After years of teaching preschool, elementary and middle school students, Beth Davis wasn’t sure what her career would look like if she ever decided to leave the classroom.
But when she and her husband decided to start a family, Beth realized she needed better work-life balance: specifically, a schedule that didn’t involve grading papers until 9 p.m. every night or spending weekends drafting lesson plans.
“I kind of was just in this place of, ‘I don’t think I want to teach anymore,’ but when you’re a teacher, you feel trapped in your teacher box,” she explained. “Like, what else can I do?”
At that time, she turned to a friend who’d left teaching and could offer advice on making a career transition. That friend advised her to look for job opportunities at RapidScale, a managed cloud services company and part of the Cox family of businesses.
“She was like, ‘You’d be surprised at how much your teaching experience can play a helpful role in corporate America,” Beth recalled.
In 2023, Beth, who’s based in Raleigh, NC, made a career move from teaching to working in sales support and operations at RapidScale. It turns out that the leap from classroom to corporate isn’t too big: she says there are actually many similarities in the roles.
Here, she discusses what she loves about her position and how her background in teaching makes her well-suited for it.
What do sales and teaching have in common?
It didn’t take long for Beth to realize that what her friend told her was true: her skills as an educator made her shine in sales support and operations at RapidScale. In this new role, Beth is providing behind-the-scenes support, from training new hires on the sales team to developing or improving processes and documentation.
“I went from a classroom to here at RapidScale, but the skill set that I use every day and what I’m actually doing is not really as different as I thought it would be,” she said.
Ultimately, what initially drew Beth to teaching is something she also appreciates about her current role: “I love the aspect of creating resources and being helpful so that other people can be successful.”
While the age group and subject matter at hand are obviously quite different, Beth still feels like an educator when she’s helping new sales reps get up to speed on their products and processes so they can thrive in their roles.
“Like a teacher, I am relaying new information to someone and the clearer it is, and the more that they can do it independently,” she said.
In fact, Beth has gotten praise from those around her for the clarity in her communication style: “One thing that I have received feedback on is, ‘Thank you so much for being so clear in your explanations.’ So I think that is something that I definitely gained from teaching that’s helpful here.”
Beth said that she has much better work-life balance in her position at RapidScale.
“There’s the flexibility of being able to live your life and do your work at the same time,” she said. “There are things that are on my plate that I have deadlines for, but the world is not going to fall apart if I need to step away for a couple of hours or take a couple of days off. That’s been huge for me.”
Nurturing people’s potential
Beth was sold on joining RapidScale when she realized that people at the company care more about a person’s potential than whether they have the traditional background and experience for a given job.
In Beth’s case, everyone she met during her interviews saw her teaching background as a plus for the sales support role.
“It became very clear in my interview process that this was a supportive environment of teachers and educators, because there were people before me who’d been teachers and were very successful here, so that put me very much at ease,” she said.
Looking back, Beth said that the biggest challenge when making this career change was overcoming her own fear of working in a new environment in a new industry.
As the “newness” wore off, Beth recognized that there are many other positions (like hers) that don’t require technical expertise but are just as crucial to the company’s success.
As she continues her career journey at RapidScale, Beth appreciates that the company will never make her feel like she’s “boxed in” to one narrow path.
“It has really stood out to me here that they want to put you where you want to be,” she said. So if you’re in a role for a year and you’re like, ‘Hey, I want to try this,’ then that’s not discouraged; it’s encouraged.”
For anyone looking to make a career change, Beth’s best advice is: “Don’t box yourself in.”
Instead of worrying about what’s unfamiliar to you, “focus on your skills and what brings you joy in your work,” Beth says.
Just like Beth discovered new ways to use her teaching skills, you never know where you can end up. So let your skills and your passion be your guide.
“Just as I used to feel so satisfied when my students would do well on a test or finally master a concept, I feel that same thing now when a new sales rep is like, ‘Oh, I finally got this now’ — or ‘I just closed a huge deal,’” Beth said. “It’s still the same intrinsic joy of, ‘Yay, good job. We did it.’”
