It's Halloween and you've got somewhere to be, so this one is quick.
A recruiter gives a resume about ten seconds on the first pass.
That's volume. A recruiter with a stack of applications reads the top of each one and decides whether to keep going. Ten seconds is long enough to read three lines:
- Your headline. The line under your name.
- The first line of your summary.
- The first bullet under your most recent job.
Then the decision. Keep reading or move on.
So here is what has to be clear in those three lines: the job you're applying for. Nothing else gets a vote before that.
Could a stranger name the job you want from those three lines? That's the test.
What I keep seeing
I've read 500 educator resumes since spring. Most of them spend all three lines on your school.
Line one says Educator. Or nothing at all.
Line two says "Dedicated educator passionate about student growth."
Line three says "Responsible for planning and delivering instruction."
Ten seconds, gone, and the recruiter still doesn't know what job you're applying for.
Every one of those lines is true. Every one of them names the setting and skips the work. That's fixable in an evening.
Line one: the headline
Put the target title under your name, written the way the posting writes it. The posting says Instructional Designer, your headline says Instructional Designer. The posting says Customer Success Manager, your headline says Customer Success Manager.
One title per resume. A headline with three titles and a bar between each one reads like a wish list and a recruiter can't match a wish list to an opening.
The headline is a target. The next two lines are the proof.
One more reason to write it exactly as they wrote it: the application system matches you to the posting on that title too. Plain, boring and ready for an ATS and a tired human at 4:45 on a Friday.
Line two: the first line of your summary
This line says the title again and names the adult-facing work behind it. One sentence. What you built, what you built it in and who used it.
Before: "Dedicated educator passionate about student growth."
After: "Instructional designer with eight years in a 3rd grade classroom: built a complete reading curriculum in Google Slides and Nearpod that the grade-level team adopted the following year."
The school is still in the sentence. The work is what the sentence is about now.
Line three: the first bullet
The first bullet under your most recent job is the third thing a recruiter reads and on most educator resumes it's "Responsible for planning and delivering instruction." I wrote a whole issue on "Responsible for" back in September. The short version: the phrase hides the work.
The first bullet carries your biggest piece of adult-facing work, the one closest to the target title. What you built, what it contained, what tools it lives in, who adopted it. Here's the one I shared in my LinkedIn post Tuesday night:
"Designed a complete 3rd grade reading curriculum with no inherited materials: 8 units, 160+ lesson plans in Google Slides and Nearpod, weekly assessments in Google Forms and Kahoot, student work tracked in Seesaw, a pacing guide in Google Sheets, all delivered through Google Classroom. Organized in a shared Drive the grade-level team adopted the following year."
That's a 3rd grade teacher. That's also an instructional designer.
Student growth numbers go nowhere near this bullet. A corporate hiring team can't do anything with your test scores. They're reading for your work with ADULTS.
Want to see a whole Experience section rebuilt this way? Two weeks ago I rewrote one line by line.
The test, tonight
Open your resume. Scroll so you can only see the top: your name, the headline, the first line of the summary and the first bullet under your current job. Read those lines once, at reading speed, no going back.
Three questions:
- Could a stranger name the job I'm applying for?
- Does line one match the posting's title word for word?
- Does each of the three lines name something I built, ran or changed and the adults who used it?
Three yeses and the recruiter keeps reading. One no and you know which line to fix first.
Three lines decide whether the rest gets read. Go read yours out loud. Like a stranger would.
Not sure which title belongs in line one? My quiz reads your school experience the way a hiring manager does and points you at the corporate path that fits.
Companies hiring for roles like these run every Saturday in Jobs Jobs Jobs, my LinkedIn newsletter listing companies currently hiring former educators.
Reading this in your inbox? Hit reply, I read my own email. Reading on my website? Send me a message on LinkedIn.
Cheers,
Steph
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About Steph Yesil: Steph is a former Kâ12 educator who moved into corporate education companies in 2015 and built a career across curriculum, professional learning, content, and leadership. She founded Elevated Careers to help educators build successful corporate careers.
