Best Jobs For Former Directors [2023]

It’s tough to be a director nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a director isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become directors in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many directors no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former directors to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former DIRECTORS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former DIRECTORS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Vice President	2.99%
2	Consultant	1.7%
3	Principal	1.17%
4	Senior Director	1.13%
5	Executive Director	1.1%
6	Manager	0.94%
7	Teacher	0.88%
8	Program Manager	0.86%
9	President	0.82%
10	Project Manager	0.71%
11	General Manager	0.71%
12	Owner	0.69%
13	Managing Director	0.68%
14	Substitute Teacher	0.59%
15	Operations Director	0.57%
16	Operations Manager	0.56%
17	Internship	0.56%
18	Senior Project Manager	0.55%
19	Chief Executive Officer	0.53%
20	Chief Finance Officer	0.49%
21	Senior Manager	0.49%
22	Program Director	0.49%
23	Business Developer	0.48%
24	Adjunct Professor	0.44%
25	Instructor	0.42%
26	Administrative Assistant	0.42%
27	Office Manager	0.41%
28	Director Of Sales	0.37%
29	Assistant Director	0.37%
30	Marketing Director	0.35%
31	Chief Operating Officer	0.34%
32	Sales Associate	0.32%
33	Senior Consultant	0.32%
34	Founder	0.31%
35	Customer Service Representative	0.31%
36	Volunteer	0.3%
37	Senior Vice President	0.29%
38	Supervisor	0.28%
39	Human Resources Coordinator	0.28%
40	Account Executive	0.28%
41	President/chief Executive Officer	0.27%
42	Adjunct Faculty	0.26%
43	Assistant Manager	0.26%
44	Principal Consultant	0.25%
45	Management Consultant	0.25%
46	Registered Nurse	0.25%
47	Adjunct Instructor	0.25%
48	Development Director	0.24%
49	Lead Teacher	0.23%
50	Owner/operator	0.23%
51	Administrator	0.23%
52	Sales Representative	0.22%
53	Case Manager	0.22%
54	Coordinator	0.22%
55	Director Of Human Resources	0.22%
56	Team Leader	0.21%
57	Communications Director	0.21%
58	Managing Partner	0.21%
59	Marketing Manager	0.21%
60	Professor	0.21%
61	Account Manager	0.2%
62	Finance Director	0.2%
63	Associate Director	0.2%
64	Preschool Teacher	0.19%
65	Sales Manager	0.19%
66	Assistant Vice President	0.19%
67	President/owner	0.19%
68	Research Assistant	0.19%
69	Director Of Information	0.18%
70	Regional Director	0.18%
71	Human Resources Manager	0.18%
72	Server	0.18%
73	President And Founder	0.18%
74	Service Director	0.17%
75	Vice President, Business Development	0.17%
76	Partner	0.17%
77	Co-Founder	0.17%
78	Chief Information Officer	0.17%
79	Writer And Editor	0.16%
80	Coach	0.16%
81	Editor	0.16%
82	Production Assistant	0.16%
83	Associate	0.16%
84	Store Manager	0.16%
85	Business Development Manager	0.16%
86	Program Coordinator	0.15%
87	Business Consultant	0.15%
88	Creative Director	0.15%
89	Director Of Strategy	0.14%
90	Controller	0.14%
91	Technical Director	0.14%
92	Producer Director	0.14%
93	Board Member	0.14%
94	Marketing Consultant	0.14%
95	Executive Vice President	0.14%
96	Chief Technology Officer	0.14%
97	Assistant Professor	0.14%
98	Sales/marketing	0.13%
99	Clinical Director	0.13%
100	Specialist	0.13%

Most Common Jobs For Former DIRECTORS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a director would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former directors to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former DIRECTORS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed director under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a director, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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