The Hidden Facts About Resumes - Part I

Over the course of the next three weeks, I'll share some amazing facts about teacher resumes.  Knowing these principles ahead of time can save you from making classic resume blunders and give you a leg up on the competition you will be facing in securing the teaching job of your dreams.

Your Resume is Your Most Important Document.  In conversations with school administrators from around the country one fact became abundantly clear: Of all the documents you might submit to a school or district in response to an advertised job opening, it is the resume that is THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENT.  I purposely capitalized letters in the previous sentence to focus your attention on this critical and essential fact of life.  There is a good chance that all of the other material in your application packet will go unread (initially) and that your resume will be the single document that will determine if you get considered for a future interview.

While the statement above may shock you, it’s part of the reality of the job most administrators face every day.  Selecting a new member of the faculty is just one of a plethora of responsibilities principals have to accomplish…and that’s on top of all the other duties and tasks that take up major portions of their day.  As a result, many principals have developed strategies that help them sort through an (often) enormous stack of applications - strategies that are both time-saving and efficient.  Truth be told, most administrators have, over the term of their career, developed ways to quickly and easily read a resume to see if there is a match between a candidate and a job.

 
That’s not to say that everything else in your application packet is unimportant.  Those other documents will be used to supplement the information included on your resume.  However, you must pass the “resume test” first.  If you do, then the other items are “value added” documents.  However, if you do not pass the “resume test” the other items are seldom, if ever, reviewed.  Bottom line: Your resume is your most important document!



First Impressions Do Count!  I recently attended a Teacher Recruitment Fair - one held every spring in our local area.  Over five dozen school district recruiters from across the country (in addition to two from Sweden) were there to offer teaching positions to more than 550 soon-to-be college graduates from eleven different colleges.  As I walked around and visited with recruiters, I asked many of them to offer a critical piece of advice every potential teacher should consider when drafting a resume.  Almost every one of them told me something like, “I have a limited amount of time to read resumes, so remember that first impressions count!”

As you will discover in the book Ace Your Teacher Resume (and Cover Letter) [http://amzn.to/2mDmJWh], recruiters devote a very short amount of time with each and every resume.  You can help them get the most information in the shortest amount of time possible by designing your document so that most of it can be read quickly and efficiently.  No one will read your entire resume during an initial screening process so it is vitally important that its design be clear, simple, and clean.  Keep the reader in mind - the question shouldn’t be “How can I present myself in the best way?”, but rather, “How can I help the reader learn why I’m the best qualified for the position - in the most effective way possible?”