170: Don’t Just Apply—Align: What’s Actually Hiring Now (And Why Clarity Matters) with Chelsea Maude Avirett

Holly Owens (00:01.134)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of EdUp Learning and Development. My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host and I'm super excited and legit super excited because Chelsea Maud Avirett here and she's been on the show I think four or five times now, but she's always coming back with new stuff. So Chelsea, welcome back.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (00:21.655)
Thank you. I'm so excited. I always love having conversations with you and the back and forth and learning from you as well.

Holly Owens (00:28.524)
Yeah, our episodes are always so much fun. And they're always so engaging. Like, I learn something from you every time we talk about the job market and everything. But before we go into all that fun stuff, I'm really trying to resist. Why don't you tell the audience about who you are, what you do in the L &D space, just give us a history.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (00:51.383)
Sure. So I'm a former teacher, like most of us, and I also am someone who really loves teaching and loves learning. And I feel like I'm still able to do so many of those parts of the job that I loved doing as a teacher. I'm still doing now. And what I'm doing now is I run a job board and I help people find hope that, you you can continue to do what you love to, even if you're leaving the classroom, even if you're moving into a corporate job.

Holly Owens (01:19.016)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (01:20.791)
that may be something that's really unfamiliar to you. You can still find those same through lines that you're passionate about now. Those jobs exist. I know where they are and I share them with you. But I also try to provide this context that you can really, you can know what kinds of jobs are out there. You can know how to position yourself and you can know the challenges that you're gonna face moving into it. Because whenever we move,

from a new job to a new job, from a new career to a career, there are challenges. And I think it's really important to not just go to a job board and apply, but go to a job board and really apply coming from a place of clarity and coming from a place of, know what I wanna do, I know my strengths, and I know why I am doing this. That's such an important part of the process. And I'm small piece of that.

Holly Owens (02:11.968)
What a way to start off the episode. That's great advice. Like that's just everything that you said from you're like talking about niching and talking about just coming from a place like you know where you want to go. Like you know because all too often in Chelsea and you and I talk about this all the time people come to us and they're like well I want to be an instructional designer. I want to be you know a marketer. I want to be this and we're like well what area do you want to be in?

Like it's such a vast landscape there. So figuring out where you really want to be is important. Having that clarity when you're applying to rules is important.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (02:50.155)
Yes, and it's also important because as teachers, we're used to juggling all the pieces. So while we may only do curriculum development a couple of times a year, we're still doing that differentiation throughout the entire semester. We're doing that facilitation and doing the assessment regularly. And so a lot of times we don't realize that in the corporate world, some of those jobs are also combined, which is a trend we're seeing.

Holly Owens (02:55.661)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (03:19.273)
And sometimes they're also, yes, it's definitely a thread we're seeing. And sometimes they're more discreet too. I if you're in a large corporation, you can still have one of those jobs where you're doing one part of that entire L &D lifecycle. You're doing one part of it. So there's a lot of opportunities. knowing what you thrive in and knowing what parts of it you want to do is essential to really being able to successfully transition because job titles aren't going to help you.

lots of lots of endless scrolling is just going to be exhausting. Finding that clarity first means that you're going to go forward with intention and you're going to be able to make it much more efficient and avoid burnout as you apply.

Holly Owens (04:04.252)
100 % people are saying the job market saturated and I think there's a couple different reasons people say that probably number one is because they don't want other people they want to deter people from applying to the roles that they want to apply for number two they're making an observation that's only from their personal experience and not a like an overview like you have where you have that 30,000 foot view but you also have that narrow view of what's happening in the job market Chelsea is is a job market saturated

Is it?

Chelsea Maude Avirett (04:33.067)
I think I'll go back to like there are those different different ways of looking at what saturation means. So there have been a lot of layoffs. And so, yes, I think there's a lot of gatekeeping and teachers are competitive in this market. And there's some concern, particularly if you have a master's degree in instructional design and a decade of teaching, which a lot of teachers do, you're putting in a competitive portfolio compared to other people. And

Holly Owens (04:38.99)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (05:02.695)
that can be scary. So I think, yes, some of this over saturation narratives coming from that. Some of it is coming though from the reality that a remote job is getting over a thousand applicants. And many of those applicants are going to be well qualified. Half of them will be not even worth looking at because they won't match some of the basic criteria.

Holly Owens (05:13.582)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (05:22.914)
Yeah, the days of like hoping that some sort of role like in a mid-level role where you're not qualified for the middle level role, they're just hiring you on a whim and then they'll train you. Those days are gone. Those days were...

Chelsea Maude Avirett (05:34.251)
Yes, and those days are disappearing from so many industries. Like my professors, when I was in grad school, were getting jobs in ways that I couldn't even imagine. Like someone picked up a phone and said, hey, I've got somebody graduated. Would you like to hire them? That doesn't exist anymore. And also it's important to think, a lot of times I hear this narrative of, I want someone to take a chance on me. People take chances on entry-level candidates. When we get the skill level that we all have,

Holly Owens (05:37.476)
You know.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (06:02.039)
people aren't taking a chance. They need to know why you're qualified and you are qualified. So, I mean, it's an alignment issue. But going back to the saturation, I do think that what I'm seeing is year over year, I'm keeping, I'm posting about the same number of jobs, but I'm having to broaden my sourcing. So we're seeing some companies, we're seeing some pullback in certain types of roles. And I'm sure we'll talk about what that looks like later, but we're seeing some of that.

Holly Owens (06:10.713)
Yep.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (06:31.191)
But overall, think we are seeing the industry is solid. I learning and development is such an essential part of maintaining a healthy corporate environment. It helps with retention. It helps with hiring, particularly younger workers who really want to be someplace they can grow. It's something that companies that invest in learning and development get a return on that investment. So overall, it's a steady field.

I don't think you should have concerns about going into it, but it's not necessarily going to be every company is continuing to hire at the same pace. And you really do, I'm having to change my sourcing and I'm sure you know this too, because you source jobs as well. And we're seeing also this trend towards specialization. So a lot of these companies want you to be an expert in instructional design or learning and development. And by the way, you should have a nursing degree or...

Holly Owens (07:14.563)
Yep.

Holly Owens (07:28.132)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (07:28.927)
one of these other industry credentials, which is why ed tech is really helpful because we already have that subject matter expertise, not vertical, vertical being the industry jargon there, but the vertical expertise. But it does become harder when you're competing with somebody who has both of those factors and you've got to think about, well, am I competitive in this role or do I need to look for verticals where I have volunteer experience, personal experience with it?

Holly Owens (07:36.793)
right.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (07:57.911)
professional experience, things like that. So there are a lot of things to think about with saturation. And I think overall, we often come from a place of, I'm not getting interviews, therefore it's over saturated. When sometimes what we need to do is change our strategies, applying to jobs that we're more closely aligned to. And maybe we need to do a little bit of upskilling. Maybe we need to figure out what our niche is so that we can pitch ourselves differently.

Holly Owens (07:59.374)
Yep.

Holly Owens (08:22.402)
Yeah, I think that's definitely becomes a blocker when we hear industry experts saying that it's saturated, we just like, well, I give up. That's it. It becomes a mental blocker. And you're not trying to figure out like what you're saying, how to re-strategize, how to do things a little bit differently. Like, how are you approaching the application process? How are you approaching things when it comes to your resume, your portfolio?

Chelsea Maude Avirett (08:31.114)
Okay.

Holly Owens (08:49.368)
what makes you a little bit different than the next applicant? Because everybody's submitting these things. Like, is your LinkedIn updated? Or is it old? That's one thing I keep mentioning to you. it's almost like, I'm going to say it's required now. You have to have a LinkedIn. If you're applying for a job, you have to have a LinkedIn. There's no avoiding it anymore. They're going to ask for your LinkedIn page.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (09:13.623)
Right, and often it's, there's this red asterisk that's required on the application itself.

Holly Owens (09:16.652)
Right, you're required now. So we're gonna say that that's required. So if you're not doing that, and or if you have one and you just did the bare minimum, you're probably not gonna stand out there. Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (09:27.085)
Right. Yeah, LinkedIn is like your resume, everybody knows you're tailoring your resume. So you're leaving certain things off. So they go to LinkedIn for two reasons. One is to say, well, what other experience do they have? And if they're finding out about new relevant experience, that's a little weird for them. But sometimes, you know, people do have like part-time jobs and things like that. So it's important that they can see your full work history. But the other thing is they want to see how you show up professionally.

Holly Owens (09:44.547)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (09:55.775)
I see a lot of people who are treating LinkedIn more like a social media than like a professional social media environment. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're posting like pictures of their vacation or their animals, which I do support posting pictures of animals on LinkedIn. Right. But sometimes it's just like a comment. I've been getting, now every time I post, I get four or five comments that say I'm interested. And it's like, what does that mean?

Holly Owens (10:12.6)
We support all the fun things, yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (10:25.227)
And I really struggled to reply because I'm just not sure what to say. And it's that ability to carry on a professional conversation that people are looking for. And if you don't have that, if you don't have like, you don't have to be active on LinkedIn, but I think you've got to be thoughtful about what's going into your profile. It needs to be updated. And I mean, people look at it every time I interview someone. The first thing I do is I look at their LinkedIn, I Google them, I check out their Facebook.

So lock down your Facebook page. But I think people figured that out.

Holly Owens (10:59.588)
I'll be fucking you on all social media platforms.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (11:03.539)
Exactly. Which is why I'm enjoying Reddit. People can slide under the radar on Reddit because you don't necessarily have that professional.

Holly Owens (11:08.29)
Yes, yes, you want to be in like, we don't we won't say the dark web, but you want to be under definitely under the reader. Reddit is where it's at. Not Lisa.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (11:16.383)
Yeah, Reddit's a lot of fun lately. I think it's, I mean, you get the same kind of mix of professional engagement and professional conversation, but there's less posturing because it's not as much of a marketing platform. So.

Holly Owens (11:32.268)
Yeah, absolutely. So what are you seeing in the data? You're saying that you have to go to different sources now and you post great data and Chelsea sends out an email every single Saturday, every single Saturday, same time. I wish I had that kind of focus. I don't, but every single Saturday. Yeah, I know it's scheduling, but building the content takes a little bit of work. But what are you seeing? What should people be aware of at this point?

Chelsea Maude Avirett (11:48.397)
scheduling.

Holly Owens (12:00.548)
Well, we can say that we're in summer 2025.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (12:04.269)
Yeah, we're definitely in, it's 80 degrees. We're in summer 2025. So this has been a really interesting year. So I've been doing jobs on some scale for the last four to five years, but I've only been doing it for like 16 months at this scale of like 500 to 1000 jobs a month. And so I have year over year data. And one of the things that I'm noticing is that overall we're moving

Holly Owens (12:07.555)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (12:33.909)
a lot more into customer facing roles in general. So we're seeing a little bit of contraction in part-time learning development jobs that are in schools. So I call them school-based learning and development jobs where a company is coming into the school and doing professional learning. Those part-time jobs are disappearing. The curriculum jobs, which can sometimes be a good pair with instructional design because so much curriculum is digital these days. Those jobs are disappearing.

And we're seeing that focus shift to sales and marketing. Learning and development, program project management, which often.

Holly Owens (13:05.742)
Yeah.

i love it that i'm

Chelsea Maude Avirett (13:10.985)
Exactly. Yes, you are ahead. Well, and I think that's so interesting is that I'm also seeing some you've talked about it recently to some customer education roles where you are using an LMS and you're creating courses for customers. And I mean, we've always had this sales force has had really robust certification program for years now. But customer education, I think, is starting to become a little bit more mainstream.

Holly Owens (13:21.358)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (13:38.215)
And it's a great opportunity for educators because it's harder to find. It's not quite so saturated. it also, again, it goes back to this larger focus on revenue generation. Because in a tighter economy, we really have to make sure that the employees are getting a return on investment for hiring them. So learning and development in companies where it thrives, they're demonstrating that impact. They're saying, you know,

we're retaining employees, we're speeding up the onboarding process so they can do what they do best and learn more faster. So if you're looking at these jobs, you wanna make sure you're asking companies, are you doing these things? So learning and development, when it has that strong focus is doing well, marketing, sales, which also brings up the issue that some learning and development jobs are actually in sales and marketing, where you're doing customer education.

but also training at the enablement function, sales enablement jobs, customer success enablement, customer support enablement. All of these jobs where you're training people in the department how to do that job better, these are great opportunities, particularly if you've done part-time customer support work, which a lot of educators have done. If you've done any kind of customer facing work, a lot of times these can be good transitions. So again, broadening the scope of what you think about.

And I think really focusing less on job titles and more on like, what is this job actually doing? Because a customer education is doing the same task, different audience enablement, similar tasks, different audience, and really trying to say, how can I bring in all of the skillsets that I have and leverage different skillsets? And it also means you can sometimes take a bridge job. If you're having trouble getting to LND, you can take a customer support job for two years and move into their training role and or sales or things.

Holly Owens (15:14.148)
Right.

Holly Owens (15:23.491)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (15:33.476)
We are.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (15:34.381)
So gives you more opportunities, which is great because if you're looking at that overall job market trend, really being able to be flexible and being able to respond. It's a teacher superpower. And it's something that I think is important in the current climate that we have.

Holly Owens (15:49.144)
Yeah, 100%. Last night, I'll tell you a little story. Last night, my fiance and I, went to a local restaurant, right? And we were sitting at the bar because it was packed and this restaurant is really open four to nine. That's it, every day, four to nine. So five whole hours. But anyways, we were talking to some people who had recently moved to Wilmington. They were from Southport, Maine.

You know, they asked me what my role was and I'm always hesitant now. I'm not saying I'm hesitant. I love my role, but I want to say I'm an instructional designer because that's what I've always been. And now that I'm a director of growth marketing, I have like this little challenge, like saying like I'm a director of growth marketing because I don't want to take away from what I've done in instructional design, like kind of discredit my reputation. So that was interesting to me to think about, like the role I'm using instructional design every single day in marketing.

every single day. have to know your customers. You have to know how to design things for webinars. I'm still doing trainings and things like that and developing courses that Yellowdig puts out for people to take. We have a certification. So there's so much instructional design. There's still not a It's not like it's another position where it's like there is not a thing that doesn't overlap with instructional design.

just like teaching in instructional design overlap or customer success and instructional design overlap. Like I'm finding so much overlap that like the things that I needed to be trained on were more or less the technologies that were being used in marketing that I wasn't aware of. Not just so I feel weird. was like, you know, my fiance, I told this lady I was a director of marketing. I'm like, but I'm not, I'm an instructional designer. So just a little story, you know, kind of getting that like.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (17:33.814)
you

Holly Owens (17:38.98)
Yeah, these things overlap and you're not just pigeonholed into these things and this is all you're gonna do for the rest of your life or this is all you're gonna do in this role. It's like, it's very open.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (17:50.025)
Yes. And that's one thing, like I do break jobs into job categories, but so frequently I'm like, this role fits into this job category. Like program management is a great example, but 50 % of the job is training. So maybe that should be in learning and development. You know, it's, it's Right. And I, again, I think if you're interested in this, learn what your skillset is and then look broadly because you're going to see.

Holly Owens (18:06.284)
It's hard. It's harder.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (18:18.385)
So many of the elements of what you do on a regular basis show up in a lot of different job categories, exactly like what you're talking about. We think of marketing as social media, but marketing is also engaged with customers and teaching and coaching those customers, particularly growth marketing, because how do you keep customers around? Well, you engage them, you help them learn and feel excited about the product. So absolutely.

Holly Owens (18:30.464)
It's way more than that.

Holly Owens (18:40.11)
Yep.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (18:46.081)
Don't rely on job categories, job titles. Really find what you do well and then find the jobs that fit.

Holly Owens (18:52.74)
And like we continue to preach it's different everywhere. Like what growth marketing looks like at Yellowdig doesn't look the same at another ed tech company or like a big, like a Google or Amazon. It doesn't look the same. It should, it 100 % should, but it doesn't. Not at this point. I'm wondering if, and I want to ask you another question before I jump into all this stuff. I'm wondering if like things like AI are going to make things more uniform for us again, like in terms of.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (19:05.111)
But it should. I think it's the future.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (19:21.604)
that's interesting.

Holly Owens (19:22.98)
Like how it's just gonna bring together some of the main components of the role and how we're using that tool. And that's just gonna be like, this is the same everywhere. Like you have to use AI to generate scripts or generate job descriptions or whatever you have to do, generate trainings, that kind of stuff. I've been wondering like, is that gonna change? Maybe it'll make things more uniform across the different industries.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (19:50.753)
ways too, some of those things are already standardized, like job descriptions. mean, how many there's a boilerplate job description for all of these job titles. You can tell when somebody actually wrote a job description for the first time, you're like, this is new. like it tells you what the job is actually. And they've thought about what the job is. And so I think we already have some of that, which is where AI feels appealing. Because if we're just

Holly Owens (19:51.844)
Yeah.

Nah,

Holly Owens (20:05.006)
Big difference.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (20:20.553)
sort of doing the same thing over and over again. Why not automate that so that we can put our time into doing something different and previewing our candidate process. That can be something where if we spend more time interviewing people or finding some better ways to actually assess their skills and not doing the boring stuff, that's a plus. That's an absolute plus. It's interesting to see how fast AI is going because we've gone from AI never showing up in job descriptions.

Holly Owens (20:29.124)
Yeah, I wanna do it again.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (20:50.177)
to now it's starting to show up in preferred skills quite frequently. Yep. So that's the next step is when it's required. And I don't see that super frequently, but I am starting to see it. And not enough that I would actually be like, in my summaries, you need to have AI for this, definitely you need to have an awareness. You need to know how it's being used in your field. You need to know what its strengths are.

Holly Owens (20:54.168)
be required.

Holly Owens (21:08.324)
Yeah, you need to have an awareness 100%.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (21:18.285)
you know, what is it actually good for? What is it not good for? And the ability to leverage that because yeah, the people who know how to prompt AI to do the things they need to do are going to be the people who are getting employed faster and who are getting promoted and not getting laid off because their job can be done by AI. Yeah.

Holly Owens (21:39.042)
Yeah, question of the day, and I know you get this in your inbox a million times like I do, or when you're talking to people, what do I do to stand out? What do I do? What is the magic formula? What do we do?

Chelsea Maude Avirett (21:51.244)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (21:58.157)
Yes, that's tricky. I think there are a couple of different ways we can answer this. So let's start off just thinking about the resume and the cover letter. And we talked a little bit about how L &D is consolidating. And so roles that used to be distinct are now being collapsed for various reasons. Some of them, honestly, very good reasons. Some of them bottom line issues. So.

One of the things I think you've got to do is show the breadth of your experience. As teachers, we're so used to doing that. We do that whole life cycle. So really making sure your resume demonstrates each section of that. I also see a lot of teachers who are still focused on their classroom. And a lot of times we're doing the same work outside of our classroom. So think about that needs assessment. You were talking about how you do needs assessment and evaluating even in your role.

We do it in every role. But as we're teaching, one of the things that we often say is, I assess the needs of my students. I'm pulling data. But we also, almost every single teacher is working in a department, or you're doing that with your department colleagues. And then you're making, what are these larger scale department changes we need to make? So whenever you have a choice between describing something,

that you do in your classroom or describing something you do with or for adults, choose the second piece because that's going to be closer to what you do in an instructional design environment. You're having to suddenly evaluate students that you don't know and see every day. So you're having to ask different questions. And that process is really important because we forget that even though we're doing the same process, we're doing it in a different way. And we have to think about what that changes.

It is a lot harder to gather data from adults that you see, or if you're working in a remote environment that you might be emailing. So thinking a little bit about how can you show that you're doing that part of the job as well? So not just the functional skill, but who you're doing it with. So that's one thing I would say. Then the other thing is the opposite, is I would also show some of where you're niching down. So we just talked about AI.

Holly Owens (23:55.181)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (24:13.631)
What are the other preferred skills you're seeing in job descriptions that you're like, that sounds like fun. Go and learn that and then use it and show how you're actually demonstrating that skill on a regular basis. And make sure those are in your resume and your bullet points. Don't worry about trying to say, this is my job description. Say what you're doing that's relevant for the job. So that's kind of like the basic stuff. I would also, we haven't talked about portfolios yet.

Holly Owens (24:37.154)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (24:43.117)
And I think there's a lot of portfolios are becoming very, very similar. There's a style and everybody is doing the same style. They look great. They look great, but they are really one note. There's so much emphasis on training and specifically training through an articulate program or a rise. And one of the things that I think teachers are so good at is

Holly Owens (24:43.46)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (25:04.706)
Yep.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (25:12.553)
assessing what the right learning intervention is. We don't always go to a classroom training, so to speak. You sometimes we break kids up into groups. Sometimes we have them do our project. Sometimes we do 20 different, we usually have a toolbox of like 20 different things we do. And so thinking about how can you show that in your portfolio? And I think one thing that is a bit underrated in L &D or job aids,

I think professionals who are working in instructional design are using these all the time. But we're talking so much about articulate courses that we don't really talk about how often we're doing something like building a job aid. And so I would really encourage people to think about that portfolio more broadly than just the training piece of it. What are other ways that you help somebody solve a problem and show that? And

I think it really shows your flexibility and it shows your understanding of adult learning methodologies and that you can really navigate a lot of different environments and not just, let me build a training for you because that's a lot of time and money for the company. And I mean, I've got a couple of others. think networking is its own, is its own topic, but I think networking, networking is such a piece of this. So yeah, I'll talk about networking.

Holly Owens (26:25.218)
Yep.

Holly Owens (26:32.298)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (26:39.085)
actually had a great experience.

Holly Owens (26:39.48)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm just sitting here listening because I love listening to you talk because I always learn something. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you on that. Like people, I think I was just, you know, like saying that the LinkedIn is required, but the networking is right behind it. Like, even though we're in this digital space, it's still very old school who you know, who you know that could maybe introduce you to somebody within the position or the industry or the company you're going to look for, you know, who knows who, that's still a thing.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (27:09.793)
Right. And so going to conferences, you do conferences a lot of times. There are some major learning and development conferences. You've got a great handout that lists a lot of them. Conferences are great. I think also looking at your local learning and development, I'm being very broad there, chapters. So it could be ATD, but it could also be, I spoke recently at PACT Minnesota, and it's a training, it's a local training organization. And they were

Holly Owens (27:27.363)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (27:39.629)
They're actually welcoming teachers. They have a special teacher membership for some of their remote opportunities. But it was just such a warm and welcoming environment. And they were sitting there giving people advice and it was just really collegial. And I think that's what learning development does so well is build those learning communities and professional development spaces. And so I would say find what that is locally. Sometimes you're gonna see it online if you're in a...

Holly Owens (27:44.953)
nice.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (28:08.407)
community like me where it's a 90 minute drive to get to all the professional networking events.

Holly Owens (28:11.236)
You won't believe it, it's like, mine's in Raleigh, I think. That's two hours. It's just, we need more, yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (28:17.445)
are you serious?

Wilmington's major city. Okay.

Holly Owens (28:22.38)
Yeah, no, we don't have the local ATV. in the center of the state. So yeah, I definitely agree with you too on those ATV things. I enjoyed like when I was in South Carolina attending those events and working with that group. They had a really great group.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (28:35.725)
That's nice. And I know it, I don't know how it works in every state, but here in Maine, they do a lot of remote events just because we're Maine. We're a million people spread out very, very far. But so there may be that way in other states, but yeah, find your tribe locally because it means that you're going to be talking to people who are doing the profession on a daily basis. And that's just going to give you.

Holly Owens (28:45.848)
Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (29:02.361)
so much knowledge of the field and it's going to give you such an ability to translate your skills more effectively. And also networking, that's how a lot of people find jobs. They say, by the way, did you hear about that job? No, I didn't hear about that job. Or did you hear about that job board? I a lot of people come to my job board because somebody else told them about it. these communities that we build and the resources that we share within them are really valuable. So you need to find.

what that resource is in your neck of the woods. And you want to do it locally too, because a lot of people transition to hybrid and in-person local jobs. A lot of people prefer hybrid. Yeah.

Holly Owens (29:39.81)
Yeah, some people prefer that. Like I prefer remote, but there's lots of people who prefer to go into the office one or two days a week or more and just be with colleagues. so I totally get that.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (29:51.937)
Right, yeah, so I think there are a lot of opportunities for people to think locally, even for remote jobs, because again, the L &D community is a small, tight network. So you know about the local jobs, you know about the remote jobs too.

Holly Owens (30:08.42)
Yep, absolutely. Oh my goodness. It's gone by too fast. I was like, oh, we're about 15 minutes in. No, we're about 30 minutes in already. Well, what I'll say is that obviously you need to continue to come back and people need to follow you out on LinkedIn world and all the data you're sharing and sign up for skip. Do all those things and everything will be in the show notes. But like,

Chelsea Maude Avirett (30:13.453)
my goodness, I just looked at the clock too.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (30:22.445)
you

Holly Owens (30:36.918)
Any final thoughts about what's going to be happening in the next few months, like in the next quarter as we, you know, Q3 and Q4 as we begin to move towards the end of the year?

Chelsea Maude Avirett (30:46.881)
Yeah, so in EdTech, we do see a shift away from those school-based jobs because obviously the school year has started. So those are really quarter one, quarter two. They trail off by the end of the summer. in the non-EdTech, well, so in EdTech, when they're internal departments, those are gonna continue to be consistent throughout the year. And I'm also doing a lot more sourcing outside of EdTech as well.

Holly Owens (31:00.035)
Right.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (31:14.669)
because so many people have been like, you know, so long as it doesn't require me to have a nursing degree, I'm entrusted. nursing degree is a stretch. So what I would say is I'm really expecting to continue to see a similar number of these non-school-based learning and development jobs. think, again, there are larger questions about the economy. I think that there is a lot of uncertainty. We saw particularly in March and April of last year a pullback.

Holly Owens (31:20.492)
Yeah, right.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (31:43.277)
And I think quarter two people picked back up. They're like, okay, I'm feeling a little more comfortable. So I think that's my only concern is that we don't know where the overall economy is going. I think if things stay the way they're going, we're going to be fine. But it's that uncertainty that, yeah. But I do think again, if you're applying to jobs, look for those companies that are really, they understand the value that they're getting out of their learning and development job.

Holly Owens (31:59.406)
what happens. Yeah.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (32:12.885)
it's going to make it a little bit more future proof. Take a look at those marketing jobs that are customer education focused and really think about the diverse.

Holly Owens (32:19.022)
Happy to give you advice too about jumping into marketing. Yes, we should. Yes, we should. Well, Chelsea, it's always a pleasure having you on. I could talk to you all day. I'm like, you know, last episode I learned about the knockout questions. This one I'm learning about like how you're sourcing on outside and how people are starting to see these different roles that may or may not fit into the little

Chelsea Maude Avirett (32:22.542)
Excellent. We should do a webinar on that.

Holly Owens (32:45.796)
box of L &D as actual roles that they can jump into. it's all about just figuring out where you want to go. In simple terms, where do you want to go? So thanks so much for coming on again.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (32:54.284)
Yes.

Chelsea Maude Avirett (32:59.098)
Thank you again for having me. I always love seeing you.

Holly Owens (33:02.212)
Ditto.