Not only are there a lot of teachers leaving education, a lot of professors are leaving the classroom too. I looked over a dear professor friend’s resume recently and I have some thoughts. Her resume looked great. She showed that she knew the difference between a CV and a resume, which is an important first step. However, I saw a few minor errors that I myself remember making in the past. When you get your resume all done, do one last check for these errors that may fly under your radar:
Being wordy. Resumes are skimmed. It’s hard to skim long, complex sentences. Shorten your sentences. Avoid jargon.
Putting education first. Academia values degrees. The rest of the world doesn’t as much. Yes, list your degrees. I personally have never lost out on a job because I have a PhD. I’ve never left mine off my resume. I realize that’s not everyone’s experience. Unless someone explicitly tells you to leave your doctorate off your resume, don’t. It’s part of who you are.
Sending your whole resume. Academics do way too much work! Not only are you teaching, but also advising students, serving on department and campus committees, and a lot of administrative paperwork. So I’m sure you have a lot of job duties to list. You can have a master resume with everything listed; however, don’t send your full resume to every job. You want to send only your relevant experience. The degree that you customize your resume will vary from job to job, but hopefully it should be too extensive.
Leaving off results. Employers want to see results, not just a laundry list of job duties. This can be intimidating, especially for humanities scholars who have various degrees of dislike for numbers and data. (Which by the way, you got to get over.) To get hired, you have to show that you can do the job. The way to know whether you can do the job is whether you have done the job before and done it well.
Overthinking your title. Academia has a very strict hierarchy, especially on the faculty side. I realize that you may have taught as an adjunct before getting a tenure-track position. Maybe you started as an Assistant Professor or a Research Professor and then moved to Associate Professor. Each of these roles more than likely have additional job duties. It’s a big deal to get these promotions in the academic world. People outside of academia will probably not know all these distinctions. That doesn’t mean you can’t make the distinction, but if you see eyes glaze over as you explain all your titles, you may want to refer to yourself as just a professor.
Along with this, don’t downplay your titles either. Just because adjuncts are basically the lowest rung on the academic ladder doesn’t mean that others outside of academia share this view. And, frankly, it’s not true either. To them, a professor is a professor. Your work as an adjunct, or lecturer, or instructor, or whatever your title was or is is valuable.
Being too status driven. This will be one thing you’ll have to get over. Academics are socialized to chase status: to go to the top programs, to apply for prestigious grants, to teach at high-ranking institutions. Don’t just apply to jobs at companies you’ve heard of. There are so many organizations out there that do great work that could use someone like you. Certainly research any organization and make sure they are legitimate, but don’t feel like you have to work for a company that is a household name.
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