You just completed your degree in education.
Now what?
Basically, a bachelor’s degree in education prepares you to be a subject teacher in an educational institute, but what if you don’t want to teach? Maybe because you realize you want to do something else, or you just found out teaching is not your thing, or you actually studied education because you had no other choice, and now you want nothing to do with teaching a class!
I have good news for you!
The good news is that, apart from teaching, there are a range of career options available to you!
Read: Problems of Education in Nigeria and Possible Solution
So smile, because you can choose from any of the career options below:
Banking
Yes! Banks accept any degree for their graduate employees. As long as you can pass the aptitude tests and show creativity and initiative at the interviews, you are eligible to work for a bank.
Human Resource Management
Education graduates can easily fit into the human resource departments of most organizations. Because you have learned how to communicate in a way that makes people understand, and you have also learned how to listen skillfully, you can easily become a successful recruiter.
Other suitable careers in HR include employee relations and compensation or benefits management.
Writer or Editor
You can choose a career as a writer or an editor. Writers produce material for print and online media, while editors select the material that will be published.
A degree in education helps you develop creativity and the ability to convey complex information in simple ways. These skills will help you succeed as a writer or editor
Guidance and Career Counselor
Guidance and career counselors assist students with any school-related issues they have. This includes selecting classes, deciding on a course of study, dealing with academic difficulties and social problems, and applying to university. A bachelor’s degree in education will provide you with a great background for this occupation.
Training and Development Manager
Training and development managers design and implement training programs for companies’ employees. These are usually trainings to improve workers’ skills and knowledge and, in turn, the organization’s performance.
As an education graduate, you have skills that can prove very beneficial in this occupation. You have learned how to instruct people and have the ability to determine what strategies are appropriate for different situations and subjects.
Administration and Research
Because you have been taught organizational and planning skills, you would easily succeed as an administrative staff member in any organization. Becoming an admin assistant would open up a career in administration for you.
In addition to administration, education graduates would excel in research. Research is clearly related to gathering information to teach students, and this is one of the basic skills you were taught.
Retail Management
Retail management includes sales, some marketing, and managing customers.
Having developed the skills necessary to manage students in an educational environment, you would do really well in retail management. This involves a job as a sales manager or sales assistant
Customer Service
Customer service requires understanding how to treat customers in a special way to make them keep coming back. Education graduates have developed similar skills that would help them really excel in customer service roles.
This is one role in which all the skills you developed during your degree will be extremely valuable and useful.
Career adviser
A career adviser helps offer an unbiased and factual job, career, and study-related counseling and advice service to assist clients in making good decisions and optimizing their potential. A degree in education will be of tremendous importance in this job because it involves creating action plans for educational and career trajectory and helping clients achieve these lofty goals.
Child psychotherapists
Child psychotherapists are involved in attending to the non-medical treatment needs of children and teens, especially in matters pertaining to psychology, mental health, and emotion.
This job is akin to that of adult psychotherapists, but child psychotherapists work with kids and teens. It might sound difficult, but it can give you a sense of fulfillment. A degree in education is vital for this career because child psychotherapists deal with learning difficulties, anxiety, abnormal behaviors, and depression.
Recreation Director
A job as a recreation director will require leadership skills because it entails looking after and playing a managerial role in summer camps, sports centers, and other related fields. This career will offer you a way of providing educational service, but with another outlook, which is improving the physical health and fitness of youngsters. An educational degree will help you clinch this position.
Freelance Writing, Blogging, and Podcasting
Freelance writing is a great side hustle or full-time job for every teacher or education degree holder. Freelance writing gigs are flexible and enable writers to work at their own pace. The flexibility feature applies to bloggers and podcasters. Writers and bloggers produce content for lots of digital publications and online magazines. Podcasters also produce audio files to distribute to internet listeners. No specialized training is needed for freelance writing or blogging, but a degree in journalism is a plus.
Education Policy and Research
Educational policy and research careers are great alternative career pathways for education degree holders. An education policy analyst observes the educational system of a country or state and points out its weaknesses and strengths. This will help government agencies forge better educational policies and improve school outcomes. Education policy analysts may also be involved in field studies to discover which policies have been successful in educational institutions. A master’s degree in education is usually required for this position.
Read: List of Popular Educational Foundations in Nigeria
In conclusion, if you are an education graduate who does not want to end up in the classroom, you do not have to.
You can actually choose from any of the career options above and have no fear; your degree has prepared you adequately, and you will do really well in any of them.
Don’t forget that the onus is on you to show the recruiter that the knowledge and skills you gathered in education are very similar to the skills they are looking for in any of the roles above.
If you don’t show them, they won’t see it. Write out all your skills and relate them to the skills in each of the job roles above, and you will surely get your foot in the door.
Best of luck!