I have been privy to a number of resumes received by my school from first year hopefuls trying to find a job. I have also sat in on some demo lessons as well. What I've seen makes me embarrassed for some of these would be teachers, as well as embarrassed for the fellows as a whole. No wonder people find it difficult to find a job... use your common sense, people!
A couple of pointers based on what I've seen in the past month:
#1: If you are sending a resume via email, do not make your cover letter a separate attachment. The body of your email should be the cover letter itself! If you write a boring, generic, or casual email and expect anyone to actually download a cover letter or resume after that, you're wrong. You may have only 8 seconds to make a great impression. Please utilize your emails wisely!
#2: Get the name of your school right! There is no "Brooklyn University." If you sound clueless, certainly we have no reason to believe you're not!
#3: Having a world travel section on your resume makes you seem downright pretentious. And actually, I'll just laugh behind your back from this.
#4: If you are invited to an interview, come on time! In fact, come ten minutes early. Bring extra copies of your resume and dress professionally! Capri pants are not the ideal interview attire.
#5: If you are invited to do a demo lesson, have a lesson plan with you!!! I understand you're not teachers yet, but there are plenty of resources online. There is no excuse to show up empty handed. In addition, a lesson where you present an interesting topic and the students ask questions for 45 minutes is not acceptable! There should be clear parts to your lesson, including some sort of group work component and sharing if you want a chance at landing the job.
#6: If you are asked to give a demo lesson in earth science, it is not acceptable to teach a lesson in astrology!!!!
That's all I have so far. I'm sure the readers of this blog (are there more than 2???) have more sense than to make one of the above blunders, but you never know. I do hope that those teachers who were not called back, or did not get the job, reflect on what they can improve for subsequent interviews. After all, even I went on 4 interviews before I landed my job!
4 comments:
Well it depends on what they're teaching in astrology. The Regents had a number of astrology related questions...
I'd have to agree with the remainder of these points though.
Luckily, I didn't have to perform a demo lesson at my school, but now I hear that they're asking new teachers to do a demo lesson to the hiring committee.
interesting... what type of concepts?
the lesson that was given in my school (according to another teacher) was about reading the alignment of the stars.
in discussing another candidate with my principal today, she said that this young teacher snapped in her face to get her attention. way to make yourself stand out...
The reference tables require students to extrapolate information about various types of stars and based on their color and brightness you can determine what kind of star it is or something like that...
I'm not sure if snapping fingers in the principal's face is such a good idea... I sometimes wonder if it really is that difficult to find a teaching job in NYC but when you notice that candidates are just as likely to sabotage themselves, I kind of understand...
And the sad part is my principal is left to hire the finger snapper against her better judgment because it's either him or the star gazer. And apparently we received two other resumes for science that were just too horrific to even consider.
I don't understand... I thought there were loads of fellows looking for jobs!
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