I did something this month I should have done a long time ago.
I checked my numbers.
Thursday morning I shared the headline in a LinkedIn post. This is the full version, with my work shown... how I counted, the rules I counted by, how fast people moved, and where they went.
How I counted
I talk about my Career Change Accelerator a lot. I wanted to know what actually happened to the people who took it, one person at a time.
So my Accelerator roster went into a spreadsheet. Then I read each person's LinkedIn profile.
I read the Experience section, with dates. Headlines are a whole other story, and I'll get to them another day.
One question per person: did they take a new role AFTER they started the course?
To answer it, I put two dates side by side. The day they bought. The day their new role started. If the new role came first, it didn't count.
It was slow. Profile, dates, spreadsheet, next.
A few more calls I made along the way:
- If someone had already left teaching before they bought, I counted them separately. The question was about leaving the classroom, and they'd already done that part.
- If I couldn't tell which profile was theirs, that person stayed out. No guessing.
- If someone emailed me back to tell me where they are now, that counted, as long as the dates lined up.
The rules
Every person got judged by the same rules. I'm printing them here so you can check my work, and so I can't move the goalposts later.
- Only people a year or more past their purchase. Nobody changes careers in a month, and I didn't want someone who bought in June counted as a no.
- Moving out of the classroom into a different school or district role counts. When I was teaching, that move was the thing I would have killed for.
- A promotion inside education counts, with an asterisk. Promotions are hard to get.
- Someone who left and went back still counts. They left.
- Working for yourself counts only if it's your whole job.
What came out
Educators who got halfway through the course: 8 out of 10 are out of the classroom.
Educators who started but didn't get that far: fewer than half.
Same course. Same price. Same modules. The difference was getting past Module 3.
Module 3 is where you write the resume.
Yep. The resume.
How fast they moved
Half of the educators who moved did it within six months of starting. Three out of four within a year.
That's the day they bought to the day the new role started. Same two dates from the spreadsheet.
Where they went
They are now in hospitality, insurance, medical devices, pharma consulting, healthcare IT, HR software, civic tech, and edtech.
Six got promoted inside education instead: assistant principal, associate principal, district coordinator, director.
I'm not naming anyone or any company here. Those are their stories to tell.
Medical devices. Pharma consulting. Hospitality. If the only title you've ever typed into a job search is "instructional designer," that list probably looks a lot wider than the one in your head.
Not sure which of those would even fit you? That's what my quiz is for. It reads your school experience and points you at the corporate path that fits you. Take the quiz here.
If you bought it and stopped
Now you know where the line is. It's Module 3.
Log back in this weekend and pick up wherever you left off. If that's somewhere before Module 3, you know which one comes next.
One more thing. I'm keeping the spreadsheet. If you ever see me post a stat, that's where it came from.
Want to see who's hiring right now? Jobs Jobs Jobs, my LinkedIn newsletter listing companies currently hiring former educators, comes out every Saturday.
Hit reply, I read my own email. Tell me where you are in the course, or which industry on that list surprised you.
Steph
Find me on LinkedIn | Career Change Accelerator | Get on my 1:1 Waitlist
About Steph Yesil: Steph is a former K–12 educator who moved into corporate education companies in 2015 and built a career across curriculum, professional learning, content, and leadership. She founded Elevated Careers to help educators build successful corporate careers.
