Whether you are looking to make a career transition into the Further Education (FE) sector or you are applying for a promotion or alternative role in FE, there will be some key things to avoid when producing a CV as part of your applications.
Read our article for pointers on what to avoid when writing a Further Education CV.
Don’t submit the same CV
Crucially, as with recruitment processes in other sectors, when applying to positions within Further Education, avoid submitting the same CV and application, including covering letters and supporting statements.
Make sure you review and revise the key areas of your CV where you can look to tailor your content based on the specific role and institution you are applying to. This will include your initial profile section, where you introduce yourself as a candidate and summarise your relevant skills and experience. Aim to align the information incorporated here with the overview of the job role and responsibilities, as well as the key skills and abilities the organisation has identified within their person specification.
Also, take some time to consider how you can further align the information incorporated as part of your work experience section with the skills and behaviours identified in the person specification. Even if you have not previously worked in the specific area, by evidencing relevant competencies and strengths through your previous tasks, you will demonstrate to the prospective employer how you are a suitable candidate for the position.
Avoid informal language
Working in a role within the FE sector will require a high level of professionalism, whether you are working in a teaching or learning support role, or within professional services. Therefore, ensure you use appropriate and professional language throughout your applications, including across your CV content.
In order to produce an effective CV for FE, ensure the following:
- Use clear and concise language with strong action verbs that describe what you did and achieved within your role. Examples of good action verbs to highlight your achievements include “achieved, delivered and exceeded”, whilst terms to discuss your skills in communication could include “collaborated, presented or persuaded”. If you are applying to a technical role, you could utilise “developed, managed, organised or programmed” to describe previous work activities. Overall, by using these strong action verbs to start each bullet point, you will ensure your CV is more impactful and clearly demonstrate your capabilities to a prospective employer.
- Be specific and quantify your achievements by including an impact measure wherever possible. For example, “facilitated a group workshop on effective approaches to time management with 50 Level 3 students, with 85% of participants indicating that they found the content very helpful.”
- Check your tense for consistency throughout your CV – ensuring your previous roles are discussed in the past tense and ongoing and current responsibilities are discussed in the present tense.
- Avoid jargon and acronyms – this will be particularly important if you are looking to make the move from another industry into Further Education. Avoid assumptions about employers knowing what abbreviations stand for.
- Maintain a professional tone throughout by using positive and enthusiastic language, but keeping your content concise. The goal is clarity and not excessive length or complex, “flowery” language.
Don’t underestimate the importance of research
When tailoring your CV content and other aspects of your application, make sure you carry out thorough and thoughtful research. Ideally, your content will reflect the institution’s values and ethos, indicating to a recruiter that your own values and aspirations align with the organisation’s culture.
Additionally, by researching industry terms, including reviewing job descriptions for keywords and common phrases to incorporate in your CV, you will showcase your knowledge and understanding, as well as highlight the relevance of your skills and experience.
Avoid submitting your application too soon
Whilst you will need to ensure that your application to any opportunities within FE reaches the organisation by the stated deadline, avoid rushing your application and not proofreading your content thoroughly. It will also be helpful to ask others to review your content in line with the role requirements and description to see if there is anything obvious you have missed.
Having another person look over your CV and application will also help with spotting any obvious spelling, grammatical or formatting issues, giving you plenty of time to make amendments.
Don’t feel you have to include your whole work history
Whether you are a seasoned professional coming from another industry or you have an extensive work history within education, don’t feel pressure to include every aspect of your previous roles and experience. Instead, a prospective recruiter or hiring manager will be focused on your most relevant experience.
This might also involve re-ordering your content to split your work history into a “relevant experience” and “other experience” section, with the former appearing on the first page of your CV. This will give you the chance to draw attention to your most relevant experience in line with the role you are currently applying to. As your CV will be limited to two pages for this type of application to a role in FE, you will be restricted by what you can include and therefore, you might wish to state “full work history available on request” if you are not able to document everything within the space you have available.
Don’t overlook your skills and qualifications
Ensure you include any relevant training and qualifications as part of your CV content. You will need to show potential employers the relevant qualifications you have in relation to the role you are applying to, in order to reassure them that you have the right knowledge to teach others in your chosen subject or discipline (if applying to a teaching position).
Information about any education and/or training undertaken can also help to demonstrate some of the skills you have developed, having achieved a specific qualification.
Equally, don’t underestimate the value of your transferable skills – of which there will be many from other industries when making a move into a career in Further Education. Discuss your achievements and skills with confidence, using concrete examples and measures of success to evidence what you have to offer as a candidate.
Overall, there are some key considerations around how not to write a Further Education CV. In this article, we have discussed some of the essential things to keep in mind and what to avoid when producing a CV as part of your applications.
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