Way back on December 14, 2022, we held a resume workshop featuring a panel of the three women who lead our Resume Assistance team. Queenie, Linda and Debbie have professional backgrounds in Human Resources or Technical hiring and training and have been sharing their expertise with English B'Yachad students who want and need assistance in creating professional resumes in English.
Our three experts have shared that there's much that tutors can do to work on English resumes before those resumes get to this team. And you need not have experience in Human Resources or specialized technical knowledge to add real value.
Our experts will deal with the more technical aspects of the resume including formatting. In Israel resumes are generally called, "CV" rather than a resume.
Your role as a tutor is to focus on the English!!! Help your student use positive and strong and active words to sell themselves. Help them connect themselves to the job description.
We recorded the training workshop which you can watch here!
Workshop highlights include:
The goal of a resume is to improve a candidate's chances of getting a job
Anything you can do to help put your student's resume in the "yes" pile
Correct grammar or capitalization errors
Use of key words - many resumes are reviewed by databases that select candidates based on key words
Less is more - be succinct & provide the first impression of "easy to read"
Ultimately the resume should be only one page (margins and font size save space)
Suggest that resumes should be submitted in PDF format
Look at the job description to what the employer is seeking to identify key words
Consider how to describe a student's skills as transferable - see example
Don't forget to include accomplishments - what have you done in x job? Extract the skills and accomplishments to highlight
Suggest English vocabulary that the student understands - the resume must be in the student's voice
Focus on soft and hard skills
Make sure the student's email and LinkedIn are professional sounding
Cover letters are not always needed and often can't be uploaded along with resume submission
LinkedIn profiles are very important
If your student is actively engaged in a job search, you can focus your sessions together on reading company websites, read and discuss what you can learn about the job and the company as part of the job search process.
Students need to be honest about their English level but shouldn't sell themselves short!
To reach out to our experts for more information:
Queenie: queenie_rich@hotmail.com
Linda: lihmaslin2@gmail.com
Debbie: kamioner@gmail.com
Samples of action verbs, the handout used to demonstrate transferable skills and sample resumes before and after revision are below. Please note that these resumes are examples and are NOT intended to serve as the best or only example. And as Linda shared, the 'after revision' resume is not perfect in any way!!!