How to quantify impact on your resume
Now that you’ve seen how important data is, let’s talk about which aspects of your job can be tied to numbers.
Before you start building your resume, consider the following questions:
- How have you added value to your workplace in the past? Is your impact limited to the classroom or you’re involved in other areas of school life, too?
- In what ways have you supported the main teacher? Did you help reduce their workload? How about being proactive by helping a struggling student improve their grades?
- Show how you’ve supported the main teacher while at work. How did you ease their struggles? How about being proactive and providing ideas and suggestions?
- How do you ensure the students are engaged with the lesson? How do you ensure students don’t fall back in class?
- Were there any ongoing issues you’ve managed to solve? How did you tackle the challenge and what happened afterwards? Flaunt your problem-solving skills.
- How many students did you have to oversee on average? What was their age range? Was it a diverse classroom? Were there any special needs students?
- How do you foster a sense of community in your students?
- What is your overall impact on your students’ graduation rate?
How to craft a teacher assistant resume with no experience
For anyone switching careers or just graduating from college, building a solid experience section is hard. But there are ways to get noticed:
- Reference any children related work you’ve done or any experience you have with the education industry.
- Highlight relevant majors and minors when listing your degree. Move the education and certificates section closer to the top of your TA resume.
- Opt for the functional resume format, if you’re a college grad. This layout will accentuate your skills by bringing them to the forefront.
- Use the hybrid resume format, if you’re changing your career path. The layout allows you to give a balanced overview of your abilities and any relevant experience you have.
Listing your hard and soft skills on your resume
Speaking of balance, show principals you’re a well-rounded paraprofessional. Shine the spotlight on both types of your teaching assistant skills:
- Hard skills: Including these near the top of your resume will help principals get to understand your tech background much faster.
- Soft skills: Demonstrate your work ethic and approach to education by discussing your social talents.
Once you’ve finished writing the experience section of your resume, review the bullet points one more time.
If your achievements delve more into the tech side of being a TA, concentrate on your social talents when filling out the skills section.
By contrast, if you think you haven’t talked about your hard skills enough, describe your technical prowess in more detail.
After you figure out which skills you’ll share, simply:
Think of situations where your talents have made it possible to achieve your goals. Your examples can include tackling a challenge or completing a course. Provide an account of the situation and what actions you’ve taken to handle it. Explain what was the outcome. Reference any relevant and important data, pertaining to the results of your work.