The Perfect TEFL Application Profile: From Picture Perfect to Your Resume

Do you feel that you would be the perfect TEFL teacher, but cannot seem to get your foot in the door? Or do you look at your monthly income and feel that you are worth more? Perhaps you are feeling a little apprehensive about applying for your dream TEFL job? Or not sure how to prepare a Perfect TEFL Resume? Don’t worry! We are here to help. 

Applying for TEFL jobs, like an industry, has a lot to do with sales skills, and yes preparing a perfect TEFL Resume. You have to sell yourself. Yes, you may have killer qualifications and experience, but it won’t matter if you can’t present yourself to be the best. Live up to your potential and don’t let yourself down.

Tips to Create a Perfect TEFL Resume for Teaching Job Application

• Your TEFL CV / Resume
• Your Cover Letter
• Your TEFL Media Content

Your TEFL CV / Resume

Your first step is to list everything you need to include. You don’t want to miss out on anything before sending your CV / resume away to potential employers and missing the chance of employment. Here’s a suggested list for you: 

• Personal information and Bio
• Profile Photo
• Educational Background
• Relevant Work Experience
• Skill and Achievements
• References

The layout will depend on your experience. They are typically split into two types of TEFL CV or TEFL resumes; a graduate layout and an experience-focused layout. You need to accentuate your best qualifications. 

The graduate layout should be focused on the educational background and skills sections, keeping these at the top of the page. Relevant work experience will be low, but use your other work experience and let potential employers know why this will help you be a successful teacher. This can include skills such as training new staff, working with children, working abroad and adapting to new surroundings, and public speaking to convey confidence in the classroom. We would suggest that you alter your TEFL resume or CV for online teaching jobs. You should focus on technical skills as well here and more one-to-one training. A great addition to the educational background section is the 10 hour Virtual TEFL Course with teaching practice.

When you are an experienced teacher, the relevant work experience should be the forefront of your TEFL resume or CV. Don’t just list the schools you have taught at but go into detail about your responsibilities and skills learned. This is better in bullet point format as well as it’ll create an easier read for the recruitment department. Remember, just because you have years of experience does not mean that your educational background section should be lacking, it is just as important, so put time into this too! 

Your TEFL CV

Your profile photo should be a professional one. Cropped photos from your social media photos or selfies will not look great. If you don’t have one on hand, that’s ok. Put on a nice shirt, find a neutral wall and get a friend or family member to take the photo for you. Photos are great to add as it shows personality and a professional one shows that you are prepared and took time for your CV or resume. 

Skills and achievements sections are a wonderful and very important section. This is where you can highlight anything that will help your application, but feel it may not fit into any other section. We are not talking about the horse riding lessons or judo lessons that you took so many years ago, we are talking about lifetime, relevant skills that will show employers that you are the right fit for the job. Some skills can include any languages you know which will help you adapt to a new country, any technical experience for online teaching, or any communication skills you have picked up along the way. Achievements can include any certifications you have that you received through previous work or otherwise, such as MS Office, Business Development, First Aid, or courses.

>> Also Read: How To Write The Best TEFL CV To Land Your Dream Teaching Job

Your Cover Letter

Although you may tweak your TEFL CV or resume a bit while applying for jobs, depending on whether it’s online or in-classroom, young learners or Business English, or the country you are applying to, they should remain pretty neutral. Your cover letter is the one that should be specifically addressed to the company or school you are applying to. 

For some applications, this is seen as an optional document. We suggest that you don’t see it this way. Cover letters are vital and show the employer that you truly want the job, know their company and have commitment if offered an interview. Without a cover letter, it will look like you’ve just applied to tens or hundreds of jobs and will pick the one, meaning they may not even ask you for an interview as it may be a waste of their time. You don’t want to give off this impression. 

Be creative with your cover letter and try and show some personality as well as keeping it professional. Using some of the local language is a nice touch like saying hi or when signing off. USing some of their facts in it too, showing that you’ve done research on their school or company and have proactively chosen to apply with them. Break it into paragraphs so it’s easily readable and follows the standard layout. Remember to include what job you are applying for and make it clear as there may be multiple positions available in the school or company. 

Your TEFL Media Content

In your bank of application documents, you should include an introduction video and a demo lesson video. These are asked for by employers constantly and it’s good to have them ready, as you will come across prepared with knowledge of the industry and application process. 

An introduction video is similar to a cover letter. You introduce yourself, your qualifications and experience and say why you’d like the job. If you are applying to a few jobs within the same country, you can have this prepped and answer “why you’d like to go to Thailand” for instance. If you are applying for an online job, you can answer “Why you’d like to teach online”. Try and bring some personal, unique reasons here, such as “I’ve been there before and would love to go back”. Sometimes for a specific job, you’ll need to re-record to apply as they’ll have a unique suggested layout, but doing one regardless will definitely help your video skills. 

A demo lesson video is normally asked by online learning platforms as the recruitment process is always distant and they want to make sure you’ll be a good fit for them. They cannot run observed teaching lessons from afar. A demo lesson is basically an acting session. You must pretend to be teaching a student. To get the best tips on how to create a good one, please try out our salary calculator and receive a brilliant video tutorial straight to your email for free! 

For all media content, make sure to look and present well. Do not use selfie mode, get a friend or family member to help with recording. Make it unique and portray your personality.

>>Also Read: Be your own boss and teach English online – How to be a freelance success!

FAQs

Q: How to write a perfect TEFL CV?

Your perfect TEFL CV will be dependent on the job you are applying for. Whether that’s online TEFL jobs, TEFL jobs abroad, teaching adults or teaching children. TEFL companies and programs globally are big organizations and the recruitment department can receive lots and lots of CVs. Keep it to 2 pages long and use bullet points to keep it short and  make it clear. Have all the information they need, but no more than what is necessary. 

Q: How you can introduce yourself as a TEFL teacher in a creative way?

Creative methods are personal and will definitely depend on the type of person you are. You’ll need to show your personality. Some great ways to do this is to add video content or different TEFL CV or resume templates that you can get online to really make you stand out from the crowd. Employers get bored of the font “Ariel” with “Heading 2” format. 

Q: Tips to sell yourself as a TEFL tutor?

Again, be personal. If you have had experience with children before and are applying for a teaching young learners TEFL job, make it fun. Show that you are enthusiastic and energetic and that the kids will love you. 

A lot of people sell themselves short in an interview and only after you’ll realise that you should have something you didn’t. The best thing to do is to look at the most frequently asked questions and prepare your answers. 

Q: How to write a short bio for my resume?

Contrary to the rest of your TEFL CV or TEFL resume, your short bio doesn’t look great bullet pointed. Keep it to 3 or 4 sentences. This is the only place that you can really show off your personality. Teachers have to be confident, outgoing and qualified, so this will need to be seen in your bio. This is the first thing your potential employer will read about you, so take your time with it and even take some inspiration from places such as your LinkedIn profile or bio on a meet the team page from previous employers.