Career Change from Stock Broker to Economics Teacher
November 2017
Anthony . . . I have some amazing news!
I just accepted an offer to teach economics and business at a school in London!!!
Spent ages doing school experience and volunteering in schools, and now I got a job offer from the first job I applied to! I am so happy I can’t even describe!!
Thank you so much for all your help and support throughout the whole journey, could not have done this without you and your help!!!!!!
Best,
—Mo 🙂
Background Story
I asked Mo to share a little background on how he executed his career quest, here’s what he said:
Back in May 2017 I went on a holiday to France in the countryside, which gave me a lot of opportunity for some self reflection. I had just escaped two terrible career choices — but mainly, a lot of bad events at work as a stock broker woke me up to realize that broking wasn’t ever meant to be the industry that I was going to commit myself to.
So, I made a bit of a breakthrough in my career research. I had begun really seriously looking at becoming a teacher of economics or geography (secondary) — had just felt a big urge that didn’t seem to be going away like a lot of my ideas do (I took that as a massive hint for myself). So I went back, did all my career design inquiries and a lot of online research that had me eventually settle on teaching. I became quite excited about the idea of being able to excercise my passion and temperment through teaching other people whilst being in a much more Extroverted Maestro Intuitive-Feeler (NF) friendly setting. Arguably, that was the easy part!
Getting the experience was tricky. I had absolutely no contacts from university, but what was very lucky was that my girlfriend’s family is full of teachers, head-teachers and the like. We messaged them, and I managed to get myself two general days of shadowing / school observation in September and a further 3 days in October, 2017. I knew I had to get at least 5-10 days experience in state schools if I was ever to be able to apply for a Master’s course to do teaching (not that funding that route would have been easy but I presumed I’d figure that out later) so I felt panicked and rushed to get as many observation days booked as possible.
So that was my first big break / connect — my girlfriend’s family. The next major one, which I credit a HUGE portion of the success of this career change to, was through sheer cold emailing loads of schools in my community. And amazingly, not one but two schools responded saying that I was more than welcome to shadow their Economics teachers.
These experiences altogether were the most important things BY FAR in strengthening what would be my eventual job application (before, I was just trying to accumulate days to meet the minimum requirements for uni applications, I had very little hope for any actual job positions opening up that would consider taking a career changer with no qualifications) — it gave me something to talk about in my cover letter AND at interview, which made me seem genuine and fully knowledgeable regarding what teaching would entail.
So, in short, reaching out to family contacts + PLENTY of cold-emailing to schools was what worked.
Cheers,
Mo
