Many people overthink what they should put in their resume. They go for fancy fonts and overly formatted styles. That isn't the way to go! You want to keep it simple! Keep it clean. Make it concise. Offer lots of white space so it's easy on the eye. Direct the reader's attention to the important details. Provide context for your accomplishments and where possible, quantify them. Avoid overselling yourself with buzzwords like "go-getter" or "people person." Stick with the facts. Let other people talk you up. And no matter what else you do, make sure it is error-free! No spelling, punctuation, grammatical, or spacing errors unless you want to land in the "no" pile. Mistakes indicate a lack of attention to detail or a lack of real interest in the job. Get someone to proofread for you.
Want to learn more about how to approach writing your resume? Then listen in to this episode of "Teachers in Transition."
Many people overthink what they should put in their resume. They go for fancy fonts and overly formatted styles. That isn't the way to go! You want to keep it simple! Keep it clean. Make it concise. Offer lots of white space so it's easy on the eye. Direct the reader's attention to the important details. Provide context for your accomplishments and where possible, quantify them. Avoid overselling yourself with buzzwords like "go-getter" or "people person." Stick with the facts. Let other people talk you up. And no matter what else you do, make sure it is error-free! No spelling, punctuation, grammatical, or spacing errors unless you want to land in the "no" pile. Mistakes indicate a lack of attention to detail or a lack of real interest in the job. Get someone to proofread for you.
Want to learn more about how to approach writing your resume? Then listen in to this episode of "Teachers in Transition."
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach, and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition," and this is episode 20 of"Teachers in Transition," the Podcast and the YouTube channel. Today I want to talk about resumes. When you make a decision that it is time to make a move or perhaps you're a first time job seeker straight out of college and you haven't landed the perfect job yet, so you're in need of a up-to-date, solid resume and there is so much information out there about what to include in a resume, what not to include, what kind of format should you use? All of the, I mean it's just confusing to hear all of the different advice that's available. And I have laughed, but it's not really funny over the fact that if you ask someone for their opinion about your resume, no matter who they are or what role they play or what position they happen to be in, they will have an opinion about your resume. And they will be free with their input and feedback. And sometimes if you ask enough people, it gets very confusing because you can receive contradictory advice. It happens all the time. So what are you to do? How do you know which person to listen to and which ones not to? Well, now you really can't know for sure. There are lots of people out there who are claiming to be resume experts in I suppose some of them are that many of them are still using old, outdated, more traditional resume formats that I don't believe serve a good purpose anymore. They are out of step with the contemporary world that we live in and this end, the speed with which an HR director, hiring manager or recruiter needs to be able to review a resume to see if it's truly a good fit for the job that they're looking to fill. So what do you do? Well, I hope you don't make the mistake I made back in the day I was a few years ago when I was in the midst of my end, a career crossroads and didn't know exactly what I wanted to be doing and thought maybe a traditional job should be my path instead of what I wound up doing, which is this coaching Gig. But in the beginning of my career transition, I was looking for a more traditional position and that then I needed a resume. I found a job online that I thought I might be interested in. And I had written the resume that I thought reflected my background and, and skills and my experience in history and I uploaded it along with an application for the job in question. I don't even remember now what job it was, but I, almost instantly the moment my finger hit the send button, I got an alert alert. Your resume's not right. You need to have somebody fix it for you. You need help immediately. Alert, alert. I mean, it was very, it was very jarring. And of course I was so uncertain myself about what I had submitted that I fell for it. And when I say fell for it, I don't mean it was really a scam, but it felt kind of scammy. So what happened was I was told through this alert that my resume wasn't good enough. It needed professional assistance. I needed professional assistance. And for the low sum of$395 I could have a professional resume writer create the ideal resume for me and I fell for it and I clicked the button and I paid with a credit card$395 the whole time I was doing it. I didn't really feel good about it, but I've also felt panicked over the alert alert, your resume's not right. Okay. So a couple of days later I get a phone call from a young man who tells me he's representing the company and he's going, he's been assigned to me for professional resume writing and he interviews me a little bit about my work history and what kind of jobs I'm interested in and he hangs up. In a couple of days later I received in an email of highly formatted, very traditional looking, frankly very boring looking resume that really didn't even for me, it didn't feel like it spoke to who I was or what I might have to offer and so I contacted the company. I said, I am not happy with this result, would you please refund my hundred and$395? This was a wasted effort in a waste of my time. Even if you can't give me a full refund, a partial refund would be appreciated. Oh, of course. They weren't wanting to refund anything, but they were concerned that I might complain online or you know, give them a bad rating. So they agreed that maybe that young man hadn't been the right resume writer for me and they would assign the someone else, someone more seasoned, more veteran--experienced. A couple of days later, I got a call from a woman, you know, I still to this day am struck by how gravelly her voice was. She was clearly a lifetime smoker. Her voice was more raspy even than mine and she assured me that I was now in the right hands that that young man had just started out. He didn't know what he was doing. I mean, she actually kind of admitted he didn't know what he was doing. She was going to fix it, not to worry and I need not worry that that she was going to give me the ideal resume. So she went through the same kind of quizzing me about what my history had been and what experiences I had and what kind of job I was looking for. And let me just say that that really was the key problem. At the end of the day, the problem wasn't the resume writers. The problem was me. The problem was that I hadn't yet decided what it was that I really wanted to do. And here's the thing about a resume, a resume as a marketing tool that is supposed to make the case for why you are a good, quality fit for the job that you applying for. No one could have written a resume for me at that particular juncture in my career search because I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't really know what I wanted. I was making the mistake most people I think make, at least in the beginning of their job search, they scan multiple job descriptions. They don't read the descriptions all that carefully, but they scan for things that they think, oh, maybe I could do that. I kinda sorta know how to do that. Maybe I could learn how to do that if they were willing to train me. And so they pick and choose jobs to apply for that at the end of the day, if they were truly honest with themselves, they're not qualified for and writing a resume for that job description is really a waste of time. On the other hand, if you do happen to find a job that fits the criteria for what you are looking for, you have that clarity, then you're in a much better position to write a resume that speaks to your ability to do that job, the experiences that you have that lend themselves to your being successful in that position. And then you go from there. So, let me just say that, and you know I've gotten over a blaming the company for the alert-alert, and do still sometimes feel like I took that$395 and simply flushed it down the toilet. I have never used either of those resumes that I spent almost$400 four so am my plea to you would be don't spend hundreds of dollars getting someone to write a resume for you at least until or unless you have figured out what it is you truly want to do. Now, when I'm helping people with resumes, what I urge them to do is to send me the draft of their resume along with the job description that they are eager to apply for. That way I have context and that's what you need. You need context in your resume. How does your experience translate to the job that you happen to be applying for? That's the number one challenge that every job seeker has as far as I'm concerned. Gaining some clarity and having focus around the type of job you want. And being clear eyed and as objective as possible about what it is that you truly have to offer in that position. So, that's my number one best advice. Now what it is that you're looking for first and then you're in a better position to write your resume. Now as far as how to write your resume, I recommend simple as best, overly formatted fancy fonts, lots of colors. I get, I get resumes of people who've got boxes here in boxes there...boxes, boxes everywhere. Leave off the boxes. They don't translate well. It's hard for a person to know where to even start. You want to make your resume as simple, easy to read, easy to decipher tool that will,
Speaker 3:[Phone ringing]
Kitty Boitnott:clearly communicate to the recipient what it is that you have to offer. In this particular position for one of the homes, one of the things that you want to be able to do is make sure that the format is clear, that you have lots of white space that'll make it easy on the eye of the reader. You want to be sure that your resume is free of any errors, no errors and spelling, spacing, grammatical errors, punctuation errors. If you, here's the problem with your proofreading your own resume. You can use spellcheck. That's spelt. Spellcheck doesn't always catch every mistake. What you need is somebody who has an ace proofreader. You know some people have a knack. I have a friend from a previous teaching position that I think of she, she was an eagle eye. She could have easily made her living as a proofreader, as a copy editor, as a she was awesome, just awesome and she was quick and it came easily for her. You're going to be so attached to your resume. You know, I've read recently that sometimes people are so wrapped up in getting their resume ready that they overlook the simplest detail and they even misspell their name on their resume. And that may be hard for you to imagine, but it's not hard for me to imagine. There are other mistakes that slip through your proofreading because you know what you're expecting should be there and it may or may not be there. So you want to make sure that you have no spelling errors, no grammatical errors, no punctuation errors, no spacing errors, and you want to make sure that all of your dates line up. That's another sort of pet peeve that some HR recruiters and our HR directors in recruiters have that they, they can't figure out if the dates aren't clearly aligned. It becomes confusing. When did you work for such and such a place? And it could even raise red flags. So you need to be careful. You also want to make sure that when you submit your resume that you have your contact information clear. Clearly at the top you want to provide a phone number where you're going to be reached quickly and easily. You also want to be able to communicate through an email. So give them an email address that you're going to be, um, checking every day. You want to give them a telephone number if certainly if possible, one that you will respond to quickly and you need to include your LinkedIn URL and be sure you've customized that LinkedIn URL so that it doesn't have this string of letters and numbers, your name, that it's simply your name or some other designation that you've selected for yourself. Include that in the contact information. That way they don't have to try to figure out where you are on LinkedIn. And yes, you do need to be on LinkedIn. Um, so that's pretty much it, you know, keep it simple, no fancy formatting, present your accomplishments. In terms of it to the, to the extent that you can, in terms of achievements that are quantifiable and avoid stuffing your resume with keywords or buzz words that may, you may have pulled from the job description. You do want a certain number of keywords in your resume that match the job description mainly so that you can get through the applicant tracking system. But don't overdo it. Be careful about overdoing it. And one last thing. While you need to be prepared to talk about your achievements and your accomplishments, you also do not want to come off as boastful, as a braggart, as someone who is inflating their accomplishments in any shape or form because that's off putting. People don't like buzz words like go get her people person, I'm top of the line manager. They don't want to hear that from you. They want to hear those kinds of, of um, congratulatory phrases from people that you've worked with but not from you. So, keep it simple. Stick with the facts. Offer as many accomplishments as you can and to the extent that you can quantify them and provide the context. It's not just about what you did, but what were you able to accomplish as a result of what you did. Remember that past success is a predictor of future success, so you want to demonstrate your success in your current job or your previous job so that you can predict reasonably that you will be successful in this new endeavor that you're applying for. I hope that will be helpful to you as you undertake writing your resume. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at kittyboitnott@gmail.com I'll be sure you subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" the Podcast. Please leave a review if you have found any of these episodes useful for you, let me know of future topics that you would like for me to touch on having to do with stress management or career for both and also subscribe to the Youtube Channel. That way you'll be alerted any time I upload a new episode of teachers in transition. That's it for today. Have a wonderful week. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."