Teaching jobs are a hot commodity right now. The competition is high and if you are trying to find a teaching job, the first thing you need to do is skyrocket your resume's effectiveness from a passing grade to an over–achieving and attention–grabbing marketing tool. Your resume does not have to be fancy or a specific length, but it does need to have a focused content with quantifiable experiences and achievements.

The true responsibility of any resume is to gain an invitation to interview with the schools or organizations you have targeted for your job search. Your resume will be most effective if it succeeds in achieving all of the tasks it was created to do. The first task of your teaching resume is to express your current career objective. This does not mean you should write a career objective statement at the top of your resume elaborating your wants and expectations. It does mean your current career objective should be made clear using a specific title for the resume. It should be followed by some form of a qualifications summary, which is a concise statement highlighting your experience and capabilities. It supports the title and describes the objective through your achievements and abilities.

A skill set of your developed expertise or learned skills is another task of the resume and can be very valuable. The set can take various forms such as a table, a list of skills, bulleted sentences, or a paragraph illustrating the teaching skills you can offer to a new organization. However it is displayed, the skill set should be placed close to the title and in the top third of the first page. The skill set can include curriculum development, tutoring or mentoring skills, classroom management abilities, higher education, public speaking experience, advanced teaching certifications, creative learning skills, or phonics specialist.

Depending on when you began teaching, the educational background section of your resume can be placed either before or after the professional experience. Usually if you have less experience, the education will be presented first to show the degree(s) you have earned, and to include knowledge and skills acquired and even specific classes you have completed. If you are an experienced teacher, it is better to put your professional experiences first to highlight the more practical experience.

The resume is a vehicle to showcase, your professional experiences, which are usually developed in chronological order and include the dates, position titles and each school at which you worked. It is important to infuse your creative teaching style; unique qualifications such as crisis planning or parent group involvement; and your resourcefulness such as an ability to effectively, utilize networking contacts to develop workshops, fieldtrips, or educational materials that are low cost or even free of charge for your students or school. If all positions are similar, they can be listed one after another with one general description and a set of achievements area at the end. Positions that offer different skills and achievements can be developed individually.

The order of information within each job description and achievements depends on the job description, which you are developing the teaching resume for. With the different age levels of your students comes expected skills and experience so make sure to match your information with what is asked of you if you have an extensive teaching experience.

Skills you might possess that surpass what was asked for can be added in the skills set or included in your cover letter. Skills or experience including a second language proficiency, departmental curriculum development, expert computer abilities, or participation in textbook review and approval committees all provide a potential appeal and may be very attractive to different schools based on their location and its’ current faculty or district needs. This is why it is so important, to write your resume for specific job openings, that way, you will know what to draw attention to.

Association, volunteer, and committee involvement can be added at the end of the resume. If you are relatively new to teaching these references can be used as professional experience and elaborated on to include skills and experiences gained from the affiliation experience. Additional training and certifications can also be included as well as other teaching-specific professional developments.

Throughout your resume, you want to stimulate the hiring personnel with your abilities, and contribution potential, as well as show your passion, enthusiasm, and love of teaching and children. Creating a well developed teaching resume will not only put you ahead of the bell curve but also prepare you for acing your interviews and gaining the teaching job of your dreams.

Kris Plantrich is the owner of ResumeWonders Writing and Career Coaching Services. She is certified in Resume Writing and Interview Coaching, offering expert career advancing tools, services, samples, FREE critiques and more. Her work is nationally published in several career industry books. Visit Kris at http://www.resumewonders.com.

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