talent Stacker Members translated their previous experience from Education to their Salesforce Career!

Communication & Stakeholder Engagement: Built strong relationships as the point of contact between stakeholders and managers, ensuring timely and accurate communication of all details.
End User Training: Trained over 150 stakeholders a year on relevant/specialty topics and improved individual learning pathways to best support client success.
Program Management: Project manager for a pilot program to support new learning pathways for underserved students and improved student’s success rates by 20%.
Industry Knowledge: Planned, organized, and implemented a multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary, and multicultural curriculum that links the arts, math, reading, science, and social studies providing students with a comprehensive learning experience.
Product Delivery: Pivoted to a fully remote work environment while directing 250+ participants and delivering on 100% of KPIs (including: skills knowledge, social and emotional learning, and engagement).

Your Questions Answered

I’ve spent a long time in the classroom and it’s all I’ve ever known. Is it too late for me to switch careers?

No – it’s not too late! No matter how comfortable you are with technology, there are so many resources to meet you where you are, and help you grow your talent stack. As a teacher you might been asked to learn how to use and teach computers to your students. If they can learn it, so can you!

Do I need a degree or previous experience in the tech industry to begin working towards a Salesforce career?

No degree required! Many enter the Salesforce ecosystem successfully making $65k-$85k with the Salesforce Administrator Certification. All of the materials to understand how to configure Salesforce and pass the certification credential can be found for free on Salesforce’s online learning platform – Trailhead!

What is the work life balance difference between working in education versus working in a Salesforce role?

Many companies have a, “as long as the work gets done, set your hours” type of policy. You truly can live a life by design, and still help people, where you don’t have to burn yourself out working 60+ hours a week.

How can I manage to be visible to Salesforce recruiters and hiring managers coming from an education role?

Your soft skills (communication, project management, needs assessment, etc) are a perfect fit for a career in tech. The skills you’ve developed in the classroom over years of teaching are invaluable. Everything else on the technical side can be learned. Focus on your strengths – you bring more to the table than you know!