Admin Roles

[Peachycat]

Hi all
I'm going to be resigning my post as a teacher this year and will be looking for admin roles. I do have experience but have been teaching for the past 16 years. How can I make myself more employable? Are there any qualifications I should aim for or similar? I would appreciate any tips.

So I was offered multiple admin jobs off the back of temping positions. So that might be an option.

How about an admin role in a school?

Ensure your Word, Excel and PowerPoint are good. You could try admin in Child Services, although it's quite pressurised.

There must be lots as a teacher that can easily be attributed to admin. You can tailor your cv using AI to enhance those admin skills. You’d be suprised how many admin candidates come from a very different background.

Thank you - I want a clean break from teaching so won't look for anything connected to that. I have to resign by 31 Oct to leave by Xmas so will start job hunting in October. If I get lucky and am successful early on, would an employer wait a little while for me to start?

Most companies will want someone within 4 weeks which is normally the standard notice period for low to mid level admin roles. So I doubt they would wait til January. I would leave looking til mid to end of Nov to look.

In the interim I would be upskilling. What are your excel skills like? Can you do pivot tables, lookup, if formulas etc? What are your data analysis skills like?

Can I ask why you want an "admin" role?

I work for a company with 800 people and we don't have admin staff anymore, as more or less all of the admin that used to need doing has been automated.

For doing any fancy trickery with Excel and Word, which used to need someone with years of admin experience, we now use Chat GPT.

What subject did you teach?

I have been looking for admin roles and I would say one of the issues is that they seem to also want you to be an Executive Assistant on an administrative assistant salary. I would make a rubbish EA so I sift through the job adverts very carefully.

Keep a look out for NHS admin positions. Sadly it appears as if admin is still quite the thing there. I applied and interviewed for their waiting list admin bank, but haven’t got a role as yet as needs to be part time because of elderly DPs.

In the meantime you could do some online Microsoft office training - you can probably find free courses - you may well know it already but it just looks good to have relevant up to date qualifications, and shows you are actively interested in the roles.

The job market is tough at the minute so be prepared for it to take a bit longer. Temping is a good option to get your foot in the door and your CV relevant, but they generally want people available as soon as. Also maybe think flexibly about your options. Admin work isn’t well paid, so it’s pretty much on a par with supermarket working where you generally get discounts and nobody will try to make you their secretary on minimum wage. I have just applied to do the office back up for driving tests - not sure what it entails but says you can work a minimum of 21 hours per month, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for that one as the flexibility would really suit me.

Oh and use Copilot or similar to help with your CV and covering letter. You need to use it judiciously, and get rid of the obvious things like bullet points and bolding, but it has saved me loads of time, particularly on the covering letter if required as it can craft a great story about why I want to work part time.

How old are you? How long have you been teaching? Are you just looking for a job to pay the bills or entry to a new career?

Just make sure that your CV explains clearly your transferable skills.

I can't imagine an employer waiting from October until December/January for you to start. But they might

If you want the time between resignation and actually leaving, civil service. But do start applying before October otherwise you could be starting new job in March...
You will have lots of transferable skills so don't worry. For admin roals you don't realy need certificates.
Local authority jobs might also be available.

Good luck

There are still admin positions about and like you I quite fancy it

but the reality is there are far less that there used to be. My company has made most of them redundant and outsourced a small amount of admin work to India. We do our own now, aided by AI. I think this is the way things are going sadly

that said I think public services esp schools and hospitals will still employ plenty of them for years to come

NHS and civil service both take an age to onboard new starters so applying early them may work out but it with smaller firms. Loads of ex teachers in the civil service and your transferable skills should relate well to EO or HEO roles.

Thank you all for your replies. So, I'm early forties and currently a Head of Dept (English). I thought of applying to admin roles simply because I have some (outdated) experience with these, having done press, comms and PA roles in the public sector before teaching. I'm definitely no longer interested in teaching or tutoring.

I have an autoimmune disease (recently diagnosed), so don't want anything physical. I want to be busy within my role but I'm looking for more work life balance than is possible in education.

I wouldn't mind some retraining, but am possibly too old for some recruiters to consider. I

I am an ex primary teacher who now works in admin. I found it straight forward to find a position, like you I had previous (pre-teaching) experience in admin and customer service roles and I drew on this experience, as well as making reference to the heavy admin work that teachers also have to manage on a day to day basis. I absolutely love my new role, no regrets. Fingers crossed for you.