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Hiring in EdTech looks simple until you actually start doing it.
You need someone who understands education.
But they also need to understand your customer.
They might need SaaS experience.
They might need to sell to schools, trusts, universities, training providers or employers.
They need to understand long buying cycles.
They may need to work with teachers one day and a commercial director the next.
And if you are hiring into a startup or scaleup, they may also need to be comfortable building things that do not exist yet.
This is where working with an EdTech recruitment agency can make a difference.
At RecruitHer, we work at the intersection of education, technology and talent.
We help EdTech organisations find people who can contribute to growth, understand the market they are operating in and build strong relationships with the customers they serve.
But recruitment in EdTech is not simply about finding someone with the right job title.
It is about understanding the company, the customer, the growth stage and the problem the person is being hired to solve.
RecruitHer works with organisations across the wider EdTech and learning technology market.
That can include:
EdTech startups and scaleups.
Established EdTech companies.
Education software businesses.
Learning platforms.
Assessment companies.
Education publishers.
Digital learning companies.
Training technology businesses.
Skills and employability platforms.
Workplace learning organisations.
Language learning businesses.
AI companies operating within education.
Businesses selling technology or services into schools, trusts, colleges, universities and other education settings.
Not every company describes itself as EdTech.
And we do not think it needs to.
What matters is whether education, learning or skills sit at the centre of the product, customer or mission.
Our focus is on the people who help EdTech companies grow, win customers, retain them and strengthen their position in the market.
That can include roles across:
Account Executives.
Business Development Managers.
Sales Managers.
Sales Directors.
Heads of Sales.
VP Sales and commercial leadership.
For commercial roles, understanding the customer can be as important as understanding the sales methodology.
Selling to a school is different from selling to a corporate buyer.
Selling to a multi academy trust is different from selling directly to a teacher.
Selling into higher education can involve another buying structure entirely.
Those differences matter when we assess candidates.
Customer Success Managers.
Senior Customer Success Managers.
Heads of Customer Success.
Implementation Managers.
Onboarding specialists.
Customer education and training roles.
Education Consultants.
These roles are particularly important in EdTech because winning the customer is only the beginning.
Products need to be implemented.
Teachers and users need to understand them.
Adoption needs to happen.
Customers need to see value.
Renewal needs to follow.
The strongest people in these roles understand both the commercial relationship and the reality of using a product within an education setting.
Partnerships Managers.
Strategic Partnerships roles.
Channel and ecosystem roles.
Heads of Partnerships.
Partnerships in EdTech can involve schools, universities, charities, publishers, technology companies, local authorities, training providers and other organisations.
The right person needs to understand where commercial goals and shared value meet.
Marketing Managers.
Growth roles.
Product Marketing.
Content and community roles.
Demand generation.
Marketing leadership.
Strong EdTech marketing needs more than a good campaign.
The person needs to understand the customer, how education decisions are made and how to communicate value without losing credibility with educators.
Depending on the brief, this can also include people working between the customer, learning and product.
Education Specialists.
Curriculum specialists.
Learning Designers.
Product Managers with education experience.
Product education roles.
Customer research and insight roles.
One of the biggest opportunities within EdTech is bringing more people with direct education experience into the teams shaping products and customer experiences.
Heads of function.
Directors.
VP roles.
Commercial leaders.
Customer leaders.
General Managers.
Country Managers.
Senior hires often require a different search.
You are not simply looking for someone who has done the role before.
You need to understand what they have built, the stage they built it at and whether that experience matches what your company needs next.
EdTech is not one market.
A company selling mathematics software into primary schools faces a very different customer environment from a workplace learning platform selling into global employers.
Recruitment should reflect that.
We work across areas such as:
K12 and school technology.
Further education.
Higher education.
Assessment.
Education publishing.
Teacher technology.
Professional learning.
Skills and employability.
Apprenticeships.
Workplace learning.
Language learning.
Digital curriculum.
AI within education.
Learning management and education software.
The market matters because it changes what good looks like in a candidate.
A salesperson who succeeds selling a low cost digital product directly to individual users may not automatically succeed with an 18 month enterprise education sales cycle.
A Customer Success Manager supporting corporate accounts may need to adapt significantly to working with busy teachers and school leaders.
Sector knowledge helps us understand those differences before a shortlist reaches the hiring manager.
Hiring into a startup requires a particular type of thinking.
The role may not be fully formed yet.
Processes may still be changing.
The founder may still be involved in sales.
The product might be developing quickly.
There may be very little infrastructure around the person being hired.
That means previous job titles tell you very little on their own.
A startup may need someone who can create as well as execute.
Someone adaptable.
Curious.
Comfortable taking ownership.
Prepared to test ideas.
Able to work without an established playbook.
If you are hiring your first Head of Sales, for example, you might not need someone who has spent the last five years managing a large established sales organisation.
You may need someone who can personally sell, build a sales process, improve CRM discipline, recruit the next team members and work closely with the founder on commercial strategy.
Startup recruitment is often about finding builders.
Scaleups face a different challenge.
Something is working.
Now it needs to work repeatedly.
Across more customers.
More salespeople.
More products.
More markets.
More people.
At this stage, companies often need people who can introduce consistency without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
They need strong operators.
People who can take what has worked informally and make it repeatable.
They might need to build onboarding.
Improve forecasting.
Create team structures.
Introduce clear customer processes.
Build enablement.
Develop managers.
Improve performance.
A scaleup hire therefore needs enough adaptability to operate within change, but enough structure to help the organisation mature.
The question becomes less:
Can you build something from nothing?
And more:
Can you take something that works and help us make it work at scale?
Established EdTech companies have another set of advantages and challenges.
There is usually greater brand recognition.
Larger teams.
More infrastructure.
Existing processes.
More specialist functions.
And often more complex stakeholder relationships.
Hiring may involve finding people who can operate successfully within that environment.
But established businesses should not simply look for people who resemble everyone they have already hired.
Sometimes the most valuable person is someone who understands the organisation but brings different thinking.
We prefer to think about values alignment and culture contribution rather than simply culture fit.
The question is not only:
"Will this person fit in?"
It is also:
"What could this person add?"
Established businesses can offer something powerful to experienced candidates.
Impact at scale.
Resources.
Strong development.
Experienced colleagues.
Internal mobility.
Stability.
Flexibility.
And the opportunity to influence a product or service used by a large number of educators and learners.
This is becoming increasingly important.
Companies sometimes tell us they want someone with ten or fifteen years of experience.
But the structure of the role does not reflect the life that an experienced candidate may have.
They may be a parent.
They may have school drop offs or pick ups.
They may have caring responsibilities.
They may need some flexibility around working hours.
That does not make them less ambitious.
And it does not mean lowering performance expectations.
It means recognising that experienced professionals often know how to manage their time and deliver outcomes without needing every working hour to look identical.
If flexibility exists, put it in the job description.
Be clear.
Can someone adjust their start and finish time?
How often do they need to be in the office?
Are there core collaboration hours?
Can the role accommodate school pick ups and drop offs?
Is part time or compressed working genuinely possible?
"Flexible working available" tells a candidate very little.
Specificity can significantly change who considers the opportunity.
If you want experienced talent, make sure the job is designed so experienced people can realistically take it.
A general recruiter can search for a job title.
An EdTech recruiter should understand the context behind it.
That means understanding questions such as:
Who is the customer?
Who actually uses the product?
Who makes the buying decision?
How long is the sales cycle?
What does implementation involve?
What causes customers to renew?
What causes adoption to fail?
Does the candidate need classroom credibility?
Do they need education experience?
Do they need SaaS experience?
Which matters more for this particular role?
That context changes the search.
It also helps us avoid one of the biggest mistakes in EdTech recruitment:
Looking for someone who already has exactly the same CV as the previous person.
Sometimes that is appropriate.
Sometimes it unnecessarily shrinks the talent pool.
Someone coming from education may have highly relevant skills for customer success, implementation, partnerships, product or sales.
Someone from an adjacent technology market may bring commercial experience the company currently lacks.
The job is to understand what is genuinely essential and what can be learned.
This is particularly important when bringing educators into EdTech.
Education professionals often have highly transferable skills.
Stakeholder management.
Presentation.
Training.
Influencing.
Data analysis.
Project management.
Relationship building.
Problem solving.
Leadership.
Commercial awareness may be newer.
The terminology may be different.
But the underlying skills can be highly relevant.
Part of good EdTech recruitment is being able to translate that experience accurately.
Not forcing an educator into a role that is wrong for them.
And not dismissing someone simply because their previous title does not look familiar to a technology company.
We see recruitment as part of the wider talent ecosystem.
Hiring someone is only valuable if they can contribute successfully once they arrive.
That is why our approach considers more than the vacancy itself.
We look at the company.
The stage of growth.
The team.
The manager.
The customer.
The market.
The role.
And the outcomes the person needs to deliver.
Our Talent Ecosystem approach looks across five areas:
Expand
Widen the talent pool and challenge assumptions about where strong candidates can come from.
Translate
Help companies and candidates understand how experience transfers between education, technology and commercial roles.
Align
Make sure the person, role, company stage and expectations genuinely match.
Embed
Think beyond the offer to how people can succeed once they enter the organisation.
Grow
Build talent strategies that support the next stage of the company rather than simply filling today's vacancy.
Recruitment should solve a problem.
Not simply produce a shortlist.
Different hiring situations require different levels of support.
A single specialist hire does not need the same recruitment model as a company building an entire commercial team.
Depending on the brief, recruitment support can include:
Useful for clearly defined roles where the company needs access to relevant candidates and sector expertise.
The recruiter works the search and a fee becomes payable when a successful hire is made.
Often more appropriate for senior, specialist or business critical appointments.
The search is run as a structured project with deeper market mapping, candidate engagement and ongoing reporting.
This can be particularly useful for leadership positions or roles where the right candidate is unlikely to be actively applying.
A startup or scaleup may need several people across sales, customer success or another function.
In these situations, recruitment can be approached as a hiring programme rather than a series of disconnected vacancies.
That allows the company to think about team structure, level, diversity, progression and future leadership as the team grows.
Sometimes the requirement goes beyond filling open vacancies.
A company may need help understanding the available talent market.
Defining roles.
Building a new function.
Benchmarking candidates.
Improving its employer proposition.
Expanding its talent pool.
Or thinking about how education professionals could strengthen the organisation.
That is where recruitment becomes a broader talent conversation.
Every brief is different, but a strong process normally starts before candidate outreach.
What stage is the company at?
What is happening commercially?
Why is this role needed now?
What changes after the person joins?
We separate what is genuinely essential from what is simply familiar.
What experience does the person need on day one?
What can they learn?
What behaviours matter?
What outcomes will define success?
Where is relevant talent likely to sit?
Which adjacent markets could be useful?
Does the salary match the brief?
Is the working model realistic?
What might stop strong candidates considering the role?
Good candidates are not always actively applying.
The search needs to reach people who may not have seen the vacancy or even considered the company before.
This is where the employer proposition matters.
Why should they move?
Why this company?
Why now?
We look beyond the CV.
What did the candidate actually own?
What changed because of their work?
What environment did they operate within?
What size company?
What support did they have?
What did they build themselves?
Good candidates have options.
Slow processes lose people.
Unclear communication loses people.
Repeated delays lose people.
Recruitment needs ownership.
That means clear feedback, realistic timelines and keeping both the company and candidate informed.
The offer is not only about salary.
Flexibility.
Role scope.
Progression.
Leadership.
Benefits.
Working model.
Start date.
Expectations.
All of these can affect the final decision.
The outcome should not simply be:
"We filled the role."
A good recruitment partnership should help create:
A stronger shortlist.
Better alignment between the brief and the market.
Access to people outside the obvious candidate pool.
A clearer understanding of what competitive talent looks like.
Faster decision making.
Better candidate communication.
More confidence around senior appointments.
A stronger employer proposition.
And ultimately, people who can contribute to the company's next stage of growth.
The best hire is not always the candidate with the most recognisable CV.
It is the person best equipped to solve the problem you are hiring them to solve.
RecruitHer is founder led.
That matters because our work sits across both sides of the EdTech talent market.
We work with companies trying to build stronger teams.
And we work with education professionals learning how their experience can translate into technology businesses.
That gives us a useful view of where the two sides often misunderstand each other.
Companies can make their briefs unnecessarily narrow.
Candidates can underestimate how relevant their experience is.
Job descriptions can use language that excludes the very people a company wants to reach.
And hiring teams can focus on previous titles instead of the problem the person needs to solve.
Our role is to challenge those assumptions where they need challenging.
Not simply agree with the brief and start searching.
Because better recruitment starts with asking better questions.
An EdTech recruitment agency specialises in finding talent for organisations operating across education technology, learning technology, education software and related markets.
The key difference is sector context.
The recruiter understands the customers, roles, business models and challenges involved in hiring within EdTech.
This can include sales, customer success, implementation, partnerships, marketing, product, learning, education specialist and leadership roles.
At RecruitHer, our strongest focus is on the people and teams that help EdTech businesses grow and serve their customers successfully.
Not always.
It depends on the role.
Some appointments require deep EdTech or education market knowledge.
For others, relevant experience may come from SaaS, publishing, training, education, HR technology or another adjacent market.
The important question is why EdTech experience is needed and which parts of it are genuinely essential.
Yes.
Education professionals can bring highly relevant experience to areas such as customer success, implementation, training, partnerships, sales, product and learning.
The move still needs to make sense.
A teaching background alone does not automatically qualify someone for every EdTech role.
But companies should not overlook strong candidates simply because their experience was developed inside education rather than technology.
Yes. Startup recruitment often focuses on adaptable people who can build processes, operate with uncertainty and take significant ownership.
The hiring profile can be very different from the person required by an established company.
Yes. Scaleups often need people who can create more consistency and repeatability as teams, revenue and customer numbers grow.
Yes. Established organisations may need experienced specialists, senior leaders or people who can bring new thinking into an existing structure.
Yes. Where a company is building a team or entering a period of growth, it can make sense to approach recruitment across the whole function rather than role by role.
Because context matters.
A specialist recruiter should already understand the language of the market, typical roles, customers, transferable skills and many of the hiring challenges EdTech companies face.
That allows the recruitment conversation to start further ahead.
Start with the problem you are trying to solve.
Not simply the job title.
What does the business need this person to achieve?
What changes when they join?
What experience is essential?
And where can you be flexible?
From there, we can determine what the right search should look like.
Whether you are making your first commercial hire, building a scaleup team or searching for an experienced leader for an established education business, the starting point should be the same:
Understand the problem before searching for the person.
That is what we do at RecruitHer.
We help EdTech organisations build stronger teams by understanding the market, widening the talent conversation and finding people who can contribute to what the company needs next.
Because recruitment is not just about filling today's vacancy.
It is about building the team that gets you to the next stage.
