When Sarah* walked into our first coaching session, she opened with a common concern:
“I’ve been teaching for ten years, but I want to move into tech recruitment. I assume I’ll need to start again at a more junior level.”
What followed over the next few weeks wasn’t a reset, it was a repositioning. Sarah moved into a tech recruitment role at an IT social enterprise, securing a higher salary than her teaching position by clearly demonstrating how her experience translated into value for a tech employer.
Career transitions into tech don’t require abandoning your professional history. They require learning how to leverage it strategically.
The Transferability Gap
The real challenge for professionals moving into tech isn’t a lack of relevant skills — it’s a lack of translation. Many experienced professionals undersell their background because they frame their experience through the lens of their previous industry, rather than through the problems tech organisations are trying to solve.
Sarah initially viewed her teaching background as unrelated to tech recruitment. But when we mapped her experience against the responsibilities of a recruitment role, a different picture emerged.
Her work marketing educational programs mirrored the relationship-building and pipeline development required in tech talent sourcing. Evaluating student capability aligned with structured candidate assessment. Managing parents, administrators, and regulators translated directly into multi-stakeholder coordination across hiring managers, HR teams, and candidates. Her experience designing individual support plans became a strength in candidate engagement and retention. Even her database management and compliance work positioned her well for applicant tracking systems, CRM platforms, and regulatory requirements.
These weren’t abstract “soft skills.” They were commercially relevant capabilities already in demand within tech hiring environments.
A Three-Step Framework for Leveraging Your Skills in Tech
Audit for adjacencies, not absolutes
Instead of asking, “Have I done this tech role before?”, ask, “What problems have I solved, and do those problems exist here?”
Sarah hadn’t recruited engineers before, but she had years of experience assessing potential, managing expectations, tracking outcomes, and supporting progression. By mapping her experience directly to role requirements, her relevance became clear.Speak tech language and articulate value
Every sector has its own terminology, but the underlying business needs are consistent. Sarah reframed “educational program development” as “customised recruitment solutions,” “student assessment frameworks” as “candidate evaluation criteria,” and “compliance management” as “regulatory and data governance adherence.”
This showcases accurate translation and demonstrates commercial awareness and adaptability; two traits tech employers value highly.Find the bridge, not the leap
Strategic transitions outperform speculative ones. Rather than applying broadly, we focused on tech organisations whose operating models aligned with their experience. This included IT social enterprises, traineeship providers, and organisations with diversity hiring mandates.
By targeting roles where her background strengthened the team, Sarah positioned herself as a low-risk, high-value hire.It was because of this that Sarah didn't need to take an expected pay cut. By elegantly articulating the relevance of her transferable skills she brought to this particular position, she could continue onwards and upwards.
Build Forward, Not Over
The professionals who succeed in tech transitions don’t expect to be carried forward; they deliberately carry their experience with them. Their advantage lies in perspective, maturity, and the ability to apply proven capability in new environments.
Moving into tech isn’t about starting again. It’s about building forward with intention.
*Name changed for privacy.
Author Bio
Geraldine Olea is the Founder and Career Strategy Consultant at Academy Olea, where she helps professionals transition into tech through strategic skill positioning and market-aligned career planning. With experience across government, defence, space, and commercial technology sectors, she specialises in translating complex experience into credible tech career pathways. Her work has been featured in Entrepreneur.com, The Daily Telegraph, and SmartCompany. Geraldine is a ReadyTech accredited Job Coach and an advocate for inclusive, skills-first entry into the tech workforce.
