Teachers are great at utilizing their skills to provide students with learning opportunities to grow and grasp concrete skills. Teaching professionals help individuals achieve their goals and foster them to become great citizens.
The skills of teachers are unmatchable and their value cannot be limited to words as they help students unlock their potential. So the question is, how do you showcase such skills on a resume?
While hiring a professional, a resume is vital to help the recruiter understand if the individual matches the job description and can fulfill the job requirements.
So the only way you can convince the recruiter of your abilities as a teacher is by showcasing your skills effectively on a resume.
Here is how can you accomplish it:
Write the Professional Experience Section
One way to filter all your expertise as a teacher is through professional experience. Sure you can write the skills sections first with expertise that are just off the top of your head.
But, it is not ideal because just having a skills section will not be enough if you cannot substantiate it in your resume.
You can write that you revolutionized the way you conduct classes in the skills section, but if you do not have points that validate this information, it will not leave the right impression.
Further, you can use the professional experience section to filter skills that you must have used.
To make an impressive work experience resume section, follow the given tips:
- Create buckets: Make subheadings for relevant statements. These subheadings should focus on your skills as a function. For example, curriculum designing & parent interaction, etc. Further, you can use these subheadings to include in the skills section.
- Use power verbs: As you are trying to display your skills, use power verbs to create a concrete impact. For example, instead of writing “responsible for parent interaction”, you can write it as “overseeing parent interaction”.
- Format: Apart from using power verbs to curate result-oriented statements, use a STAR (situation-action-task-result) format. Using this format will help you bring forth the result of your actions in the statements.
- Bolding: Highlight important words and numbers in all the statements. Though make sure that you do not overdo it as it would negate the purpose and create a negative impact. Further, this is an explicit rule but do not bold the subheadings in the statements. For example, let’s say you included student development in the bucket, so try not bold it in the statement. Instead, bold some other keyword.
Tip: While using power verbs, make sure the meaning of the statement does not change.
Here is a snippet of what your professional experience section should look like:
Curriculum Design & Student Engagement
- Overseeing the curriculum design for Literature and Political Science to devise student-driven lesson plans
- Deploying individual student engagement plans for counseling and evaluating the needs of students
- Managing a class of 25+ students and utilizing e-learning channels to ensure robust learning
- Participating in seminars, workshops, etc. to leverage technological tools to streamline learning
Use Keywords
Though you should be focusing on showcasing all your skills, you must focus more on those that are in line with the target profile.
The description and requirements for all the jobs you apply for will be different. So, you need to make some changes in your resume to prioritize the skills that are important for the target profile.
Let me tell you why we do this.
As organizations receive an overwhelming amount of resumes, some of them have deployed resume screening tools. The one that is most prevalent among the recruiters is ATS.
The applicant tracking system helps organizations shortlist candidates based on a few keywords. To counter this, you need to make sure that you use keywords that are important for the target profile.
Let’s say one of the schools requires you to have expertise in online learning. You need to make sure that you do not downplay this.
So make sure that you include all the points that are relevant to the required skills. However, make sure that you only use legit information to convey the point and refrain from lying in your resume.
Create a Skills Section
As recruiters do not spend more than 6 seconds on a resume, you need to have all your skills organized in one place that can give insights into your profile as a teacher.
But this section is often treated as a shelf for all the irrelevant soft skills and personality traits. You should only include such skills if they are asked for in the job description.
Further, even if you want to include these skills, you should try to convert them into more professional terms. Let’s say you need to include communication skills, you can write it as “student communication” or “parent interaction”. The idea is to not directly mention such skills.
However, if “communication” is listed as a requirement in the job post, then by all means write it as it is.
To give you an idea, here are a few skills that should be present in a teacher’s resume:
- Student Management
- Curriculum Design & Development
- Lesson Planning
- Parent Interaction
- Staff Training
- Student Engagement
Further, include all the tools you use. You can make a sub-heading “Tools” and include all such technical expertise there. For example:
Tools: Word Processing Software, Microsoft Office, e-Learning, Classcraft, Google Classroom
Draft a Summary
As a teacher, while writing your resume you must have tried to trace all your professional accomplishments and skills, then write them in your resume.
Here, the summary should give an overview of all your skills and achievements. The reason why you need to do this is that your summary goes at the top of your resume.
And, as we declared the importance of the time factor, the recruiter should not have to read your resume to look for your important achievements.
Write a stellar summary by incorporating the following tips:
- Make sure you write your summary in a paragraph form without using instances of first and second-person pronouns. Instead, try to begin sentences with strong words, for example, “adept at”.
- Begin the summary by inserting the numerical value of your professional experience and your job title. For example, +5 years of experience as a Teaching Specialist & e-Learning Expert.
- Use the keywords listed in the job description. For example, if the job post specifies “lesson planning and interpersonal skills”. These should be included in the summary.
If you use the above tips, here is what your summary should look like:
5+ years experienced Teaching Specialist & e-Learning Expert with a stellar record of delivering quality education to students via planning robust lessons. Adept at utilizing interpersonal skills to foster student development and engagement, inventing new study methods, and designing curriculum while keeping the learning abilities of each student in mind.
Final Word
To end, though you need to effectively present your skills and use all means necessary to showcase your abilities, you need to make sure that you do not exaggerate your skills and especially do not lie. So, proofread your resume before submitting it to the recruiter and applying for jobs.
