Latest / The Comeback Career Podcast with Fexingo: Returning After a Gap, Stay-at-Home Re-Entry / How a Career Gap Helped One Woman Pivot From Teaching to Tech Recruitment
Transcript
- Lucas: Maria Chen spent seven years teaching middle school math in a public school district outside Portland. Then she took a career gap — two years at home with her kids — and when she wanted to go back, she didn't return to teaching. She became a technical recruiter at a SaaS company called LogixFlow, and she got a 15 percent raise over her previous salary. That story has a lot to unpack, and I think it's a really useful case study for anyone listening who's eyeing a cross-industry pivot after a gap. Luna: Fifteen percent more than a teacher's salary in a district that was already underpaying — that's not nothing. But the question I have is, how did she convince a tech company to hire someone with no recruiting experience and a two-year gap? Lucas: Right, and that's exactly where the story gets interesting. So Maria's first move wasn't to apply. She spent about three months doing what she called 'translation work' — mapping her classroom skills to corporate language. Classroom management became 'stakeholder engagement and conflict resolution.' Curriculum planning became 'project management with tight deadlines and measurable outcomes.' And data-driven instruction — she had been tracking student progress with spreadsheets and adjusting lesson plans — that became 'analytics-driven decision-making.' She told me that the hardest part was unlearning the humility that teachers are taught. You know, the instinct to downplay your achievements. Luna: Yeah, I've heard that before — teachers often don't realize how much they manage. But she still needed a credential, right? Recruiting has specific tools and processes. Lucas: Exactly. So she took a free online course — actually it was the AIHR Digital HR certificate, which is free for the first month — and she focused specifically on the technical recruiting module. She learned about applicant tracking systems, Boolean search strings, sourcing on LinkedIn. She finished that in about six weeks, doing it in the evenings after her kids went to bed. Then she started doing informational interviews with recruiters at tech companies in the Portland area. She did 22 of them over two months. Luna: Twenty-two informational interviews is a lot. Most people do three and give up. How did she even find that many people willing to talk? Lucas: She used a really specific approach. She didn't cold message random recruiters. Instead, she searched LinkedIn for people who had previously been teachers and had moved into recruiting. She figured they'd be more sympathetic and more likely to give honest advice. And she was right — she had a response rate of about 40 percent, which is way above average. One of those conversations turned into a referral at LogixFlow. The recruiter she spoke with was a former English teacher, and they hit it off immediately. Luna: That's smart — finding the people who already understand the narrative. So she gets the interview. What was that like? They must have asked about the gap. Lucas: She told me she didn't hide it. She framed it as intentional — I chose to be home with my kids, and during that time I reassessed my career and decided to pivot into a role where I could use my people skills in a different way. She also mentioned that she kept her skills sharp by volunteering to coordinate the hiring for her local parent-teacher association — she basically ran the volunteer recruitment drive for a hundred-person organization. That gave her a concrete example of sourcing, screening, and onboarding that she could talk about in the interview. Luna: And this is something we've talked about before — using volunteer roles to fill the gap. But what's new here is the specific industry shift. Teaching to tech recruiting is a pretty big leap. Do we know why LogixFlow was open to hiring someone without direct experience? Lucas: Yeah, and this gets to a broader trend. LogixFlow's head of talent told me that they've been actively moving away from requiring a four-year degree for many roles, including recruiting. They're more interested in what they call 'proven people skills' — empathy, communication, ability to manage multiple stakeholders. And they've found that former teachers often outperform traditional recruiters in candidate experience. Teachers are trained to listen, to ask the right questions, to make people feel comfortable. That's exactly what a good recruiter does. Luna: So they were essentially hiring for attitude and trainability. That's a smart move, especially in a tight labor market. What was her starting salary? Lucas: She started at $62,000 base plus a bonus tied to hires — her total compensation her first year was about $68,000. Her teaching salary had been $59,000 after seven years. So she took a small base pay cut initially — the base was $55,000 for the first six months during training — but by the end of year one she was ahead. And the growth trajectory is very different. In teaching, step raises are maybe two or three percent a year. In tech recruiting, she got a 10 percent raise after one year and was promoted to senior recruiter after 18 months. Luna: And the gap wasn't a liability at all. If anything, it gave her a story. But I want to push back a little — not everyone has the time to do 22 informational interviews and a six-week certification while parenting. What's the realistic takeaway here? Lucas: I think the realistic takeaway is that you don't have to do all 22. Maria did that many because she was strategic — she was also building a network from scratch. But you could do five and get a much better sense of the landscape. The key is the translation exercise — actually writing down your skills in the language of the target industry. That's free, it takes an afternoon, and it changes how you see yourself. The certification is nice but not strictly necessary — she got the interview before she finished it. What mattered was the story and the referral. Luna: So the certification was more for her own confidence than for the resume. That's actually a helpful reframe. A lot of people think they need a whole degree or a bootcamp to switch fields. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing — Maria told me that the biggest surprise was how much she enjoyed recruiting. She said teaching prepared her for the emotional labor of dealing with candidates who are nervous or disappointed. She's really good at giving feedback that doesn't crush people. That's a skill that's hard to teach, and it's one she already had. So the gap didn't erase her expertise — it let her repackage it. Luna: That's a great line. And you know, this kind of story is exactly why we keep doing this show — because it gives people a concrete blueprint. And we can keep doing it ad-free because listeners like you support us. If you've gotten something out of episodes like this, maybe a couple of dollars a month — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It genuinely makes a difference, keeps the lights on, no ads, no sponsors. Lucas: Yeah, and it's listeners like Maria who told us they found the show useful during their own gap — that feedback is what keeps us going. So if you're in a similar spot, we hope this episode helps. And if you want to chip in, that link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Now, back to Maria's story — one more detail I found really interesting. She said that the hardest part wasn't the interview or the certification. It was the moment she decided to leave teaching permanently. That psychological break — admitting that the career she'd invested seven years in wasn't the right fit anymore — that took the longest. Luna: That's the part that doesn't get talked about enough. A career gap isn't just a resume gap — it's often an identity gap. You're not just explaining a blank space, you're explaining why you're not the person you used to be. Lucas: Right. And Maria said she spent about four months of her gap just wrestling with that. She didn't start the certification or the informational interviews until she had made peace with the fact that she wasn't going back to the classroom. She called it 'the permission phase.' Once she gave herself permission to pivot, the logistics felt manageable. But without that internal shift, she would have kept half-applying to teaching jobs out of guilt. Luna: So the gap itself — the two years at home — that was actually a necessary incubation period. She wasn't wasting time. She was doing the emotional work that's a prerequisite for a real career change. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the most important takeaway for anyone listening who's in a gap right now and feeling like they should be doing more. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is sit with the discomfort of not knowing what's next. The action steps come later. Maria's timeline was roughly: six months of emotional processing, three months of translation and certification, two months of networking, and then one month of interviews before the offer. That's a year, start to finish. And she started the process while she was still at home with a toddler and an infant. Luna: That's a realistic timeline. A lot of career change advice makes it sound like you can do it in a weekend. Maria's story shows it's a marathon, but a winnable one. So what's she doing now? Is she still at LogixFlow? Lucas: She is. She's been there just over two years now. She's a senior technical recruiter, and she's actually started mentoring other career changers — especially former teachers — through a local nonprofit called pivotPortland. She says she's never been happier professionally. And she still uses her math skills — she runs the numbers on hiring funnels and conversion rates. So in a way, she never left teaching. She just changed the classroom. Luna: That's a beautiful way to put it. Alright, that's all we have for today. If you want to read more about Maria's full journey, there's a link in the show notes. And as always, if this show has helped you, consider throwing a couple of bucks at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps us going. Lucas: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.