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Recruiter Roundtable: Objectives on Resumes

Yahoo! HotJobs — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:00:00 -0700

The Recruiter Roundtable is a monthly feature that collects career and job-seeking advice from a group of recruiting experts throughout the US.

The question we put before our panel this month is: How important is having an "objective" or "summary" section at the opening of a candidate's resume?

Your 15-Second 'Elevator Pitch'

If you want to convert your 15 seconds of fame into an in-person interview at the company of your choice, include a summary statement at the opening of your resume.

A well-written summary statement tells me how your experience and skill set will help my company solve a particular challenge, become more profitable or efficient, or break into or further penetrate target markets. In other words, it will make me want to read the rest of your resume and consider you for the opportunity. The best summary statements I've seen are no more than three to five sentences long and show me that you clearly understand the role you're applying for.

-- Cheryl Ferguson, recruiter, The Recruiter's Studio

A Better Use of That Space?

While a summary could clarify your goal or objective, I don't think it is a necessary part of one's resume. Recruiters review candidates' information every day, and look for certain skills and experiences found in the body of a resume. Save the extra space for accomplishments, goals achieved, awards and unique skills relevant to the job.

-- Bob Hancock, senior manager of global talent acquisition, Electronic Arts

Review Real Situations

Including an objective targeted to a specific position can be helpful since it quickly tells an employer why the job candidate is interested in the opportunity and is the right fit for it. The key is to provide information that will pique the hiring manager's interest without adding superfluous details or items listed later in the resume.

Only include an objective if the resume is targeted to a particular opportunity. Omit this section when creating a general resume.

-- DeLynn Senna, executive director of North American permanent placement services, Robert Half International

Most Useful Cases

For me, it's most important in two cases:

1. Executive or Experienced Candidates: If you have "been in business" for a while and have taken on a variety of challenges, and even if you have depth in one discipline, it's still helpful to know your elevator pitch. An experienced executive will be able to make a pithy statement about top-level skills.

2. Career Changers: If you are trying to reposition yourself from one discipline to another (and I know people who have done this successfully), you should explicitly state the skill sets that are directly transferable. A candidate I know went from market research/analytics to organizational development and this [objective statement] was crucial for the hiring teams to connect the dots.

-- Ross Pasquale, Search Consultant, Monday Ventures

Build Momentum

If the candidate fully understands the job they are applying for, a succinct objective or summary could be helpful. However, many candidates do a poor job at making their statement match the position of interest. Instead, there is a tendency to lean towards making a broad statement in their objective such as, "To obtain a position in the financial services industry." A statement such as this loses the momentum the "objective" or "summary" could have had.

-- Robyn Timmerman, recruiter, Wells Fargo Wealth Management Group

Make your resume shine with help from Monster's resume writing experts!

Are "Teacherpreneurs" the Future of Education?

Liz Dwyer | GOOD — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:17:00 -0700

One of the frustrating things about being a teacher is that the people who make the big policy decisions about education often don't have much, if any, classroom experience. Even our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was never a classroom teacher. But 12 of the 13 authors of a new education reform book, Teaching 2030, are current classroom teachers, and the smart thinking they share is a reflection of the knowledge they've gained while working in public schools. The animated video above is a summary of their big ideas about what needs to happen to put our education system on the right track by 2030.

Many educators will appreciate that while the authors believe that better teaching is a key to improving schools, they don't believe in ignoring the impact of poverty on the classroom, or discounting how challenging being a modern teacher actually is. They also advocate a teaching force of well-prepared educators who are interested in teaching as a career.

Their umbrella education reform solution, which I've written about before, is for teachers to become entrepreneurially-minded leaders. They call them "teacherpreneurs" and they envision this new breed of educators as "classroom experts who teach while also serving as teacher educators, policy researchers, community organizers and trustees of their profession." Essentially, the people who teach in the classroom are also the ones generating education policy and reform, which is a 180 from what happens now.

But are these the ideas that teachers as a whole want to embrace, and, if so, how do we shift the reform discussion to reflect them After all, there are only 19 years till 2030, so if we really want to ensure we aren't having the same education debates then that we're having now, the conversation has to start.

Liz is GOOD's education editor. She taught in Guangzhou, China and Compton, California, and worked for Teach For America. She's written for Good Housekeeping, Parenting and numerous online publications.

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What's the Key to Ending the Math and Science Teacher Shortage?

SHAWN CORNALLY | GOOD — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:39:00 -0700

President Obama (and his predecessor, President Bush) has addressed the national shortage of math and science teachers several times in various official addresses on education. Both suggested recruiting more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teachers—in the tens of thousands per year. However, research shows that we lose almost 30,000 existing STEM teachers annually. We have a problem whose solution is based in retention, not recruitment.

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I am a STEM teacher entering my fourth year. Typically this is when a teacher starts to consider leaving the profession; I have on many occasions, but not because of a lack of passion for educating kids. Dealing with low pay, lack of autonomy and student behavior issues are a part of the job—a part that all teachers sign up for—but if the combined toll of those factors is too high a teacher will surely burn out by the end of their fifth year.

A teacher's job satisfaction sits on a very fragile precipice. The rhetoric in any given teacher's lounge gives you the feeling of being in the galley of a sailing ship rather than a professional community. This sense of quasi-indentured service bruises easier than a peach and doesn't recover well. So, how do we go about retaining STEM teachers?

Increase Pay?

This is the most often-touted solution for solving the retention problem. STEM teachers have other options in the private sector, many more that are directly related to their specializations than perhaps any other teacher in a public school. These options, perhaps unsurprisingly, pay more.

Increasing pay has a weak effect on retention because of the naturally altruistic tendencies of teachers. We are gluttons for the service mode of thinking, and while I would love to take home a fatter paycheck, I have to admit that I wouldn't do a better job for more money. I don't relate my pay to my performance. The psychology just doesn't work that way; teachers do their jobs well outside of business hours—for no pay—on a regular basis.

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However a recent study out of Penn State has concluded that it is not initial pay, but the salary schedule cap that indicates whether a teacher will stay when they're thinking about money. So, perhaps our altruism manages to recognize a low ceiling when it sees one and bows out after a few years.

Better Working Conditions

What teachers seem to be thinking about even more than cash are their working conditions. Imagine you're asked to do the nearly impossible job of teaching everyone you meet to play a Dizzy Gillespie trumpet solo, even those without lips. At first you'd balk, but, believing in your charge, you carry on. Then the real challenge drops: You're going to get one trumpet, no recording equipment, 15 sheets of staff paper each year, and professional training from your administrators on how to teach saxophone.

The same researchers out of Penn State found that this is exactly what causes STEM teachers to close up shop and jump to the private sector. When asked to educate every American child, a teacher can't stand to enter their own classroom when they know the system is set up to make that task even more difficult. They’d rather quit than face that daily.

Solutions

We need good science and math teachers, and we need them to be relaxed, inventive and supported. The solution is not to blindly throw money at the problem. Instead, increased funding needs to be used to create an environment that allows STEM teachers to feel like they can actually succeed at the herculean task of teaching all of their students to be mathematically and scientifically literate.

That environment has a well-funded equipment closet with a budget for repairs and updates.

That environment has professional development designed for STEM teachers that increases knowledge of how to deal with student misconceptions, new technology, and the latest research.

That environment has a cogent administration dedicated not to dealing with students only when problems arise, but instead, focused on creating a student body of thoughtful citizens.

Without autonomy, teachers don’t have the ability to make decisions that are best for student learning. Instead of being leaders on campus, they’re relegated to merely implementing others' ideas—ideas which, because of their experience, teachers often know don’t work.

If President Obama—or Bush, now that he has some time on his hands—would really like to keep the United States competitive, he can focus on creating an environment that retains those altruistic, creative STEM teachers that graduated from college with other options before they go the way of the Space Shuttle.

From GOOD Magazine about the author: Shawn Cornally is a teacher and blogger living in terror of boring students.

Why I Quit: One Teacher Explains

Joanne Jacobs — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:16:00 -0700

A research scientist who became a science teacher at Rhode Island’s troubled Central Falls High, Dale Dearnley explains: Why I Resigned on GoLocalProv. A perennially low-scoring school, Central Falls fired — and then rehired — its teachers as part of a turnaround effort.

Her number one reason for leaving is “the absence of discipline and accountability.” The district approved a behavior system based on “restorative practices,” but failed to implement it consistently.

In their own words: "Chaos is the norm, interruption of education is consistent, and the environment is toxic.

Being sent to the “Restorative Room” is how students are held accountable for infractions from cutting class and disrupting lessons to threatening teachers and assault. I have heard from many students that they enjoy going to the Restorative Room because they can socialize with their friends, joke around with a so-called “behavior specialist, ” and their only academic responsibility is to complete a word search puzzle. If “restorative practices” were working, then students would not resort to extreme vulgarities and hate speech in response to simple directions and the routines of an orderly, productive classroom."

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For five years, the high school has had no science curriculum, Dearnley writes. Teachers were promised a chance to develop a curriculum. Instead, they get pre-packed science “kits ” from a contractor.

Teachers are “afraid to speak up because of fear of retribution,” she writes. When a student threatened to kill her, he was assigned to the Restorative Room for the remainder of the day. An administrator told her it wasn’t a police matter and reprimanded her for using the student’s full name in the school’s incident report.

Letting students get away with cursing and threatening teachers is a form of child neglect and abuse, Dearnley argues.

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Schools Hiring in Your State (June 2011)

Teaching — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:31:00 -0700

A lot of people have been making projections about jobs for educators. Projections are great, but job seekers want and to know the hard facts about which employers are hiring now. Backed by the reputation of Monster, Teaching can help you search for recently posted jobs for educators.

Teaching has compiled a list of schools hiring for every state to make searching our job board even easier. By clicking the state below you want to work in, you'll be able to view all the current listings in the education field. Want to customize your search even more? Enter keywords and your zip code to narrow search results here.

Where are the most jobs?

All states were found to have multiple current job listings, but some states had a lot more openings than others. Massachusetts tops the list with the most current job listings, followed by New York, Florida, California, and Texas; all five states appear with more than 300 job openings for educators. Rounding out the top ten states with the most job postings currently for educators are Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia.

Good luck in your job search!

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