Recruitment has evolved in the last 5 years. As colleges merge, they are moving to a more professional model of recruiting, often employing a dedicated HR professional who has brought with them strategies from other industries. Lecturers too from other industries bring a wealth of multi-media knowledge and, as a result, can create eye-catching presentations that leave bog-standard resumes in the dust.
To land interviews for principal vacancies, you need to create an impressive portfolio of your achievements and ethos. Central to that must be an impeccable CV structure that makes your recent experience and core strengths a focal point, enabling recruiters to quickly pinpoint your relevancy for the best principal positions.
Below are 4 tips to help you produce an interview winning principal CV.
Create a flawlessly professional appearance
When you’re applying for senior roles, the appearance of your CV needs to be flawless. Adopting a seamless approach to how you format your work experience is key, proving your professionalism, and enabling recruiters’ to easily navigate your CV.
1. Use a structure that flows through your experience in reverse chronological order.
2. There are no excuses for sloppy or disorganised structures. Craft your CV with well-defined sections, clear headers, and facilitate ease of reading by breaking up large blocks of text, attracting recruiters with a visually pleasing CV that stands out from the crowd.
Are you currently looking for your next leadership role? See our available vacancies here.
PROVE your leadership skills
As a deputy or principal, your ability to be a strong leader and influencer is a vital strength. The aptitude to lead not only your employees but pupils is key. You need to showcase throughout your CV your capacity to adapt your style to support children and parents, or network with other professionals within the educational sector.
3. Include examples that demonstrate your leadership style and how you have been able to support growth within your previous colleges.
4. Select evidence that displays your ability to be assertive whilst also creating a collaborative environment that allows your employees to excel.
5. Consider workshops you have led or training sessions you have facilitated to aid your employees’ development.
Show results that colleges will love
When producing your CV, consider the key achievements within your leadership career, including Ofsted reports, exam results or college leader board outcomes. Add relevant facts and figures to boost your examples, detailing how your leadership and involvement supported these outcomes.
6. Add an achievement section into each of your role descriptions within your career history, demonstrating the value you added within your prior educational institutes.
7. Add depth to each of your examples and link these to your marketable strengths, emphasising your suitability for future roles.
Focus on recent experience
Whilst you need to display how you have progressed within your career, you should bring forward your most recent experience
8. Commence your CV with a strong opening profile that makes your relevancy for principal roles a focal point.
9. Include any sector specific qualifications, whether teacher training or master’s in education, all related experience and sector specific strengths.
10. Emphasise how you have excelled in your current role and how this experience can help you transition into a new college; where you can replicate and develop upon your previous achievements.
Blog content originally published on eTeach.
About the author
Andrew Fennell
Andrew Fennell is the founder of CV writing advice website StandOut CV – he is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to websites like Business Insider, The Guardian and FastCompany.