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Entering into the field of education is an exciting and honorable endeavor. Whether you are searching for a job right out of college or have some work experience behind you, administrators and school board members are on the lookout for the ideal teaching candidate. This is where the importance of crafting the perfect teacher resume comes in.
Your resume should highlight your strengths and stick out among a pile of other individuals applying for the same position. There are numerous ways to help your resume appear more unique than others, including hiring a professional resume writing service. Taking time to perfect your resume can be what makes or breaks you getting an offer to interview in the field of education.
Tip #1: Hire A Professional Resume Writing Service
The field of education can be competitive, especially if you are looking for jobs at some of the top school districts in an area. Administrators are likely receiving resumes often come springtime as they are conducting interviews as many teachers renew contracts in the spring. This means you need your resume to stand out from the other applicants and that you should have it ready to submit as soon as possible.
Investing in an executive resume writing service will ensure that your resume will be free of error while also formatted appropriately with language that will attract a potential future employer. Working with a professional to tweak and edit your resume can help you come up with creative and unusual ideas to help your resume make it to the top of the stack.
Tip #2: Highlight Your Strengths
Do you have experience working with students in different settings outside of school? Are you a strong leader or have you helped with curriculum writing or training? Any experience you have related to the field of education should not only be included in your resume but emphasized. If you are a departmentalized teacher, list any trainings or professional development workshops you have attended that have helped to hone your craft. Education is all about life long learning, so anything you can show that emphasizes your passion for learning is important to add to your resume.
Teachers use a variety of skill sets in the classroom and many jobs you may have had previously can lend themselves to strengths in the classroom. For example, if you worked in marketing or even at a bank, you have the people skills needed to work with both parents and students. As technology is becoming more significant in the classroom and workforce, highlighting your tech skills can be a major asset to your resume to help you stick out from the crowd.
Tip #3: Use Strong Language
Resumes are a chance to showcase your educational experience, job experiences and your unique skill set. When editing your resume, think about all of the lessons your language arts teachers taught you when you were in school. Remember how they always said word choice is important? Well, in resume writing word choice is extremely important. How you word your resume can decide whether or not an administrator would be willing to consider you for an interview.
Resume writing is a balance of not keeping it too simple but also not over doing it with elaborate and over the top language. Saying you have “written lesson plans” instead of saying “using state standards lesson plans were written to meet the needs of individual students” makes a big difference to the educators that are analyzing your resume as one statement is generic whereas the other statement shows you know how to use standards and individual student needs to plan a strong lesson.
Tip #4: Proofread, and then Proofread More
The last thing you want on your resume is a mistake, especially when applying for a job in education. Teachers are meant to be detail oriented and thorough in their work, in fact you may even end up teaching a writing or language arts class. Imagine interviewing for a fourth grade teaching position and spelling the word “fourth” as “forth” incorrectly on your resume.Don’t assume spell check will catch every error. A minor mistake like that can have a big impact on your future career.
Having someone such as a professional writer or resume editor take a look at your resume can help immensely. Getting fresh eyes on something you have looked at time and time again can often find smaller mistakes you may have missed.
Tip #5: Do Your Research for Cover Letters
When submitting your resume to individual schools and school districts, do your research first to learn about the individual schools and the school district as a whole. What does the school value? What does their website showcase that is important to their school community? Find out the names of the administrators at the school so that you can personalize the cover letter.
Each cover letter should be customized to the school you are applying to and should include mention of their mission statement and school goals and anything else you learn from your research. Schools want to hire teachers that are willing to go the extra mile. If you have a generic cover letter that doesn’t seem as if any thought or effort was included, your resume will quickly be cast to the side.
While cover letters aren’t much fun to write, they’re still a critical part of a successful job search. A recent study found that 56% of employers prefer candidates who submit a cover letter. The right cover letter template can help you beat out the competition and score more interviews and job offers. Austin Belcak has created Cultivated Culture to help you with this task.
Although a resume is only a piece of paper, in the job industry it is much more. Your resume is your starting point and first impression. It is essential that it be the best of the best, especially in education where things like grammar and spelling matter even more than in other careers. Investing in a professional resume writing service is a great tool to use to create the just right resume to get you hired for your dream teaching job.
Remember to not only have a quality resume, but also a strong cover letter that is individualized for the different positions you apply to. Once you have perfected your teacher resume the interviews should start lining up for you to begin your career as an educator.
