Best Jobs For Former Instructors [2023]

It’s tough to be a instructor 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 instructor isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become instructors in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many instructors 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 instructors 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 INSTRUCTORS

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 INSTRUCTORS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Teacher	1.44%
2	Substitute Teacher	1.29%
3	Adjunct Instructor	1.05%
4	Adjunct Professor	0.99%
5	Internship	0.89%
6	Sales Associate	0.74%
7	Assistant Professor	0.73%
8	Research Assistant	0.73%
9	Consultant	0.72%
10	Registered Nurse	0.66%
11	Adjunct Faculty	0.61%
12	Owner	0.6%
13	Administrative Assistant	0.57%
14	Teaching Assistant	0.56%
15	Customer Service Representative	0.49%
16	Manager	0.47%
17	Project Manager	0.46%
18	Director	0.45%
19	Volunteer	0.45%
20	Graduate Research Assistant	0.42%
21	Program Manager	0.4%
22	Tutor	0.37%
23	Office Manager	0.36%
24	Server	0.35%
25	Supervisor	0.35%
26	Assistant Manager	0.33%
27	Principal	0.29%
28	Graduate Assistant	0.29%
29	Program Director	0.29%
30	Lecturer	0.28%
31	Special Education Teacher	0.28%
32	Operations Manager	0.27%
33	Coordinator	0.27%
34	Program Coordinator	0.27%
35	Sales Representative	0.27%
36	Associate Professor	0.26%
37	Team Leader	0.26%
38	Faculty	0.25%
39	Professor	0.24%
40	President	0.24%
41	Coach	0.24%
42	Graphic Designer	0.24%
43	Educator	0.24%
44	Cashier	0.24%
45	Graduate Teaching Assistant	0.24%
46	Research Scientist	0.23%
47	Associate	0.23%
48	Specialist	0.23%
49	Technician	0.22%
50	Case Manager	0.22%
51	Executive Director	0.22%
52	General Manager	0.21%
53	Writer And Editor	0.21%
54	Owner/operator	0.2%
55	Research Associate	0.2%
56	Esl Instructor	0.2%
57	Assistant Director	0.2%
58	Online Instructor	0.2%
59	Training Specialist	0.2%
60	Security Officer	0.19%
61	Lead Instructor	0.19%
62	Personal Trainer	0.18%
63	Teacher Assistant	0.18%
64	Editor	0.17%
65	Mathematics Instructor	0.17%
66	Trainer	0.17%
67	Fellow	0.17%
68	Office Assistant	0.17%
69	Vice President	0.17%
70	Systems Administrator	0.16%
71	Instructional Designer	0.16%
72	Research Fellow	0.16%
73	Chief Executive Officer	0.16%
74	Counselor	0.16%
75	Assistant	0.16%
76	Data Analyst	0.16%
77	Curriculum Developer	0.15%
78	Math Teacher	0.15%
79	English Instructor	0.15%
80	Academic Adviser	0.14%
81	Technical Support Specialist	0.14%
82	Business Analyst	0.14%
83	Administrator	0.14%
84	Chairperson	0.14%
85	Founder	0.14%
86	Mentor	0.14%
87	Account Manager	0.13%
88	Human Resources Manager	0.13%
89	Analyst	0.13%
90	Store Manager	0.13%
91	Lead Teacher	0.13%
92	Nurse Practitioner	0.13%
93	Research Assistant Professor	0.13%
94	Web Developer	0.13%
95	Human Resources Coordinator	0.13%
96	Driver	0.13%
97	Attorney	0.13%
98	Certified Nursing Assistant	0.13%
99	Writer	0.13%
100	Massage Therapist	0.13%

Most Common Jobs For Former INSTRUCTORS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a instructor 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 instructors to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former INSTRUCTORS

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