CivieBlog

There has been really great response to both Recommended End of Year eLearning Tools Spending? and this month's Big Question: Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning.  For both, lots of ideas that I never would have been able to provide on my own.  I may be pushing my luck, but I received another question that I thought was a good question.

By way of background, this person is a teacher/trainer who is bright and has lots of great experience teaching and training different adults across different topics.  He's well versed in "advanced Teaching-Learning techniques."  But he's looking for a job right now and wants to point himself in a good direction.  Here was his question:

I taught MS Office and HTML for 8 years in college, then went back for an MFA in Fine Art to give my right brain a chance.  I have exceptional talent at training and communicating across disciplines and I’m trying to get back into the job market.  Any ideas about where some “sweet spots” are, niches that are growing, companies that are doing especially well now?  I appreciate any thoughts you can share.

But I've got to imagine this question is bigger than him.  A lot of the core skills that a trainer has can be applied in a lot of different places.  How do you decide where to focus your search?  How do you figure out what companies are hiring trainers?  And, of course, there's the thought in the back of my mind, do you need to re-skill to be more than a trainer?

What suggestions do you have for him?