After your contact details, your personal profile is the first section on your CV. The reason it’s at the top of the page is because this is your opportunity to introduce yourself to the recruiter and grab their attention.
For this reason, it needs to effectively sell your key skills, experience and qualifications and encourage the recruiter to keep reading the rest of your CV. Pretty important stuff!
So, with pressure to get this right, this guide will help you write a stand-out personal profile for your teaching CV. Read on for our top job-winning tips:
Keep it short and sweet
One of the trickiest parts of getting your personal profile right is including all the key information without making it five paragraphs long.
Recruiters are time-poor and only dedicate about 10 seconds to each CV they read, meaning your profile needs to cover the must-know info in as few words as possible.
As such, you need to keep this section short and sweet. It should be no more than a few sentences long, somewhere between 50-200 words. Focus on sharing your high-level and most important details — you can add the small print later on in your CV.
Include your key selling points
This section should include your key selling points, whether that’s your skills, achievements, experience, qualifications — or all of the above! Just remember, you need to keep it short and succinct.
You should start with a simple sentence that, ultimately, answers the question ‘what does this person do?’. Then you should follow this with your experience level, teaching background and any important qualifications that are relevant to the role. An example of this could be:
I am an accomplished secondary school teacher, with a bachelor’s degree in education. I have a proven track record for teaching KS3 and KS4 materials. My strong classroom management techniques have allowed me to support and guide over 100 students of mixed abilities through their GCSEs.
Quantify your achievements
If you include any of your key achievements in your profile (and it’s a good idea to do so) then it also pays to quantify these with facts or figures. This helps to give the recruiter a better idea of how you can add tangible value to the role.
For example, you might wish to include the size of the classes you have taught, the number of years you have been teaching your subject or the percentage that exam results increased while you were teaching.
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Avoid clichés
It can be tempting to stuff your teaching CV full of cliché phrases and keywords that you believe recruiters want to read. In fact, we all tend to slip into that habit from time to time!
But remember that recruiters read them buzzwords and clichés repeatedly which means they’ve lost their meaning completely.
Some of the worst CV clichés include:
- Passionate
- Dynamic
- Results-driven
- Detail-orientated
- Always gives 110%
These overused phrases don’t tell the recruiter anything about you. Instead of using these clichés, prove why you’re results-driven (sharing your class grades) or how you drive results (hosting extra revision sessions for GCSE students).
Proving you’ve got the skills and showing exactly how you’ve used these in the past to achieve results is more likely to impress the recruiter.
Tailor your personal profile
Last but certainly not least, you need to make sure you tailor every CV you write to a specific job role and school, including your personal profile. Do your research beforehand and work out which key skills, qualifications or experience will impress this recruiter most.
You can do this by highlighting the key requirements in the job description and including these in your profile. For example, if the position requires a minimum of three years and a 2:1 in your degree, proving you’ve got this right away will show you’re a suitable candidate and encourage the recruiter to read on.
It’s time to get writing
Now it’s time to start writing your CV. Using our tips above you’ll be able to create a strong personal profile that will increase your chances of being asked in for an interview. Good luck!
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About the author
Andrew Fennell
Andrew Fennell is the founder and director of StandOut CV, a leading UK careers advice website. He is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to publications like Business Insider, The Guardian, and The Independent.