The Best Career Move You Can Make This Summer Isn’t Applying for Jobs
Summer may feel like the perfect time to update your resume and start applying for jobs. For many educators, however, the most valuable work happens much earlier in the process.
Why Summer Matters
For many teachers, summer begins with a familiar thought: maybe this is the year to explore something different.
After a busy school year, there’s finally time to step back and think beyond lesson plans, grading, meetings, and everything else that demands attention from August through June. Questions that were easy to ignore during the school year suddenly have room to surface. Would I still choose this profession if I were starting over? What other opportunities might be a fit? Do I want my next ten years to look like my last ten?
Not everyone who asks those questions wants to leave education, and many ultimately decide to stay. What summer often provides is something more valuable than an immediate decision: the opportunity to explore possibilities that are difficult to consider during the school year.
The educators who get the most out of that exploration are usually the ones who start earlier than they think they need to. Summer has a way of disappearing faster than expected, and career exploration rarely moves as quickly as people assume.
Career Exploration Comes Before Applications
When educators talk about changing careers, the conversation often turns quickly to resumes, portfolios, interviews, and job boards.
Those things matter, but they tend to receive attention before a more important question has been answered: what are you actually looking for?
Most successful transitions involve a period of discovery. People spend time researching roles, talking with professionals in those positions, identifying transferable skills, and learning how organizations outside of education operate. In many cases, they discover opportunities they hadn’t considered when they started.
That process isn’t always visible, which is one reason it’s easy to underestimate. Updating a resume feels productive. Submitting applications feels productive. Spending an hour talking with someone about their career path can feel less tangible, even when it provides more useful information.
I’ve seen educators spend months refining resumes for jobs they later realized they didn’t want. I’ve also seen educators uncover opportunities they never would have considered if they had jumped straight into applications.
Exploration doesn’t guarantee a career change. It does help people make better decisions about whether a career change is actually the right move.
The Hiring Process Has Become More Crowded
Career exploration also matters because the hiring process looks different than it did even a few years ago.
Generative AI has made it easier to create resumes, tailor cover letters, and submit applications. While those tools can be helpful, they’ve also lowered the barrier to applying for jobs. Candidates can now apply to dozens of positions in the time it once took to apply to a handful.
As a result, recruiters and hiring managers are often reviewing significantly larger applicant pools. Many report spending more time looking for evidence of genuine experience, clear accomplishments, and a strong fit for the role rather than simply searching for the right keywords.
For educators considering a career change, that makes the exploration stage even more important. Understanding how your experience translates, learning the language of your target industry, and developing a clear professional narrative often provides more value than increasing the number of applications submitted.
Rather than focusing on volume, educators are often better served by understanding where they can create value and how to communicate that value effectively when the right opportunity appears.
Start Gathering Information
One of the most common mistakes people make during career transitions is waiting until they feel certain before they begin exploring. In practice, certainty usually develops after people start gathering information, testing assumptions, and having conversations they weren’t having six months earlier.
If you’re considering a change, start there. Talk with someone whose career path interests you. Read job descriptions in industries you’ve never worked in. Take inventory of the skills you’ve developed throughout your career and consider where those skills might create value outside the classroom.
You may decide that education remains the right place for you, or you may discover opportunities that make you excited about a different direction. Either outcome is worthwhile because the purpose of career exploration isn’t to convince yourself to leave. It’s to understand your options well enough to make an informed decision about what comes next.
