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GreenDestiny
Joined: 27 Nov 2004
Posts: 88
Location: International
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 Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2004 9:38 pm Post subject: Resume: Differences between ESL & Business presentations |
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Hi,
I'm currently forming my resume for the ESL job market, and wish to receive ideas/suggestions regarding the differences between an ESL resume and a (general) Business resume.
My job experience is largely managerial and human resources work in the states. How can I include this in an ESL-targeted resume? Is work experience other than teaching generally of little importance to an employer?
Thank you!
GreenDestiny
Why would I make one woman so miserable when I can make so many women very happy? -Benny Hill (when asked why he never married) |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 12:35 am Post subject: Re: Resume: Differences between ESL & Business presentat |
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| GreenDestiny wrote: |
Hi,
I'm currently forming my resume for the ESL job market, and wish to receive ideas/suggestions regarding the differences between an ESL resume and a (general) business resume.
My job experience is largely managerial and human resources work in the states. How can I include this in an ESL-targeted resume? Is work experience other than teaching generally of little importance to an employer?
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Glenski and I often do a lot of proofreading of resumes for people, and its probably a good idea to consider what employers are NOT looking for over here, and adapt your resume accordingly. Not having experience is not a problem in itself, but you could end up sending the wrong message to them.
At a conversation school You will NOT:
Attend meetings to plan curriculum or decide the course of the company, decide what texts to use and so on. You will likely not be in a position to advise the company or provide them feedback on what they should be doing.
Use computers or the Internet to develop lesson plans or create lessons
be in a position of managing or supervising people, unless you have been there a while and become an assistant trainer.
Likewise be in a position to hire and fire people. Schools here dont like prima donnas.
Need to speak Japanese during your classes. Japanese is usually banned for use by foreign teachers. Students pay to hear English, not your broken Japanese. Understanding or knowing a foreign language e.g. Spanish is useful as you understand the mental processes of second language acquisition, learning vocabulary and grammar. Start to learn Japanese and you will know how your students feel learning English with you. You will have your hands full just learning how to get around when you don't speak the language, so don't diss your students English when you can not even speak their language yourself.
Use your classes as a dating service with the local women. Some schools have rules against fraternisation (even going out with students of the same sex) and many teachers abuse their authority. the students are your bosses customers, not your students. Don't forget who pays your salary (students tuition fees) and don't bite the hand that feeds you.
You will however:
Need to be punctual and on time for work each day. Students are paying for your time and punctuality is a must, even if it means arriving 20 minutes before work starts to prepare lessons etc. Schools like NOVA will dock your pay for the hour even if you are 5 minutes late, whjich means you teach the lesson for free.
Be neatly groomed and not look like you are at a luau in Hawaii. Collar and tie for me. Personal grooming is quite important. No body odor etc
Be reasonably energetic, sociable and cheerful. No need to be a 'clown' but no student wants a lesson with a teacher who is in a bad mood and tired after teaching 6 hours straight.
be interested in your students, be interested in the culture, even though some things about living here will be quite alien to you and culture shock will be a dominant feature in your first 6-12 months of life here. Things are not wrong, just different. Being able to handle different customs and ways of doing things, different food and language are important and being able to handle adversity, loneliness and homesickness.
OK, what to put on your resume:
Employers here are not really interested in what you did in a past life. You can have been a corporate CEO but thats water under the bridge as you will not be able to do that in Japan or at a language school as you dont speak the language or have the knowledge or skills to transplant your skills here. They look for people with a degree for the work visa, preferably are in Japan or can start within the next few months. Most employers will allow you up to a month to start if you are already working and need to tidy up your affairs, hand in notice and if you need to obtain a work visa
Teaching English is like being a glorified bar waiter. You make small talk with complete strangers for 50 minutes, so you need to be able to make small talk even if its the 100th time you have had that conversation. Be light and breezy, be interesting. People may ask you about what you did back home so you can tall about yourself with students. be able to relate the lesson to students daily lives.
I have read resumes where people have bullet-point, paragraph long job descriptions that have nothing to do with language teaching. You will either send the recruiter to sleep or have him think "This guy will get bored with teaching a low-level student English or teaching someone to say his ABCs. Downplay your high powered job skills and glowing resume or you will overqualify yourself out of contention.
Stick to the basics such as when and where you worked, what you did there. detailed job explanation of everything you did is unnecessary and irrelevant. They just want to know if you can write a coherent sentence or not.
Dont assume that the recruiter or interviewer will understand everything you write on a resume. Things like GPAs, SITs are Greek to employers here. many native speakers of English who read resumes here are not even americans. Avoid slang, jargon, abbbreviations or things that you think may not be easily understood outside the US. Imagine yourself to be a British person reading your resume. Sometimes the foreigner doing the hiring or reads your resume is less academically qualified than you (though 6-12 months in Japan makes him your superior). Have a glowing turbo-charged resume and you may just appear a threat to him, even take over his job one day.
State what your experience is but avoid sounding like you want to take over the company or become a manager or start running the show. You can do that once you get here and get some experience and teaching qualifications and network for different jobs etc.
A resume here is a work and education record, not an opportunity to trumpet your acheivements and tell the world how great you are. leave that for the interview or cover letter. In a CV which should be one page or less, write where and when you worked, and when and where you went to school. what your highest degree is. Grades and majors are largely unimportant.
I would omit Goals and Objectives. A CV is a work record of past achievements, not of what you plan to do. Plans and obectives can change, and its pretty obvious what your goals are if you want to teach in Japan.
Dont forget what they are hiring you for. Its no so you can learn Japanese, learn the culture, meet Japanese women or travel around Japan. they are paying you to teach English. be interested in japan etc but it should not look as though you are using them to further your own goals. Even saying you want to learn Japanese can be a negative as they think you will use Japanese in class, and not speak English. think about what you can do for your students and the company and give them a reason to hire you. Whay should they hire you over someone else, and what do you bring to the table?
You will not likely use computers so saying you have experience with Word, Excel and Powerpoint is probably superfluous. You wont even touch a computer during work hours. |
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Laura C
Joined: 14 Oct 2003
Posts: 211
Location: Saitama
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| Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 1:08 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for that Paul.
L |
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Gordon
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 5309
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 1:24 am Post subject: |
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Great list Paul, I agree with everything you said. I think one common mistake people make is that they make themselves out to be overqualified in their resume. Easy to do for an eikaiwa. Be realistic about what kind of job you are applying for.
If I was a NOVA recruiter and someone said they have experience in syllabus design and are interested in second language methodology, I wouldn't hire them. I would think they would be miserable teaching the "formula method". |
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GreenDestiny
Joined: 27 Nov 2004
Posts: 88
Location: International
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| Posted: Fri Dec 03, 2004 1:50 am Post subject: |
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Thank you very much for a thorough response! I would like to submit my resume to both you and Glenski soon. Lately, I've been immersed in Japan-related research, and your advice is quite useful. BTW> I'm beginning to learn Japanese.
All the best,
GreenDestiny, BA, CTESOL & Advanced CTESOL
The strangest secret: We become what we think about most of the time. -Earl Nightingale |
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Sody
Joined: 03 Oct 2003
Posts: 55
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:29 am Post subject: |
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This thread has helped me understand the ESL industry in Japan quite a bit. I am really quite sorry I didn't read it earlier. I've noticed that a lot of the recruiters and people I have spoken to from Japan are very insecure people.
Sody |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| Teaching English is like being a glorified bar waiter. You make small talk with complete strangers for 50 minutes, so you need to be able to make small talk even if its the 100th time you have had that conversation. |
You can look at these remarks two ways.
1. Teaching ANY class (math, history, microbiology) for any length of time is like being a bar waiter, in that you should appear sociable even if you have presented the lesson 100 times. You might feel this way (bar waiter) if you have a pre-programmed format for teaching handed to you.
2. No way! I prepared my lessons all by myself, and they included fun ways to present a grammar point, as well as have students interested enough to participate in them (and LEARN from them). In my rare "free talking" classes did I merely make small talk, but even then, my goal was to keep the STUDENTS talking and to correct their grammar and vocabulary and improve it at the same time. Bar waiter, indeed. Pass the scotch, neat. |
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Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
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| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| My job experience is largely managerial and human resources work in the states. How can I include this in an ESL-targeted resume? Is work experience other than teaching generally of little importance to an employer? |
Green Destiny,
You have been posting and reading on this forum (and others if I'm not mistaken) for quite some time now. I'm surprised that you still have such questions.
You are looking to teach conversational English. The employer wants to see a few things.
1. Are you a native English speaker (in most cases)?
2. Do you seem to have a likeable personality?
3. Do you have any experience teaching English at all?
4. Do you appear to be a person who won't succumb to culture shock?
The personality issue can't be seen in a resume, but as for the other 3, it's easily detected on a resume and cover letter (and obviously expanded upon in the interview). Some employers don't even care if you have taught English. They may see private tutoring in tax laws as good enough. Or even volunteering at your Sunday school classes or local daycare. Depends on what sort of students they have, too. Just don't try to B.S. your way into describing "teaching skills" with something that clearly stretches the truth.
Example: "I have fully trained all of my office subordinates in the various procedures for the Accounting Department, including creating several Excel programs that demonstrate how company policy works."
Example: "I was responsible for teaching all incoming employees in my section how to use the copy machine, fax machine, and intranet."
Another point that I see a lot on resumes, and that I try to discourage, is when people list their "people skills". They may actually have set aside a separate section to do this, or they may embed them for each job description. One recent resume seemed to list nothing BUT people skills, and I was hard-pressed to see what he/she had actually done in his/her jobs! Leave these out. They will come out in the interview...maybe. Your employer is only interested in points 1-4 above.
Example of things to exclude:
Team player, hard-working, proactive, reliable, punctual, easygoing, etc.
Leave out the computer skills, too. As Paul wrote, you won't be expected to use the Internet to plan lessons (but you might want to see what's out there just for your own benefit, or even to supplement lessons you've been given). What I'm talking about is when people write that they are fluent in certain computer languages or know various programs. These descriptions usually come from people leaving the IT field, but I've seen them in practically every resume that I've proofread to date.
Example:
I know how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Competent in programming with Fortran, C language, and in designing documents with Access.
How an employer can judge your resistance to culture shock is something I just threw in, but if you have done any traveling overseas, or even lived there, or perhaps have been involved in hosting (or being hosted) on student exchange programs, those are good signs. To say (in the cover letter, not resume) that you are very interested in Japanese anime will not fly too well. Better to write Japanese culture instead, if anything at all. Realize, however, that practically everyone will be writing that they have "always had a fascination with the Japanese people and/or culture". So, you have to be specific about that, or find a way to state this obvious fact so that you stand out positively. If you land the interview, your employer will still likely ask questions like, "How are you going to survive over here with little to no Japanese language skills, being 7000 miles away from mommy and your waterhole friends, and potentially being posted in an apartment as big as your current living room?" If you are a man, don't be surprised at the trick question, "Do you like Japanese women?"
So, for everyone coming from a non-teaching background (Hey! I did!), just design an abbreviated description of your job history. What was the name of the company, where was it, and generally what did you do? If it's not related to teaching, and you had essentially zero teaching/training functions in the job, don't try squeezing blood out of a turnip. Showing that you held a job for 27 years in corporate law is just as good as showing you sold men's clothing at The Gap for 12 months. Say it, make the resume as presentable as possible, and write a darned good cover letter. THAT'S where the employer sees who you are first. |
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