Top Ingredients for Telling a Coherent Story: Resources for Education Data Jobseekers (Jobseekers Series Post 5)
This series serves as a follow-up to our Spring 2026 series on what we've learned in more than 15 years of attracting and screening education data talent, and what it means in meeting the moment of today's hiring market. This post is part of a series providing guidance to data strategists seeking roles in education organizations, informed by our work with hundreds of education data jobseekers.
Over the last month, Mary Levine, my colleague at the Harvard Strategic Data Project , has shared resources for education data jobseekers. These resources aren’t designed to encourage candidates to be something they aren’t; rather we share them to help strengthen the education field by getting the right talent into the right roles.
In this series, we’ve shared how to get the details right across your job application materials, why using the right language in your resume and LinkedIn can be make-or-break in demonstrating your potential, and why you need to do your research before an interview. Now, we’re putting it all together.
Think about it this way: getting yourself noticed as a viable candidate is akin to trying a new recipe. You know what you want to make, you know the ingredients and order of operations, and you have a general sense of how much time it will take. However, you’re now trying something slightly different (maybe you’re taking the leap from pre-made pie crust to homemade) so your preparation is even more important to set you up for success.
You know what you’ve done so far in your education and career, you know what your strengths are and what you want to improve on, and you know what sort of impact you want to make in your work. In baking, most people will get out all of their ingredients and tools before getting started –and don’t forget about preheating the oven. As a candidate for a role, you have to do something similar. You need to take inventory of your materials, your elevator pitch, and what’s drawing you to this next step in your career.
All of your materials – your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, and any other accompanying features – are all ingredients for how you tell a coherent story, including:
- What do you know how to do?
- How have you used those skills?
- What kinds of problems do you want to help solve?
- How would you contribute to this organization or role?
- How do you want to continue to grow and learn?
All in all, the details matter because they reinforce your credibility.
We put together this series and accompanying workbook because we want candidates to tell an accurate story about their potential. If you embody the competencies that are crucial to this work, you want that to be clear in your materials, your interview, and your preparation. And, hopefully, that helps you land the job.
Ready to tell your story? Check out this workbook that pulls together the lessons shared from the full series: https://sdp.cepr.harvard.edu/workbook-jobseekers
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We share these lessons openly because we care deeply about talented candidates finding the right roles to make a difference in the use of data in the education field. If you think you’ll benefit from this series, sign up here for updates right to your inbox: https://mailchi.mp/gse/jobseekerseries26
Check out the other posts in this series: