The Puzzle: Blog

In today's job market, your resume needs to immediately stand out. Hiring managers are spending less and less time reading resumes, and attention spans are short. On top of that, add the fact that what's accepted and expected on a resume seems to change from year to year.

So how can you ensure your resume is getting noticed, and for the right reasons? We've compiled a list of some of the most helpful and effective ways you can make your resume shine.

Lead with a Summary

Hiring managers are concerned with finding the right fit for their open positions. Rather than stating what it is you're looking for in an objective statement, which has become obsolete, start your resume with a short professional synopsis that includes your years of experience, job history, and big career achievements. Labeling this section to match your area of expertise (i.e. “Passionate STEM Teacher”) lets readers know what to expect as they continue reading.

Brand Your Resume

Branding has made its way into resumes. Often branding is seen in a subtle way, with your “brand attributes” woven into the summary or job responsibilities. Other times, it's in much more obvious ways, such as including a Brand Bio heading and section at the top of your resume. How much or how little you're comfortable doing is up to you, but your brand should capture your career identity, authenticity, passion, and image, and should sharpen the focus of your resume. Make sure your message is consistent and woven throughout. Have a personal website, portfolio, or thank-you cards? You can also use the same fonts and colors—appropriately, don't overdo it—on your resume as part of your visual branding.

Integrate Your Resumes

Whatever you do publicly online, whether on Twitter, LinkedIn, or a blog, is part of your resume. Ensure you have an orchestrated plan to integrate your written resume with your online identity. Information you have on your resume should match what you list on LinkedIn especially, in addition to any other sites you use. Especially if you're not searching for a job for the first time, make sure that school hiring managers won't pull up old versions of your resume from a simple Google search that you posted to other sites a few years ago but have forgotten about.

Intermingle Your Skills into Your Job History

Schools want to know what concrete skills you have, but also how you have used and applied them. Merge them into your work experience section. Tell hiring managers how you have put your expertise in curriculum planning to use, or how you have switched to follow a flipped classroom model. Be as specific as possible, yet brief and concise.

Maximize Your Real Estate

Make every word count when you're writing your resume. Use action verbs and short, tweet-like sentences to communicate key accomplishments and facts you don't want a school to miss. Call out critical information in headers or using bold text so those who like to skim won't miss the main points. The “rule” of keeping your resume to one page doesn't apply to everyone, especially if you've been working for 30 years, but don't make your resume longer than it needs to be. It helps to follow a formula when trying to flesh out your story: share a challenge/situation/problem, the action you took to address it, and what the result was. Essentially you're framing the result to show how it impacted your school or students, or whomever your employer and clients were.

Have you tried any of these trends already? Have more tips you're like to share? Use the comments below and let us know!

Back to Blog

0 Comments

There are no comments on this blog entry.