The ELT Times The only online TEFL newspaper

By Kelly Blackwell

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the meat and potatoes of businesses hoping to make it on the internet, but did you realise that SEO can also be the key to wildly increasing the number of international school recruiters who see your eResume?

Let’s face it, the reality of job-hunting in the 21st Century is that digital is the way to go… We search for jobs online, we submit our resumes online, are interviewed via Skype over the internet and accept contracts that are delivered electronically too.

In this article I want to clue you in to a little known technique that is crucial when you are submitting your resume to a website or an electronic database, use keywords. Simple isn’t it? But very few of your competitors know about this, and that’s to your direct benefit because optimising your resume for the search terms recruiters will be using to find you will put your resume smack in the middle of their desk.

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Here’s what to do:

Include specific education related nouns in your resume because keywords are noun-based. Some examples are: classroom management, curriculum design, student motivation, student assessment, student organisation, class project, extra curricular activity.

Include specific subject related nouns in your resume.

Include qualification specific nouns in your resume.

Include experience specific nouns in your resume. Some examples are: GCSE teaching experience, examination board marking, moderating experience. Remember to include terms that would be of interest to a British, American or IB school if that’s where you experience lies or that’s where you want to go.

Look at job descriptions and job advertisements for ideas of keywords. Imagine that you’re the recruiter and make a list of keywords you’d use when searching a database for someone with your qualifications.

Attempt to position these keywords towards the top of your resume.

Here’s what not to do:

Lose sight of the fact that you’re preparing your resume to attract the interest of a human being. Check that your resume is attractive, well-laid out and reads well.

Over use any single keyword or phrase as this can result in that keyword or phrase being disregarded.

The pros and cons of posting your resume online:

At the end of the day, international recruiters are busy people who don’t spend hours trawling the internet in an attempt to find staff. Therefore, submitting your resume to resume bulletin boards is going to be a waste of time.

So why go to the effort of optimising your resume for online use? There are a number of industry specific websites on the internet where international school vacancies are posted. If you submit your resume to these sites, there’s a reasonable chance that recruiters may run a quick search when they’re posting the job adverts, provided the advertisement is not being posted by a personal assistant. And so, submitting an optimised resume will pay off in this situation.

Also, one of the services the international teaching job fair organisers offer schools’ recruiters is the ability to search a database of candidates’ resumes. To search the databases the recruiters enter subject specific, qualification specific and, experience specific keywords.

At the very least this exercise will result in you identifying areas in your experience and qualifications that will attract recruiters. You can then use these either when you optimise you resume ready to post online, or you can use them when you write your cover letter to catch the eye of recruiters who ’skim’ the majority of cover letters prior to deleting them.

Good luck on your job-hunt!

About the Author

Kelly’s been teaching overseas for more than a decade and has many proven, effective strategies for getting her resume read by international recruiters! Get your copy of Kelly’s interview with a veteran international school recruiter and utilise his foolproof secret strategies to dominate your competition!