What a Good Learning Mentor Resume Should Look Like
Jan 07 2016
Working with children of any age is a job that requires a lot of personal investment. It’s never easy and you need to be careful about developing your methods as a learning mentor. You also need to have a strong desire to constantly improve and develop them according to the needs of each new generation.
That being said, we can come to a simple conclusion – this job isn’t for everyone. Working with adults and dealing with clients or customers is often overwhelming, but working with children is about a hundred times more difficult. Being a learning mentor is a job that will follow you home.
Taking up this job comes with a lot of responsibilities, some of which are in the job description while others are implied. Obviously, you shouldn’t devote your career to developing kids’ minds if you can’t handle the responsibility – it will show in your resume and through your behavior.
So, if you have successfully passed this first obstacle, you’re ready to begin with your resume.
It Needs to Be Tailored to Your Job Description
Most people make that one same mistake and send out the same resume for different jobs. This is probably the main reason why you don’t get invited to the second round of interviews. When you’re sending out your resume for a particular job, you should adapt it to fit the requirements of that job.
Being a learning mentor is practically being a medium between students and teachers. Obviously, the main focus of your job are the students, but it’s quite important to establish a clear communication with the teaching staff as well.
With this in mind, you’ll be able to sort out what information and relevant experience should be included in your resume. Each previous job, a skill or a characteristic of yours need to be strongly connected to a learning mentor job description and the resume needs to emphasize why you are a great candidate for this position.
All Sections Should Be Neat and Transparent
As a person that will be responsible for encouraging others and helping them improve their performance, you need to establish that you are a serious professional right from the beginning. If you want the interviewer to perceive you as a capable and reliable candidate, you need to put your organizational skills at the forefront.
So, it starts with your resume – it mustn’t have any clutter whatsoever. If you want to be seen as someone who can help others establish discipline, you need to show it yourself.
This is a thing that many neglect, but it can determine whether you’ll get that job you want or not. No matter what form of resume you plan on using – the classic one, an infographic or a physical version of your portfolio – make sure that it’s visually formatted in such a way that it makes your best qualities apparent even at a quick glance.
Keep Your Lines Clear and Concise, but Cover Everything
Everything I previously mentioned is important for creating a good learning mentor resume, but content is what matters the most. Quality resume writing is an art – you need to establish a balance between being clear, but using the right words, and being short, but still managing to share everything you feel that your interviewer should know about you.
Obviously, this will take time. My suggestion is to write a comprehensive resume that covers absolutely everything you ever did and lists all your skills and characteristics – if you haven’t already. This is a useful little thing because it will be useful for this and any other jobs that you might apply for in the future.
When you’re done with that, you should take a good long look at a particular learning mentor job description and compare these two texts you see in front of you. Then, start shaping your resume based on the requirements laid out in the job description. This way, you can be positive that you haven’t forgotten anything and you’ll be completely thorough.
Make Sure You Find Appropriate References
Not all job positions will require you to have previous experience in this area, but you should include it in your resume anyway. If you have none of it whatsoever, you should write down any experience you had that prepared you for the types of challenges you will encounter working as a learning mentor. For example, even if you haven’t officially worked in an educational institution, you might have helped someone with their homework at some point in your past, tutored a younger student or babysit your younger sibling or a neighbor’s kid.
Any children related experience will be more than welcomed, you can be sure of that. Their young minds require special treatment and a lot of devotion, both of which should come natural to every learning mentor.
You Should Definitely Include a Cover Letter
This is the part of your resume where you can add a personal touch. I believe that this should be as carefully written as your resume, because – if written well – it can allow you to really stand out from the crowd.
A great cover letter explains why a certain job would fulfill you and how you can contribute. Naturally, you should also add what you expect from the job and what that specific educational institution can expect from you.
The perfect tone for this letter is somewhere between personal and professional. You should tend to stick to the official form and language, but still make it special in your own way.
I have one last piece of advice for you – you can be absolutely positive that every form of additional effort you invest into your resume will be noted and appreciated by your interviewer, which is why I believe you need to take your time with it.
All in all, being a learning mentor is a fulfilling job and it’s a job you should be lucky to have. Helping others deal with their problems in any way is a noble cause, and it should be treated as one.