Leaving the Classroom: A Transitioning Teacher Podcast

How to Revise Your Teacher Resume

In this episode, I give you a list of the 10 instructional design technologies that are most used, as well as some more cost-effective alternatives!

Listen to the episode here:

Connect with Kristi on LinkedIn 

Enjoy the podcast transcription:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to leaving the classroom. I'm Kristi Oliva, I'm so glad you are here. Today I'm talking about how to revise your resume to pursue a career in instructional design. You need a resume, I need a resume. We all need to have a resume to apply for the roles we want. Now when I decided to leave the classroom, revising my resume was one of the things I put off for as long as I possibly could. It was difficult. It was tedious. It was just not fun. I hadn't even looked at my resume for several years, then I didn't know how to not make my resume scream teacher. Finally I dusted it off and got to work. And it was hard. It took me multiple revisions to finally get it even slightly ready to apply for jobs. And then it still wasn't even Great. Listen, revising your resume is pivotal to switching careers, especially as a teacher. Often your resume is the hiring managers first impression of you and your skills. Then they will look at your portfolio, which I will talk about next week in Episode 14. After that comes the interviews, which I will talk about in episode 15. But let's get back to the resume. It is the way you are going to translate your teacher skills into the correct terminology that applies to the instructional design world. So let's get started.

Are you ready to take some notes, I'm going to share with you my get attention resume formula. The format of the resume first of all is really important. Your basic information is on the top, your full name, email address, your LinkedIn profile link and your portfolio link. After that, you will write a profile statement. This should be three to four high quality sentences that do not just act as a keyword purge. This profile statement should talk about why this type of work is important to you. Do you love technology and anything new in the space? Are you passionate about accessibility or inclusivity or diversity? Talk about that in your profile statement. Your profile statement should set you apart from the rest do not be generic here. Then list each job in reverse chronological order. Make a list of three to five, no more than five bullet points that talk about your accomplishments and contributions.
Now this is where my formula comes in. For a good resume that gets attention, you need three out of four of the following elements in each of your bullet points. Obviously, if you can show all four even better, but you need at least three of these elements, or you need to get rid of that bullet point. All right, so here we go.

Number one, what did you do make or design and how many. So for example, this may say something like, designed and developed five lesson outlines, or designed and developed 3 45 minute lessons. We've all done that as teachers, you're doing that all the time. So use that designed and developed 3 45 minute lessons. The numbers there may differ, but you've done it. Number two, how long did it take you? So now add on to what you already have designed and developed 3 45 minute lessons weekly. Okay, that's how long it took you. Maybe you're doing it every week. So then you would put weekly number three, how many people are learners were affected? Once again, add on to what you have so far, designed and developed 3 45 minute lessons weekly for 150 learners. This applies I was a middle school teacher so I was doing this I was developing at least 3 45 minute lessons every week for 150 learners.

Okay, number four, add data or results. Now this one is tough and it's why I say to have three out of four of these for each bullet point. When you add on it will sound something like this designed and developed 3 45 minute lessons weekly for 150 learners, raising standardized assessment scores by 15 percent compared to the previous year. See what I did there? We've added some results. Now what I did actually matters, it's answering that question. So what?

Okay. Now my last note for you is this do not include generic statements like collaborated with coworkers performed a needs analysis. These feel like keyword doubts, and they are not solution space, you can talk about your work with some ease in interviews, or if you feel really passionate about it include the line about collaborating, but you have to have everything else otherwise. So what keep thinking that so what, now you have a bullet point that doesn't leave any guessing to the reader, the hiring manager, it contains hard numbers that eliminate vagary and make it clear how productive you were and the impact you had. Go through these steps for each bullet point in your resume. If you can't get at least three out of the four items I mentioned, get rid of that bullet point, it is doing you more harm than good. Keep this section high quality. And remember that recruiters and hiring managers spend an average of eight seconds, eight seconds, that's it reviewing your resume. Obviously, this is an average. So some spend more and some spend less. But even if you double that, and it's 16 seconds, right? Fine, let's triple it 48 seconds, slightly less than a minute, that is still scanning at best. So your resume needs to have those numbers jump out at them and catch their attention. Plus, your resume needs to be scannable. Use my formula for your bullets and you are making it easy for even the fastest scanner to learn a lot about you in a small amount of time.

Now after your bullet points, list your education. And then finally you can do a keyword dump in a skill section. But you should still carefully choose these words by comparing your real life skills to the skills listed in the job descriptions for the job you want. So in this case, go find instructional designer job postings, and look at the skills they list. If you have any of those skills, include it on your resume.

Did you know that there were more mentors like me, and that of course is Academy. We help you build your professional portfolio, revise your resume, prepare for interviews and give you valuable feedback on what you design. And if you are ready to leave the classroom, I invite you to check out IDOL courses Academy. Sign up using my code CLASSROOM100 and get $100 off enrollment today. It's time to take control and make the career change that will change your life. It changed mine. See you next time.

Send your stories or your questions to [email protected] or share them with me on Instagram  @leavingtheclassroom.