Every year, the EdSurge jobs board collects thousands of postings from companies, districts and nonprofits looking for new edtech talent. And while users are perusing the listings and indicating their interests with clicks, EdSurge gets to see which jobs and organizations are the most popular via pageviews.
Curious to learn about the trends in edtech jobs over the last year? We took a look at the data to bring you information on the most popular edtech jobs, the best hiring seasons, and which organizations’ postings are receiving the most clicks.
The most popular edtech jobs
The most popular edtech job category doesn’t relate to design or administration—it’s all about curriculum writing.
On the Browse tab of the EdSurge Jobs board, the EdSurge Jobs Team has listed more than 50 titles or topics related to various roles in the edtech world, but certain categories have received more clicks than others over the past 12 months, as demonstrated by the chart to the right.
While edtech “sales” jobs do garner an admirable amount of attentions, over the past twelve months, “curriculum writer” has risen to the top, capturing more than a fourth of all pageviews. In fact, the word “curriculum,” whether followed by “writer” or designer,” appears to resonate relatively strongly with viewers. Take the five most viewed job postings from last year:
- “Curriculum designer” at NoRedInk
- “Educator success job” at Better World Ed
- “Curriculum solutions designers job” at Cengage Learning
- “Language arts curriculum designer” at IXL Learning
- “Senior education specialist job” at Eduscape
Why so much interest in curriculum? There’s no one reason for it, but Helen Resor, head of the EdSurge jobs team, reports that it could partially be because of job seekers looking for a change. “We have a number of educators looking to make the transition to an edtech company,” she explains, “and it seems that for many, their first choice in role is curriculum writer/curriculum development.”
There’s a caveat, however. Resor says that while curriculum roles do seem to get a lot of attention on the jobs board, she and her team have noted that other job areas are growing to be more and more popular, according to data from EdSurge’s job matching service, Connect.
On Connect, jobs seekers create an edtech profile, which the jobs team then uses to match job seekers with relevant roles. While “curriculum” still retains the top spot for most requested role amongst Connect job seeker, Resor notes that a number of other areas are growing—specifically data analysis, instructional design, and engineering (which currently makes up 14% of the Connect audience, as shown in the graph above).
Which companies do job seekers actually end up applying to?
When it comes to the “most popular” organizations, merely looking at which companies and school districts post the highest number of jobs isn’t a valuable metric, as organizations have varying hiring needs.
However, some organizations receive more “Apply Now” clicks per job posting than others. (Let’s call it the “job posting conversion rate.”) Out of all organizations that have posted more than four jobs in the last year on the EdSurge jobs board, who do you guess has the highest conversion rate?
Well, it’s not an edtech company, or a startup, or a venture capital fund. It is, in fact, Design Tech High School in the Bay Area, a young school out of the San Mateo Union High School District that’s looking to hire teachers for roles that involve instruction, design thinking and curriculum development. “Design Tech High School is looking for an English teacher interested in not only teaching English, but looking to redefine what it means to be a teacher,” reads one job posting. “In addition to teaching English in a 1:1 environment, you will also have the opportunity to learn design thinking through support from the Stanford k.12 lab.”
At the moment, Design Tech High has a conversion rate of nearly 1 in 4 (meaning for every 4 people that looks at the job posting, 1 chooses to apply). However, they aren’t the only organization hitting that rate. Curriculum platform Front Row Education, Chinese ESL product VIPKID, and K-12 assessment provider Performance Matters all follow closely behind, and they’re looking for talent to fill positions in California, Utah, New York, Illinois, and Florida.
The busiest hiring seasons
At any one time, the EdSurge Jobs Board features thousands of jobs across the country and overseas. But when it comes to pageviews, eager job seekers do flock to the Jobs Board homepage at higher rates over certain months—and Google Analytics helps tell that story.
To the right, you'll see the order of months (between January and December of 2016) from largest amount of traffic to the Jobs Board vs. least.
Unsurprisingly, December takes the last spot, likely due to the holiday season and prevalence of individuals dedicating more time to a celebration rather than to a job search. September may fall in second-to-last place because it coincides with the start of the school year. And at the top, spring takes up three of the top four spots—specifically, the season we’re in at the time of this article going to press.
Whatever month or season applicants choose to search for roles, there are always jobs that need filling and job seekers looking to fill those roles on the EdSurge Jobs board. What will the trends from 2017 say? We’ll let you know—around this time next year.
