If you are a teacher leaving a job in search of a career that can give you more flexibility, creativity and autonomy, you will need some resume tips for teachers to help you stand out from the crowd.
Don’t think of yourself as “just a teacher”. Your experience and skills align with a lot of work outside of teaching. It’s just a matter of how you present it in your resume. For example, teachers have a level of work ethic and determination that can translate into different roles.
Here are three resume tips to make teachers more attractive to potential employers:
Teacher Resume Tip # 1: Add job descriptions to your experience
When you apply for a teaching position, you usually think about your experience and outline it in your resume. Typically, it looks something like this:
- Teach third and fifth grades while working as a member of the leadership team
- Worked as Instructional Instructor
- Instructed district teachers in effective instructional practice
- Student teachers are advised through the certification process
Unfortunately, this experience may not be relevant to the job you are applying for. Honestly, hiring a manager and hiring people may not have an idea of what these experiences mean. Instead, identify elements in the job description that relate to your experience and list them to explain the connection.
See the job description for an ad-tech job:
- Develop new materials including courses, lesson plans, challenging issues and other educational resources for individual courses
- Work with curriculum team leads, senior curriculum developers, and other curriculum developers to plan new content.
- Review and respond to content created by other team members, and include feedback from others on your content
How can your experience and skills match the job description? Think about it in terms of your professional planning and lesson planning experience.
Change your word:
- Lesson plans and other educational resources have been developed for individual and hybrid courses
- Worked with team members as part of a professional learning community to plan and develop new course materials, lesson plans and assessments
- Reviewed and responded to lessons and assessments made by other team members and received feedback on my materials to improve learning for students
This description embeds the key words listed in the job description. It has to do with what you did as a teacher. Change your experience in your resume for the job you are applying for. It is important to associate your experiences with the specific requirements listed in the job description. This will help the hiring manager see the connection between your skills and the job they are hiring.
Teacher Resume Tip # 2: Be specific with the number
An opportunity to showcase your skills through your resume data and numbers. Be specific about what you do, and write it down in a way that shows employers that you can increase productivity.
Your resume might look like this right now:
- Leads and assists school staff through the PBIS implementation process
- Teachers empowered to integrate 21st century skills into their lessons
- Created and organized an intervention program for grades 3 through 5
While these experiences are remarkable, they don’t really paint a picture for hiring a manager. So use data and numbers to make your experience more engaging.
Try something like this:
- Leads and supports school staff through the first implementation of Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS), and student referrals have dropped from 37% to 12%
- Through leadership with PBIS, student attendance across grades 1 and 2 increased from 67% to 89% within three months of the structural intervention.
- Supported teachers to integrate 21st century skills into their lessons and helped 42% of teachers raise their assessment scores from 3 to 4
- Created and organized an intervention program for grades 3 through 5 and increased students’ academic achievement in mathematics from 43% to 78%.
With such data, hiring managers will show that your hard work and skills have increased productivity within your organization.
Teacher Resume Tip # 3: Be specific in your cover letter
Separate your application with a cover letter. This is your chance to be specific about your experience. You can drive home the relevance of your skills and how they relate to the job you are applying for.
Instead of starting with the simple.
Please accept this letter as an application for the post _ for _. I am passionate about instructional design and have a strong foundation of instructional coaching and evaluation design and trends. I have a deep understanding of K-12 learning, as well as connecting assessment to instruction through data interpretation.
Be honest with the hiring manager. Start with something that might let them know you’re changing roles. Your experience can translate into new roles even though your only experience teaches.
It may sound something like this:
I am writing to express interest in _ for _ position. As an experienced educator, I have the skills and disposition to excel in this role.
I am changing the role of _ from classroom teacher and I think my abilities and experience will be an asset for your team.
Here are some skills I can bring to your company:
- List the job description and the skills related to your skills.
- Connect, add data and be specific.
- Limit it to three points and use keywords from job descriptions.
The most important thing to remember is not to give up.
It’s hard to move beyond education and there’s a lot of competition, but companies Is Recruitment (labor shortage, anyone?) Create a LinkedIn profile and use these same tips to showcase your experience. Start connecting with employers, managers and employees in the company you want to work for.