You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.

ringo sono/iStock/Getty Images Plus
When you were a kid and they asked you what you want to be when you grow up, did you say you wanted to be a teacher?
One of us, Jovana, did, and I became one. After earning my bachelor’s degree in English language and literature, I immediately started working as an English teacher. I taught for five years and then decided to go back to school. I got my M.A. in linguistics and my Ph.D. in education and continued teaching for two more years. Three years out from my Ph.D., I’m working in academic administration—and I still use the skills I gained through teaching.
The other of us, Victoria, found her own answer to the question: first baker, then author, then teacher. My first full-time role after receiving my Ph.D. in world history combined teaching with administration, including overseeing staff and instructors. When I started, I struggled with people management—I had no training in this and was anxious about confrontation. At the same time, I saw growth in my teaching approach: While I had as a new teaching assistant feared giving straight feedback to struggling students, I found myself learning from my students the value of building trust and transparency—learning I took with me in coaching instructors and staff. By developing trust and transparency through regular feedback, I shifted my viewpoint to see critical feedback as an opportunity for growth for both me and the student/staffer/instructor I was coaching.
In your graduate program, you might have had a lot of teaching experience as an instructor of record or as a teaching assistant. In our conversations with students and postdocs, we notice that many are unsure how those experiences can translate to the requirements of industry jobs. In this article we share guidance for moving away from teaching simply being a few sentences on your CV to using your teaching experiences to articulate a multitude of skills that will serve you in a variety of potential roles. Transferable skills in domains like leadership, communication and problem-solving are widely recognized as critical for success in virtually any career. They may be more difficult to identify and connect with your work experiences than some of the technical skills you have received formal training in, so we offer advice on key aspects of teaching and how to translate them into transferable skills.
- Classroom Management → People Management/Leadership. There is an old Serbian saying that “Working with people is the most wonderful and most difficult job of all.” There are few jobs that don’t require working with others to some extent. Being able to work with and successfully manage groups of people requires a sophisticated level of leadership, management and organizational skills, as well as confidence, self-awareness and humility. Employers in many nonacademic professions seek exactly these traits.
In graduate school, most students won’t get an opportunity to directly supervise others. However, if a job you’re applying for includes supervision, make sure you cite your classroom experience in responding to this requirement; through teaching, you moved multiple people from diverse backgrounds and skill sets toward a common goal. Teaching awards can provide concrete evidence of your skills. Check whether your institution offers teaching awards for teaching assistants and ask instructors for whom you’ve worked as a TA if they’d consider nominating you. Even if you don’t receive a teaching award, you can say something like “I’m energized by working with people, and teaching small and large classes throughout my Ph.D./master’s/postdoc was both a pleasure and a great opportunity to exercise my management and leadership skills.”
- Syllabus Building → Project Management. During your graduate studies, you may have had the opportunity to serve as an instructor of record and assume responsibility for the entire class. This may have included building your own syllabus. If you’ve played this role, use that experience to talk about your aptitude for higher-order thinking, long-term planning and conceptualizing a project from the beginning to the end with assessment points along the way. I, Jovana, always found syllabus development to be a good opportunity to practice scalability because, you need to be able to determine what’s achievable and where you need to cut back or add more. It requires a lot of projecting and anticipating problems that may have to be addressed. For example, when I taught first-year college writing I would always have a class or two planned for addressing a topic in more depth if necessary, without taking away from other topics.
- Teacher and Student Evaluation → Self-Reflection. Being able to reflect on your own work and put effort into improvement is something that most employers will value. At least the good ones will! As a TA you may have invited (or been required to invite) a colleague to observe your class and give you feedback on your teaching. Receiving feedback on your performance and being able to respond to it constructively is an important skill that demonstrates your growth mindset and willingness to improve performance. Student evaluations can be used to discuss your experience with performance assessment, how you respond to it and interventions you may have implemented based on the feedback you received.
Furthermore, as part of teaching, whether as a TA or instructor of record, you had to evaluate someone else’s work and give them feedback on their areas of strength and growth. In thinking about translating your teaching skills, you can articulate how you are able to give regular, constructive feedback to students in the same way you would give feedback to a supervisee with guiding principles around transparency, attention to individuals’ priorities and goals, and promoting individuals’ learning and growth.
- Classroom Challenges → Problem-Solving. It’s not uncommon to come across challenges in the classroom, such as academic dishonesty, disruptive behavior or miscommunication. How you handle those challenges speaks to your ability to find effective solutions. Keep in mind that problem-solving includes knowing when to ask for help and guidance from appropriate sources. Don’t be afraid to share a challenging situation (being careful not to disclose anything confidential or infringe on someone’s privacy) and explain how you handled it. Emphasizing what you learned from it is as important as how well you navigated the situation.
For example, I, Victoria, used the case of a student who had plagiarized in my class as an example of problem-solving when interviewing for a role. I described how I approached the problem by first being transparent about the issue and asking about and actively listening to the student’s experience in the class and their approach to the paper. This revealed outside personal factors that were impacting the student’s learning in my class and moved forward the discussion in a productive direction so we could realign expectations, connect with resources for help (e.g., our writing center) and, finally, plan out and set goals for the remediation of the paper.
As part of leading and managing a classroom, you have learned to effectively navigate a system and how to work with people with differing priorities, perspectives and backgrounds. The ability to effectively communicate with different constituents is a wonderful skill to highlight.
So what does this translation of teaching experience into job application documents look like in practice? In a job post, identify key skills and experiences that are required and match them to those you gained through teaching. You can include those skills in your CV, résumé and cover letter. Remember to show and not just tell: For example, you can include a statement saying that you are good at problem-solving, communication and management. Even better, you can show these skills through examples.
Here is my own (Jovana): When I was a TA, I invited one of my professors to observe my class and give me feedback on my teaching. My lesson plan for the day involved a lot of use of technology, which on that particular day absolutely failed. I could not get anything to work. After trying for five minutes, I acknowledged that there was an issue that I couldn’t solve quickly, and I didn’t want to waste more of the class time. I pivoted and taught the class using different methods and activities. The faculty member who observed the class was impressed with several things:
- I tried to fix the technology issue, but I didn’t let it take over my class.
- I acknowledged the problem and moved on.
- I had a backup plan to still be able to deliver the lesson.
Depending on the requirements of a job, I use this example to show my skills and not just tell about them. You should also use this strategy in interviews, not just job application documents.
Before wrapping up, let us note that we recognize you may not have the opportunity to fully design and teach a course yourself. However, you can engage with other teaching opportunities, such as serving as a TA, participating in teaching workshops and certificate programs, or working with an institutional organization where you organize a symposium or colloquia and have corresponding parallel skills as those described above.
Don’t get caught up in having the exact kind of experience in the kind of industry you’re trying to get into. Think about what the experience you do have signals to the employer. One of our favorite examples when we review CVs is when we see someone has worked at a youth camp. It signals immediately that they probably have good leadership, management and response-to-crisis skills that are really valuable in many jobs. We know that you, too, can use your teaching experiences to demonstrate the ways you will be an excellent member of a new workplace community.