A successful CV should highlight your relevant skills and experience, communicate your interest in education and show your passion for seeing young people succeed. At the same time, it needs to be well written and formatted. Sounds like a lot – right? Don’t fear we’re here to help.
Read this guide to learn how to write a first-class teaching assistant CV, which proves to employers that you’d be a valuable addition to their school.
Structure for success
There’s no point starting to write your teaching assistant CV until you understand exactly how it should be structured. Try to stick to the following format as closely as you can.
Personal details – Note down your name, number, email, and location. There’s no need to share your full address or date of birth. Keep it simple.
Personal profile – Around four to six lines to sell yourself, detailing your most important skills and experience.
Core skills – Include six to eight snappy bullet points, which show your key skills and the value you could bring.
Teaching experience – Talk about your work history, in particular, any roles related to teaching or education, detailing the impact you made in each role.
Education – Finish off your winning CV by noting down your education or any relevant qualifications/certifications.
Hook readers instantly
Including a powerful personal profile section at the top of your teaching assistant CV is essential. If there’s lots of applications, a recruiter is likely to scan your profile to decide whether the entire CV is worth a read.
Imagine your profile as a sales pitch – it’s your one chance to convince the school of your value. Aim for a short, snappy paragraph which showcases your best talents and conveys all you have to offer. This could include:
- Your key teaching skills
- Qualifications related to education/teaching
- Ages of children you’ve worked with
- Subjects you’ve specialised in or curriculums you have in-depth knowledge of
- Types of schools you’ve worked in
- Any relevant teaching experience
Now show off your talents in the core skills section to catch the reader’s attention. As mentioned above, this is a bullet-pointed list, which gives them an immediate idea of what you can bring to the role and how appropriate you are for the position.
Always refer back to the job post to see what specific skills the school is searching for. Then use the keywords they ask for (such as ‘great communication’, ‘organisation’) in your CV.
Some key skills and characteristics of a fantastic teaching assistant include good reading, writing and numerical ability, excellent communication skills, the ability to effectively manage behaviour and handle large groups of children, as well as creativity and IT skills.
Showcase your teaching skills
It’s important to give a detailed overview of your work experience in your teaching assistant CV. Particularly if you’ve had roles within education. If you have relevant experience, that’s fantastic – make it the focus of this section.
If you’re applying to your first teaching assistant role, don’t worry. Try to draw skills from your previous roles that could be relevant to a teaching position, like communication and organisation.
Keep in mind that anything that involves working with children or young adults is relevant to your application – even if it was volunteer work.
Write your most recent role down first, working your way backwards. Use this structure to define your roles properly and prove your value:
- Job title – With start and finish dates
- Outline of the role – The overall goal of the role and what group or subject you worked with
- Responsibilities – Short bullet points explaining your input, for example, ‘Worked with students one-to-one to improve behavioural issues and increase focus’
- Achievements – Examples of times you generated significant results or went the extra mile, for example, ‘Organised after-school revision classes and helped low achievers boost their exam results’
Detail your education
Your teaching assistant CV should end with details of any formal education or qualifications you have. This includes GCSEs, A-Levels and degrees.
If you have any teaching qualifications, make them the star of the show. But generally, a TA position only requires Maths and English at Grade C or above – so make sure to highlight these qualifications in particular.
Prove your impact
Whilst writing your teaching assistant CV, make sure you prove your impact with each comment you make. For example, a generic remark such as ‘great at managing behaviour’ doesn’t actually show a lot about what you can offer the school.
Instead, briefly describe a time where you effectively managed behaviour and detail the positive effect it had on the class, child or teacher.
Creating an effective teaching assistant CV
Now you should be clear on what you need to include in your teaching assistant CV to make it stand out and impress the hiring manager. While this may seem difficult at first, putting in the time to get it right will go a long way towards success.
About the author: Andrew Fennell is a former recruiter and founder of CV writing advice centre StandOut CV -Check out his detailed guides to writing a teaching assistant CV and teacher CV.
