Exploring the Future of EdTech | Interview with Jess Thibault

Ryan Purvis: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Digital Workspace Works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host, supported by our producer, Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field, stories from the front lines, the problems they face and how they solve them, the areas they're focused on from technology, people, and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts for the Digital Workspace inner workings.

so welcome Jess to the Digital Workspace Works podcast.

Do you want to tell us about yourself and your company?

Jess Thibault: Sure, I started my career as a teacher. I taught middle school science and compliance, which surprises some people or at least the middle schoolers part, but I happen to absolutely love middle schoolers. But then I moved into marketing and communications for schools and then almost three years ago, I left nonprofit work and came over to the private sector in the role of marketing [00:01:00] and growth leader at a recruitment firm, so we're a third party agency focused on the educational technology industry.

So a lot of the products that I used for years. Are now our clients. So we work with the executive leadership of dozens and dozens, if not hundreds over the course of the company's life leaders and then help them. fill key roles, right? So we help them build teams. We are known for building sales teams.

Sales in particular with educational technology is a very specific role. It is not easy to sell to schools and higher education systems. It is definitely a very specific skill set. So but we do we work with all size companies from seed stage to IPO. We have very deep industry knowledge.

We really understand the educational technology space, which can be really helpful for our clients. So it [00:02:00] allows us to build. You know, high profit, high impact teams. We focus on the areas of sales, marketing, product operations, executive leadership, customer success basically everything but technical.

And we have a really tight operations team. So operationally, we're in really good shape. We have a team of around 10 The team is awesome. They can very quickly scale even roles that are we haven't done in a while or haven't done recently. We're very successful at because I think our team really focuses on building trust and building partnerships with our clients and with candidates.

So we can be effective in that space. it's amazing how much You know, headhunters get a bad rap for various reasons, various you know, practices that we don't follow. And so we really I think bring a lot of heart and authenticity to, our work.

Ryan Purvis: So, I mean, just to understand this, so you guys.

provide a service where [00:03:00] you, can provide people to a school, but then also you look at software products that can help a school deliver on their curriculum. Is that the right

Jess Thibault: understanding? No, no, no, no. We work for the educational technology companies themselves. So the companies that are selling into schools.

So most of our clients are software companies.

Ryan Purvis: Ah, okay. That's why I got a little bit confused because I wasn't sure who you were actually helping.

Jess Thibault: Yes.

Ryan Purvis: That's quite an interesting thing if you're trying to do all of that.

Jess Thibault: It helps to understand how schools work and what the teacher's needs are, and what are the main issues in the educational Realm that really I spend a lot of my time.

I'm our VP of growth. So I focus on business development and marketing. A lot of that is understanding the market. So I go to these educational technology conferences one to meet people, right? Potential clients, candidates, past clients, past candidates. But also to understand just the environment that we're working in because we can be more [00:04:00] helpful to software company and technology executives.

The more we understand the landscape of what they're going through as they're trying to build teams. So that's kind of why we pay such attention to that broader context, but absolutely no, we're working with software companies. We do also work with some service companies. We occasionally work with some like higher education institutions that are moving.

Into workforce development. And so we're looking to fill positions that are in that sort of partnership realm which is a form of sales, so.

Ryan Purvis: Okay. And then, you know, the standard question, what does the digital workspace mean to you?

Jess Thibault: So most of our clients. are remote first companies. Most educational technology companies are remote first.

And so the digital workspace is very relevant to them and to us. We're a completely remote company as well. So the challenges that our clients face in hiring. Really comes out when you start [00:05:00] exploring, you know, okay, well, what is this digital workspace look like? Right? What are candidates looking for in that space?

Candidates, you know, candidates come to us and usually wanting a few different things, right? And it's usually pretty much the same. They want growth opportunity. They want a good culture. They want A product that has market fit that is actually going to go somewhere, right? A company that's going to grow because it actually has a product that's meeting the market and that is sellable and that looks like a few different things in education.

So that's, what they're looking for. But the culture piece is particularly challenging when you're talking about remote first companies, right? So, you know, I think really trying to unpack that and understand from our client's perspective, you know, how are they supporting culture in a remote environment is really important to find those, matches, right?

Ryan Purvis: I'm curious, are you guys globally focused or U. S. focused? I mean, with these sorts of things

you do?

Jess Thibault: Good question. So we are focused on the U. S. educational market. Now [00:06:00] that means some of our clients are international companies, but they're selling into the United States. So we don't work like, Ed tech is huge globally, right?

India has its own market, right? And Southeast Asia has a really strong market. And then there's a lot of more focus on, you know, the expanded Middle East and, South America as well. There's a lot of, I would say European companies are the ones that are particularly successful when they come over to the U S obviously, there is a perception in the United States that European educational companies are top tier because we know European countries outperform us in terms of education. And so there's in particular, certain countries, right? We've seen a lot of success with Finnish and Swedish and, and some British companies, you know, really kind of having that branding of, you know, bringing exceptional technology to classrooms.

So, in those cases, we are [00:07:00] typically helping them build a sales team to sell into the U. S. Ah, okay. You know, with that they're looking for candidates who usually have done that before.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Jess Thibault: And so we're good at finding those people who have worked with an international company and helped build, build out the U.

S. market, build a team. And that's a particular skill set. So that's often what we're asked to do.

Ryan Purvis: So what's your, I mean, if you, if you had to meet somebody, so let's not worry about so much the software vendor trying to sell something or whatever it is, but if you're interviewing candidates, I mean, how do you suss out somebody that's got education experience versus say, someone like me who's maybe more fintech or more tech or I don't know, whatever the techs are I mean, how, what's

your approach like?

Jess Thibault: Well, it depends on the role for sales. We are only looking in industry. So for the most part, clients don't pay us to find salespeople from outside the industry. And there is not, there are very few success stories in ed tech. Of people coming from outside the [00:08:00] industry and being successful in EdTech in sales, specifically sales leadership, maybe, but in terms of the, you know, account executives and you know, customer success and stuff, they really have to understand the

environment that they're working in and the sales cycle. So typically in those circumstances, we are only researching and finding candidates that have worked in ed tech and who have sold. And we get really nitty gritty with those types of roles. We are typically looking for people who have sold the same type of thing to the same Person like in the organisational structure of these educational organisations.

So, for example, if the client sells an academic piece of software that is supplemental curriculum, right? So it's not core curriculum. It's a supplemental that the teacher can use. to augment the main curriculum, we're going to try to find a salesperson who has sold that exact thing, and preferably in the same subject [00:09:00] matter, right?

So if it's a math supplemental curriculum, we preferably want to find somebody who has sold math supplemental technology or curriculum.

Ryan Purvis: And this

is primarily English based, would you consider? English, Spanish or whatever, because I mean, obviously you're Mexican influences, but I'm just curious.

Jess Thibault: It's mostly English.

I mean, I think a lot of our companies have bilingual products or have bilingual aspects to their products, but for the most part, it's primarily English. Primarily we're focused on, you know, big public schools, right? Companies have a really interesting sales trajectory that we typically see.

They often try to start with teacher kind of bottom up selling and so they'll sell to teachers first to kind of get the immediate product feedback. But then very quickly, the way that companies tend to grow in ed tech is they start selling at the district level. Yeah. So I would say with marketing roles.

For example or product roles, we have a greater ability [00:10:00] to source from outside of ed tech, right? I would say especially marketing. Some clients really want to know that a marketing candidate can market to schools.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Jess Thibault: But for the most part, the bigger distinction with marketing is B2B or B2C.

Right. EdTech is B2B, right. They're selling into schools. So I would say somebody who is used to selling SAS technology or marketing SAS technology in a B2B style can fit fairly well into ed tech. So those are the types of skills that then we're looking for. And so typically with marketing roles, we're getting really nitty gritty on are they, do they have go to market experience?

is this more of a content role, right? What are the strategies that the client feels are important or what are the, you know, if the client feels like, well, I just, I need a strategist. I need somebody who's going to come up with the then we, we qualify based on

Ryan Purvis: I mean, obviously COVID would have changed things quite a bit from an educational point of [00:11:00] view in the sense of, well, I would hope at least, because this is the archaic way of teaching people.

You know, it needs to change. Are you seeing that with the vendors that you work with, that they are, there's almost a progression to more online or more hybrid mechanisms. And then that means your skill set for selling has to be one that can create a narrative to someone progressing from enclosure to hybrid to whatever, whatever it is.

You tell me.

Jess Thibault: Yeah, no, absolutely. There's a lot of major shifts that happened in the market with COVID and post COVID. And last year was a year of extreme caution, I would say, you know, in the economy in general, but especially in ed tech schools were trying to figure out what products were going to be useful.

And we're going to be you know, kind of part of their core tech stack. And then you know, companies were trying to figure out what's, our approach to the market, right? And, and what is the value and do we need different products? We saw a lot of clients developing new products.

Well, especially with an AI jumping into [00:12:00] the middle of it, right? It's like the. I mean, most of our clients had were already working on a I right. That's not brand new to them, right? I mean, there's always been this kind of for years now. This this kind of pulling that into their technology for sure, but it definitely altered

I think some product roadmaps pretty quickly.

Ryan Purvis: So as much as you've seen a I come in, do you think it's actually changing things at all?

Jess Thibault: Yes and no. I do think it will take some time. So there's a couple different applications that I have seen with AI and it, you know, depends on which type of AI you're really talking about, right?

Is it the the chatbot type or is it, you know, in the background? I think definitely a lot of our edtech companies are using AI in the background as far as In the ways that they program, right? In the ways that they build their software. But in terms of more the customer facing side of things we're seeing AI used to differentiate in the classroom. So your classroom has many different types of [00:13:00] learners, all different points, right? And so it's always been a important skill of a effective teacher to be able to reach multiple types of students in where they're at, right? And so AI provides a huge potential for differentiated learning and adapting as the child learns, right?

And being like, Oh, they're struggling with this concept. Okay. Let me give more. So that's been done for a while and a lot of ed tech, but AI absolutely. You know, brings that to another level of like, okay, this is where this kid is at. This is how I can shift. would say, yeah.

So the differentiation. I think AI is also being used in that chat bot component for helping kids and college students like talk through things, right? So I've seen applications as far as like, you know, your teacher's assistant kind of stuff, like asking basic questions about class, right?

Even if it's stuff that's on the [00:14:00] syllabus. So I've seen AI kind of chat bots take on that. And then also there's a big push right now in using AI to support student mental health. Cause at least there's a level of check in and kind of talking to students about, you know, how are they feeling? And I mean, ultimately part of that is identifying either threats to themselves or others, right?

And so there's, an element of AI that can be helpful there too. So, I mean, those are just some of the examples of, ways I've seen AI starting to really. Infiltrate the industry. And I think it's, you know, has a lot of potential for those different areas.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, the a couple things I wanted to ask you about in that regard was I was thinking about neurodiversity, which has become a more, you know, identified thing, you know, from autism or ADHD or whatever it is.

And this is why I've got, you know, big issues with them with the education system as a whole, because it's not designed for everybody. And I was wondering if the products were becoming clever enough to compensate for how you learn something as an individual. [00:15:00] So, you know, learning, mechanism of one, whereas the content, whatever it is, might be the same thing, but, the technology has been

used to deliver it a more personalised way so you can go and study. Yeah, I study mathematics. So, you know, way we study mathematics was terrible in the sense that you would study when I first did it was six months to do a semester and our pass rate was really low. And then they did like a two week hardcore eight hours a day of maths and the pass rate was really high.

And you sort of said, well, why don't we just study subjects like this all the time? Like you do maths for two weeks, you do physics for two weeks, you do whatever it is. Then you're, in the zone on a day. Yes, there are people obviously that passed before you know, doing everything at the same time.

But, you know, for core fundamental subjects that really need you to understand everything, that's a great way to do it. And if you could go and you have different, obviously, teaching methods. Montessori is one of those, I think, where you kind of, you let the child explore the direction they want to go. But as you get older, you sort of want the same thing.

You know, [00:16:00] what's the point of learning a whole bunch of history if you're never going to go into history? As professional, and that's a very bad example, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say in the sense of boutique driven education in a sense.

Jess Thibault: Yeah, I mean, there's, lots of different approaches and technology is certainly being used to support all those different, you know, approaches to learning.

I would say one of the greatest trends that I'm starting to see with educational technology that I'm a huge supporter of is this. call to research, right. And efficacy. So COVID highlighted a few different things about the industry. And one of them was that while schools invest in a lot of different tools, there's not necessarily the research behind some of them as far as proving that they're

are going to be improved educational outcomes, right? Like, are these tools, are these approaches effective?

Ryan Purvis: Yeah.

Jess Thibault: That's still a big question mark and a lot of ed tech [00:17:00] which, you know, when you, when I think about it, at least, I mean, that's ridiculous, you know, how are we spending millions of dollars of government funding on tools that are actually not effective?

That's frightening. But anyway, so I think there is this real push now for efficacy research, you know, not just usability research, right? It's not about, is the kid engaging with it? That's part of it, but does it actually teach the kids something? that's, a huge push. And I think COVID highlighted, you know, the thing that I keep coming back to when I, talk to

experts in the industry is this idea that like COVID didn't cause anything in education. All it did was accentuate the cracks that were already there and made them extremely visible to parents because their kids were home. All of a sudden you had parents realising that their child couldn't read. You know, it's just, but also just in terms of mental health.

And then, of [00:18:00] course, it accelerated, you know, at a massive scale, the types of technologies that were being developed the idea that we can do more remotely. I mean, the company is some of the companies that I'm most excited about right now are the ones that are creating remote platforms to

provide services to students that maybe are more remote, right? Or who just don't have that particular professional service. So for example, just like testing, dyslexia testing, right? Like you'd think that there would be a remote platform for that. Well, it's, there is now, but there wasn't, you know? and like that kind of stuff is just also seems basic and just, but also just so important.

And so, you know, I think COVID accelerated some of that development.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah. And it's an interesting point because I think what you made about accentuating certain things, because I think for a lot of things have been broken for a very long time because people have been so busy [00:19:00] and it's been so fast. you haven't seen it be broken because the most part you get away with it.

It's, you know, you, you can. You can do a thing, but I mean, you know, for all those businesses that went out of, business during COVID, they were probably on the borderline for a very long time anyway. And My mom lost her business in the process, and she's very, you know, angry about it.

And I said to a few times, but there's nothing to start. You just needed to change your business. That was the difference. And those and some. Okay. Some things you still have to accept that they weren't going to work because there might have been like your, a ditch builder, your business wasn't going to work in COVID because you had to physically dig the ditch unless you're dealing with a robot or something like that.

But, you know, for the most part, people that, did pivot did fairly well out of it. They all changed and got other things and. You know, I think that was the good part of COVID if we can find good things. But yeah, I liked what you said about that in the sense of accentuating things. I also think that, you know, judging from what I've seen, like my kids at school now and I've chatted to students and stuff, there's a lot of them that have gone and said, well, I don't actually need to go to university [00:20:00] because I can learn a lot of the stuff, different ways, you know, a lot of that sort of MOOC sort of education. And I've got a friend whose son's at a university now and he's home more than he's at school, more than at university. And then you question the fees that they charge for university.

Jess Thibault: Right. that is, higher education is under scrutiny for a lot of different things, but that's definitely one of them. And COVID absolutely highlighted that, you know, is At the same time, you know, I think students have also, student taste and student desires have really pushed these universities to have these, you know, state of the art resort like campuses, you know?

I mean, universities when I went to college, I don't know about you, but they were not as fancy as they are now. So, you know, that's where a lot of those fees come from which is interesting. But Yeah, it definitely calls into question a lot of things.

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, look, I mean my university was fairly, I mean, it was fairly sophisticated.

I think about it. I mean, even in today's age, we were, in fact, it was [00:21:00] probably more sophisticated than some of the British universities that I've been to. And I'm talking, you know, 10 years later, but the problem was that like I did a Bachelor of Science. So that department was really sophisticated.

But if you did a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Law or something like that, that was still a little bit not, you know I mean, this, you know, I remember all my mates learning case law and memorising cases and, you know, nowadays you've probably just asked your GDP, you know, to tell you what, now you've got to obviously verify that the results are legitimate, but yeah.

A lot of that, brute force learning just doesn't make sense anymore for some roles. So, give me a sense now. I mean, you guys have been, you're facilitating for these software vendors trying to get into schools and stuff. I mean, what is the market like? I mean, what if, what if people, was 2023 a good year?

Is 2024 looking about the same or better?

Jess Thibault: Hiring is definitely picking back up. 2023 was, I mean, for everyone in the talent industry, like we are it was a very linear, all [00:22:00] companies in all industries were very conservative with hiring. And then there were lots of layoffs as well. The layoffs you know, people are always hiring.

But when you see kind of a big decrease and, you know, Third party agencies are, and us included, are more focused typically on director and above, right? Like executive level roles. And I think a lot of executives were really just kind of Lockdown, right? I mean, they were just kind of like, we're gonna we're gonna stay where we are.

There wasn't a lot of shifting in the hiring market. But 2024 is absolutely Warming back up. We have, you know, far more rules open that we are searching for top candidates. Lots of new clients that we are, you know, working with them, right? I mean, our process is very, In depth, you know, we really make sure that we understand our clients.

We know what their business needs are as well as, you know, their, employee needs. [00:23:00] And then we have a dedicated research team who's going to go out and source, right? Who's going to find hundreds of candidates that are potential and then our recruiters go chase them, right? And so then the recruiters and typically the recruiters already have relationships built across the industry.

And so it's very fast for us to scale up that whole operation and start getting candidates, qualified candidates to the clients. And so we've just seen this warming of the industry. And so, you know, we have our team has been very busy with that process. And I think most of that in educational technology is coming because I think schools know what they need to focus on now.

I think 2023 was a year where I think schools were trying to figure out what they needed to spend money on and what you know, funding is going to look like in the future. And I think clients and, you know, the the technology companies themselves were really trying to understand okay, What are schools [00:24:00] going to buy and what are going to be the priorities and is our tool effective for the current needs in the market?

So it was a lot of, you know, figuring that out. But definitely edtech companies are scaling up. There's a significant amount of hiring, especially in sales to kind of go into 2024, I think with a really keen eye to what is effective classroom technology or school administration technology. And also then Workforce development, which, you know, to your point about universities, right?

And kind of that, do you have to go to university? You know, in the United States, there's a huge portion of kids that don't go to university already. Nevermind the disillusionment, you know, that's coming with students feeling like, why am I doing this? Or should I do this? And so there's, much more focus on workforce development.

There's companies dealing with that from a technology [00:25:00] standpoint. So they're really growing. And then also universities finding ways to maybe have, you know, non credit programs or non traditional programs or, you know, whatever to help build that workforce development skills. There's a lot of talk, at least about skills based hiring and what might that look like?

How do you assess those things? So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of conversations there too. So it's definitely warming as a whole. And I think also in very particular areas mostly focusing on what are the, what are the gaps?

Ryan Purvis: Yeah, I mean, your point around the sort of student go, why am I doing this? I mean, the amount of people that I've met the last 10 years, specifically in the UK, because here in the UK, you can get education loans fairly easily.

And I say that, you know, sort of top of the cheek. We were studying, they were getting like 30, 000 pounds or whatever it was, 50, 000 pound loans, which are only kicking. to get repaid when you earn a certain amount of money. But they were learning, they were going to university and they were studying really odd, stupid things, my [00:26:00] opinion that they could never actually make money out of.

You know, we'll never make money that would pay back the 30, 000 pounds, but at some point you've got to start paying that loan back when you start earning money. And it kind of sits there. And it does create this thing where the universities can pretty much charge, I don't know what they're like, but they know they've got a captive audience because everyone gets told you need to go and learn a thing.

But you do have a lot of people that didn't go to university. I mean, I'm talking about some senior, you know, CIOs, CTOs that never went to university, but they're self taught. So they do the, they do the course they need when they need to do it. And I wonder if that's not the future of of it, where you're no longer going to go to an institution per se and yes, you'll have something to probably always stick around, but you're going to learn the thing that you need to learn through online course, that'll help you and the ed tech piece is coming more and more into the house.

You know, is it delivered through an AR VR based mechanism and the software that you guys are helping those software providers provide is bridging that gap closer and closer to the home is that something you need to I mean, you know, even if my kids were [00:27:00] homeschooled, they would still meet. Kids every day I think you need the social elements, but I wonder if that's also the thing that's important to the delivery of the technologies.

You need to have ways for people to talk and collaborate and, and share their stories. And cause that's how you learn. You learn through stories most of the time.

I don't have anything else really to ask. I don't know if you, is it, if you want to share anything else, anything that you'd want people to know about or come to your website, to a LinkedIn profile, where would be

preferable?

Jess Thibault: Yeah, absolutely. So our website is higher. Edu. And so it's a pun H I R E edu.

com. And yeah, so absolutely would love people to check out higher education and they can find me on LinkedIn. They can also go to higher edu slash Jess following this podcast publication to book some time with me to learn more about what we're doing.

Ryan Purvis: Fantastic. No, it's a great time.

It'd be very interesting to hear from from a different point of view. And I wish you guys well with this year. I hope everyone has a good 2024 and thanks for making the

time for me.

Jess Thibault: Absolutely. [00:28:00] Thank you, Ryan. Thanks

Jess.

Ryan Purvis: Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknel is our producer editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode, please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store.

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