Finding a Job

When I start to think about finding a job in education I have a couple of emotions spring to mind.  The first is utter and complete excitement because I will FINALLY be done with school and start my life as a professional.  The other emotion that I feel isn’t as pleasant, because the idea of finding a job in a tough job market scares me.  I was really happy that we covered this topic in Professional Teacher because I think that most of my classmates would agree that we all feel these ways to certain degrees.  In this post I want to explain some of the things that I learned about job searching.

One thing that was pretty obvious but still very crucial is that I have to have a killer resume.  Jackie stressed the importance of this in class as well as shared some great ideas about what to include.  After this class I know that I am going to have to go over my resume and give it a tune up.  I need to format it in a way that highlights my strengths, especially the ones that have any connection with children.  I have always had a concern over how few jobs I have had in my life, but Jackie helped to put a positive spin on this and said that it can show employers that you are willing to stick with a job for a long time.  I am planning to revamp my resume and then get some feedback from someone in the profession to make sure I have produced something that will get me to the interview stage of the process.

Ah yes interviewing... another lovely thing which will probably not help me in the long run is that in my small community everyone just knew me so I always just got the job on reputation alone.  Now that I am in the real world, I really need to hone my communication skills and let the interviewers know all the wonderful things that I can bring to the table in their schools.  I often have a hard time talking myself up or selling myself, but I understand that it is important to do within an interview.  The mock interviews that we held in class really helped me focus in on the proper ways to respond and also showed me the type of questions that will pop up.  Being able to watch my fellow classmates answer the questions made me more confident in my abilities because my answers often followed along with their own.  I am hoping to take a couple of workshops in the future to help with interviewing anxiety and nerves.  I also want to make sure that I am prepared for my interview and know the points I want to get across.  I want to have my educational words memorized so I will understand the questions (i.e. discuss your summative assessment practices), and I want to have certain things to say in my answers that will point out my strengths as a teacher.

I came out of this class hopeful that I have the ability to get a job if I just push myself and conduct the best search that I possibly can!