Putting yourself above the TEFL riffraff
I’m not sure I have, but now you can- with my foolproof guide to putting your TEFL resume above the hoi polloi:
Getting an English teaching job abroad is becoming easier all the time, even if you don’t have the university degree and 4 week certificate in TEFL that have long been the minimum requirements. At the same time, though, getting a good teaching job in a good school is becoming increasingly difficult as the number of TEFL teachers with 10, 20 or even 30 years experience is increasing. As someone who in a previous job had to sift through hundreds of CVs in the first week of September every year to choose the 8 or 9 people we would give an interview to, I’ve gained a very good idea of what makes an English teaching CV stand out- experience that I’ve managed to use to make my own CV noticed for several jobs I was theoretically underqualified for. Some of the tips below are just things you can make sure you don’t miss out of your CV, while others are things you will need to think about throughout your career to make sure you build up the experience and qualifications you will need to make your CV really stand out.
Read the rest of this article thanks to the people who pay for me to stay in my dressing gown all day on Tuesdays, Usingenglish.com: The perfect CV and cover letter for a TEFL teacher
January 18th, 2008 at 5:02 am
[...] a perfect TEFL CV and cover letter? TEFLtastic has some tips for putting yourself above the TEFL [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 am
Hi Alex,
I really enjoyed your article, but I have a CV-related question. How long do you think an ESL CV should be? I’ve got 5 years solid teaching experience in several companies and countries. If I added all the “extras” it’d be similar to handing the DOS/HR manager War and Peace and saying, “Once you’ve finished that, give me a call about an interview”.
I’m just beginning to apply for jobs again (work permit expiring) and could do with some guidance.
Thanks.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hi Craig
Good question. 2 pages is still the maximum, but there are ways round if there is information you really don’t want to leave out:
- Put a longer version of your CV online (may I suggest TEFL.net blogs?) and give the link to it at the end of your CV where you would traditionally write “references available on request”. I actually started this blog with that in mind, because just my list of publications stretches to 8 pages now
- Rather than list what you did in each job, give the dates and places for each one, and then a summary of all the experience you have gained from all the jobs
- Write “similar duties to job above/ below but also…” as a way of reducing an entry
- Only give higher level qualifications (I tend to mention my LCCI, DELTA and degree, but leave out school information and CELTA)
- Write the words “a wide range of ages/ levels/ types of classes including…” a lot
- Rewrite your CV for each job to make sure the important information for that one gets in
Hope that helps. You could also have a look at my CV in the “About” section, but haven’t polished it up for a long time