Identifying your interests, passions, and skills

- If you could do any other job besides teaching, what would it be? Dream big. Now what skills are needed for that position? Let me tell you a bit about my journey. After leaving the classroom, I worked on political campaigns, I did video production for national museums, all before transitioning into tech. Then one day I had a big, ambitious dream to combine all of my skills together to create a VR startup. I had a really big dream, but every big dream starts with tiny steps. When switching careers, a good first step is to identify the skills you already have. A great place to start is with LinkedIn's Career Explorer. Instead of randomly applying for jobs, LinkedIn's Career Explorer analyzes the skills of millions of professionals to show you what other careers teachers have applied their skills towards after the classroom. You can follow their similar paths straight to success. Here's how it works. First, start by going to the URL that's on the screen. That will take you straight to Career Explorer. Next, put in your region and current job. For example, I might put in middle school teacher in Washington, D.C. The jobs you'll see right away may not seem too exciting, but that's because they're initially sorted by high similarity. So you'll see other teaching jobs. But here's the trick. Go over to the sort menu and change it to low similarity. Now you'll see lots of jobs that leverage your existing skills but aren't as similar. For example, one job you'll notice is curriculum developer, which of course builds on your expertise with lesson planning. And if you're curious to learn more, don't just stop there. Instead, click that big, blue Find Connections on LinkedIn button. You'll instantly see people in your network that have already had that job and can help you understand it from an insider's perspective. Now that you have an idea of some tools you might use to help you build out your career plan and your network, let's go back and think about what types of jobs align with the skills you already possess. Here's an activity to try. Using LinkedIn, I want you to research careers that you might be curious about and look at their job description. What skills are they requesting? Do you see any overlap? To date, I've made several unconventional job moves, ranging from being a concert photographer to becoming a startup CEO. I was able to do so because I saw that overlap between my skills and the skills for the jobs in which I wanted to explore. To prepare for our next movie, make a list of your hard and your soft skills, and I'll see you in the next video.