Job Discussion Forums

[lajzar]

If that were my CV that had been posted and criticized like that, I would have named and shamed the school for being so unprofessional.

By all means give examples of teh kind of things not to use, but making it into what amounts to a flame against an un-named person is unfair. You've effectively insulted him with no reasonable means for him to reply.

[Nauczyciel]

Thanks, Glenski. You took the words right out of my mouth.

Lajzar, give me a break.

[Spinoza]

[denise]

Lajzar and spinoza--very well-said.

I am particularly concerned that Nauczyciel is so quick to dismiss those posters who disagree. A lot of valid points about professionalism have been made, and dismissing or, even worse, ridiculing them says a lot about the professionalism of the original poster.

d

[merlin]

Nauczyciel,
Have you ever considered the fact that this guy might not have even been serious about your school? Maybe, just maybe he couldn't give a flying fart if you hired him or not. You see, the amount of time he spent customizing his resume tells YOU something about how he views YOU.

Respect is a two-way thing, Nauczyciel. We see how much you respect the applicants and the feelings of teachers and I'm sure the job ad you placed showed an equal lack of respect and thus you get the applicants you do. You just have no grounds to speak of respect or professionalism.

And why should he take the time out to customize his resume when half the time recruiters/HR doesn't even bother to read the cover letter or the resume. 90% of the time they just want 1)MA/BAdegree 2)2+ years experience 3)some kind of language training 4)a picture 5)a voice in a recognizable accent. I can fill my CV with 5 pages all kinds of impressive ELT stuff but you know what? You probably wouldn't even understand half of it. Your mouth would drop slightly in bewilderment, you'd scratch your head and then you'd set out to cover up your own ignorance by throwing it in the bin.

Just like you cover up your ignorance about privacy laws by flaming the guy. What you've done is a flagrant is a violation of privacy laws in Europe, North and South America. Period. It doesn't matter if you don't give the guy's name. If you have an office in the US you've opened yourself to a lawsuit big time. But I don't really care about that. My point here is that you're blind to your own ignorance in many areas.

Glenski,
Stick to giving bad advice about how to teach Japanese students. I'm sure your resume could use some work as well. When was the last time you applied for a job? Do you really know what other employers look for in a resume or only what YOU look for?

[spidey]

I only have one question...

Do we hire people or CVs?

Letters after names does not a teacher make. Nor an individual for that matter.

Again...the standards that I hold are for the individual, not what is necessarily written on a resume which may or may not be true. Hence the interview process.

S

[donfan]

That was my CV

Not really but it could quite easily have been.

Everybody I know who has taught ESL or is interested in teaching ESL has heard of this site and it is quite possible he will read it.

I hope he does.

[Stephen Jones]

I agree 100% with the OP and Glenski here, and think that those of you who are calling the OP unprofessional are just plain idiots. There is no way from the information given that you would have a one in a thousand chance of identifying the applicant, and frankly if it would persuade him to change his CV to something marginally useful even naming and shaming him would be right.

I have been dealing with recruitment for four years now, and have seen 3,500 separate CV's, some of them many times over and some so many times over that I have set Outlook rules to delete them automarically as soon as they hit the inbox. The type of CV mentioned is exceptionally common; there are indeed many worse but I will save details of those for a later thread.

This CV follows one of the interesting tendencies of CVs: that the length of the CV is inversely proportional to the amount of experience. Candidates who have taught in five continents over thirty years will send in a CV that barely covers a page and you have to keep pestering them just to get a list of their employers, but somebody just out of college with a one week TEFL qualification and a summer course behind him will send you fifteen pages including a one page description of the responsibilties and business lessons learned from the lemonade stall he ran when he was nine.

The reason for this is not that the candidates haven't taken advice, but that they did, but have not bothered to update it. When they started college and were applying for temporary jobs, they were told to put a positive spin on what little experience they had, and so the lemonade stall and the Macdonald's job had to be puffed out. And they continued to do this for every part-time job they had through college, even though their resume was swelling faster than the belly of a couch potato. And worst of all, when they left college, and should have completely revamped the CV, they just stuck a little more on to the end.

If you are just out of college and have one year's experience, and are applying for a teaching job do not list all the unskilled jobs you did before. CONSIGN THEM TO THE RUBBISH BIN OF OBLIVION. You are making a fresh start, you are now a professional. So if all you have is one year's experience at a Chinese university put it down, and give a brief description of your duties. If you have no experience at all but just a CELTA, put that down, with a couple of lines describing it. We know you are inexperienced; if we are going to hire you it will be in spite of that. So don't pretend you can get over with it with verbiage. All the verbiage will do is ensure we pass your CV over to look at somebody else's.

Now it is quite possible that at the same time you are applying for teaching jobs you are also applying for unskilled jobs to make ends meet. Have a separate CV for that It is bad enough having to persuade your Chairman and Personnel that a person whose first listed experience on his CV is as a waste disposal operative should be offered a teaching job at a salary ahead of that of his country's university graduates, without also having to explain that despite his stated ambition to further his career as a barista, he is really dead keen on being a professional educationalist.

Now, if you have large gaps in your CV, either before or after your degree, which were filled with unskilled or irrelevant work, then list them, but do not go into details. However lifeless our students may be your experience running your own funeral parlour is of zero interest to me. Give full details for your teaching jobs and relevant experience to compensate.

Thirdly, if you are sending out your CV to forty different employers don't use the c.c column to list all of them. Either use the bcc column or send them all out separately. We know you are applying to jobs all over the place, we have done the same, but don't rub it in. Remember your CV is probably going to go up the hiring chain and be seen by people who are not EFL teachers, and you don't want to give them an opportunity to find fault.

And change the cover letter according to the type of job you want, and check you haven't left info from the last job. I have lost count of the number of people who have applied for jobs in Jubail because they want to learn more about Chinese culture; even the Chinese restaurants here are run by Philippinos!

[denise]

[Mouse]

[Stephen Jones]

[Glenski]

Merlin wrote:

[merlin]

I'll just stress what my main point is: Respect is a two-way street. Employers are well within their rights to screen applicants in whichever way they please. But don't you see the endless vicious circle they set up for themselves? They screen out well-intentioned people who just don't know how to write a resume. So who gets the job? The person who has specialized in resume writing but couldn't give a hoot about his job in fact. Like the question: Why are you applying for a position at HTC (UAE)? We all know everyone's real answer is "money" but anyone stupid enough to type that are screened out, aren't they?

You know what? Tomorrow I'm going to get the digital camera out, start up my adobe photoshot and I'm gonna be a cutting and pasting, painting fool. I'm going to be one happy-go-lucky mother-F* surrounded by smiling asian kids, the whole scene lit by a light radiating from the heavens above.

I'll send that in along with my pulse rate and tell me my inbox won't be full of offers come next week. The question is: will I accept them? I have a screening process of my own, after all.

p.s.
Glenski,
my my my.
I seem to have ruffled your feathers.
Lighten up, guy. You're not the expert you make yourself out to be and should be more open to criticism from others AS YOU EXPECT OTHERS TO TAKE YOURS! That's all I'm saying to you. Live with it.

p.p.s.
On legalities - remember I said

[moonraven]

Just a few comments on the original topic of CVs, which seems to have been mislaid somewhere along the line here:

1. When an employer announces a position, he/she wants to see CVs from folks who meet the requirements of the position announcement. If you want your CV to be read--rather than erased post haste from the employer's e-box--I suggest you make sure that it reflects what the employer is looking for. (That does NOT mean lie!)

2. The rule of thumb for CVs used to be 1 page for each 10 years of work experience, and I don't think that's a bad guideline--especially for younger folks. My CV is 3 pages, and that includes almost 40 years of work experience. That reflects my own resistance to reading more than 2 or 3 pages of 12 POINT TYPE, ATTRACTIVELY SPACED, AND WITH CATEGORICAL HEADINGS so that I can skip what doesn't apply.

3. If you feel you must include work experience you gained while studying--indicate that while you were studying you had several different jobs, and--rather than listing them--list the SKILLS you developed during the experience. That will let prospective employers know that you value all experiences for what you can learn from them.

Regarding cover letters--I keep them as short as possible (maximum two short paragraphs), refer only to the desired qualities the employer is looking for--and NEVER talk negatively about my current job or previous one. I used to keep a bulletin board of "Classic Candidates" whose cover letters included such gems as: "I caused a scandal in the town where I worked, but it wasn't all my fault...." Good for a laugh, but you'll never be hired with comments like those in your cover ketter.

[Glenski]