Overhauling a Teacher Resume
I’ve done multiple resume reviews in the last month so this topic felt timely.
Teachers looking to break into the field of corporate instructional design need to redo all of their application materials. Seriously, your old teacher resume isn’t going to cut it in a field that is very competitive right now. Your teaching portfolio with lesson plans and photos from field trips isn’t go to convince a corporate hiring manager you can do the job.
Here’s my advice for revamping a teacher resume for the corporate world:
Create a professional summary of 1-3 sentences - This takes some soul searching, but you need to be come up with something concise and memorable. What sets you apart from the instruction design pack? Who are you professionally?
Include measurable impact by harnessing data - Calculate some cold hard numbers that show your effectiveness. How many of your students passed, increased test scores, or showed growth? What percentage of teachers adopted the initiative you launched? Etc.
Only include experience that is relevant to your new field - The corporate world isn’t going to appreciate that you nurtured the social-emotional wellness of our youth, or that you took attendance daily. Focus on the work you did that explicitly connects to instructional design.
Use language from job postings - Scour job postings that interest you, and lightly lift the language from these listings. There are probably lots of responsibilities that overlap with your role as a teacher.
Use consistent messaging across your application materials - If you put in all the hard work to revamp your resume, make sure to apply the same updates across LinkedIn and your digital portfolio. Your online presence should be concordant across platforms.
Lastly… DO NOT LIE. Don’t say you were an instructional designer when your role was teacher. Don’t say you developed eLearning using authoring tools if you truly did not do this. You are not setting yourself up for success if you say you possess skills that you in fact do not.
