Education Jobs Search Tips

The education job market is highly competitive in most categories, and any extra effort on your part will pay off. Here are a few tips to help you land that perfect job.

Fine-tune your resume. Not only should you customize the cover letter (or email) to a particular person at a particular school, but you should also customize the contents of your resume to include the most relevant information for that position. Highlight your most applicable experiences - for example, if you want to teach junior high, you may want to include that you substituted regularly as a junior high teacher in another district. Your resume should be clear and concise. Also, make sure you have an electronic resume compatible with most computer operating systems, for quick uploading to the web should you need to apply online.

Brush up on your interview skills. In many education jobs, you will come face-to-face with students, teachers, or other administrators. This makes your physical presentation fairly important, and something you want to prepare before your interview. It may help to practice your interview beforehand with friends or family.

Follow up with online search results. If you went job searching online and applied for several positions, follow up with those employers either by phone or email. They will be glad to see someone taking a proactive approach to their career, and will appreciate your thoughtful gesture.

Keep yourself updated on everything. Besides technology, education is one of the fastest-moving fields out there. Teaching theories change constantly, policies shift from year to year, student behavior and trends change, even teaching tools change - for example, when was the last time you saw a blackboard with white chalk? To compete in this workforce, keep your appearance clean and updated, and make an effort to understand the latest cell phone and computer trends. Read education journals and magazines. And don't use age as an excuse!