Teachers in Transition: Career Change and Real Talk for Burned-Out Teachers

Stop Underselling Yourself: Why Your Resume Isn’t Getting Results

• Vanessa Jackson • Episode 274

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Feeling like your resume’s written in a foreign language? You’re not alone. In this episode of Teachers in Transition, Vanessa dives deep into the language barrier keeping educators stuck in the classroom—and gives you the tools to translate your teaching experience into powerful, job-winning impact statements. From resume red flags to real-world rewrites, you’ll learn how to shift from “classroom warrior” to corporate-ready candidate—without selling your soul.

🎯 Key Topics:

  • Why “edu-speak” fails in corporate job searches—and how to fix it
  • Resume mistakes that are holding you back (and how to stop)
  • A powerful “red pen” audit to upgrade your resume today
  • The truth about humility: why underselling is sabotaging your search
  • A resume hack that involves highlighters, honesty, and a non-educator friend

🛠️ Plus, Vanessa shares a clever resume clarity hack that might just change the way you see your skills forever.

 

Tags/Keywords for Search:
Teacher career change, leaving teaching, resume for teachers, transferable skills for educators, career coaching for teachers, education to corporate transition, resume tips for teachers, teacher burnout recovery, job search strategies for teachers, LinkedIn for teachers, interview prep for educators

 

💬 Call to Action:
Ready to get real feedback on your resume and strategy? Book a free coaching session at TeachersinTransition.com. Your future is calling—and it doesn’t speak in acronyms.

 

👋 Connect with Vanessa:

 

The transcript to this podcast is found on the episode’s homepage at Buzzsprout

 

Hi!  And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition with me, Vanessa Jackson!  Today on the pod, we are going to talk about the language barrier that often keeps educators in education, making sure your resume is ready for prime time, and a hack to help make sure you see that resume clearly. 

Let’s start here.

If you’ve ever looked at a job posting and thought, “I don’t speak this language,” you’re not wrong.

Because education? It’s not just a job—it’s a whole culture. A country. A whole system with its own calendar, its own dialect, and definitely its own acronyms. RTI. IEP. PBIS. OMG. And that’s just Tuesday before lunch.

We don’t even notice how different our language is—until we try to leave it.

And here’s where things get tricky: when you step outside that world into the land of job postings and hiring managers, you realize they don’t speak “teacher.” And honestly? Why would they? They were never trained in it.

It’s like trying to hand someone Shakespeare when they only speak in Marvel movie quotes. It’s not that your work isn’t brilliant it’s just in the wrong genre and not getting any attention.

And it’s not just your resume that doesn’t land. It’s the stories we tell about our work. The metaphors we’ve used for years. The things we’re proud of but don’t know how to explain in a way that connects.

Let me tell you a little story to show you what I mean.

Back in high school, I had this English teacher who started a poetry unit by having us break down the lyrics to a Metallica song and a Rush song. We weren’t just vibing to the music. We were identifying rhyme schemes, spotting alliteration, pulling out metaphor and theme like little literary detectives. And we loved it – well, at least it caught our attention,  As Rush was announcing their latest tour, several people who had this same English teacher were reminiscing about this lesson – over 30 years after the fact. There’s a lesson that stuck, eh?  Her premise that was the Rush song was objectively more poetic than the Metallica song, and this is likely borne out by the fact that I can’t even remember which Metallica song it was, but not only can I tell you which Rush song it was, but I can call up many of the literary devices.  It was the Enemy Within.
Needles on your nerve ends, crawl like spiders on your skin - metaphor
 A tongue that tastes like tin – consonance and similie
 Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy with – assonance (kinda like alliteration but with vowels)
 
I’m sure Ms. May would be proud and probably shocked that we remember. 

But back to now…. That same skill? That’s content engagement. That’s cultural relevance in instructional design. That’s hooking your audience using existing schema.

But nobody writes that on a resume. Instead, you see something like:

  • “Taught poetry unit aligned with state standards.”

Which is… fine. But also criminally undersells what was actually happening in that classroom.

So let’s start breaking down how we translate:

Edu-Speak → Career-Speak:

  • “Differentiated instruction” → “Personalized learning paths for diverse stakeholders”
  • “Classroom management” → “Team leadership in high-stakes, dynamic environments”
  • “Analyzed benchmark data to drive instruction” → “Used performance metrics to inform strategic pivots”

You’ve got the goods. You’ve always had the goods. But this next chapter? It’s about learning how to package and present them in a way that gets seen and hired.
 
 

So if you’ve been feeling like a stranger in a strange land - you’re not crazy. You’re just a multilingual professional who’s about to become fluent in a new dialect.
 
 And I want to go back to this idea of criminally underselling yourself because let’s just call it what it is: teachers are criminally underselling themselves.

Not just on resumes, but in the entire narrative of their careers.

And that’s not an accident. That’s training.

You’ve been trained, explicitly and implicitly, to deflect praise. To downplay wins. To credit “the kids” or “the team” even when you were the one making miracles out of duct tape and a Google Form.

How many times have you had someone say, “Wow, I don’t know how you do it!”—and you shrugged it off with some “Aw, it’s nothing” nonsense?

It’s not nothing.

It’s pedagogical strategy, logistical management, emotional labor, diplomatic communication, and data-informed decision-making happening simultaneously.

You’re managing IEPs, scaffolding instruction, de-escalating behaviors, tracking data, communicating with stakeholders, and running a live event every single day for a room full of humans who may or may not have eaten breakfast or experienced trauma that morning.  

That is not “just teaching.”

But when it comes time to apply for jobs outside the classroom? That habit of humility, that “aw-shucks, I was just doing my job” energy becomes a liability.

Because guess what the corporate world is really good at? Telling their own story.

That’s why someone with half your experience and none of your people skills is out there landing jobs—because they know how to say, “Here’s what I did, here’s the impact that I made, and here’s why it matters.”

Meanwhile, you’re sitting there wondering if it’s okay to say you led something when technically the principal signed the paperwork.

I’m here to tell you: it is more than okay. It is necessary. You are not inflating your story. You are finally telling the whole story.

And here’s what I want you hear.  I need you to hear:

🟦 You can be proud without being arrogant.
 🟦 You can own your impact without diminishing your students.
 🟦 You can claim your accomplishments without apology.

It is not bragging to tell the truth.

It is, in fact, liberation.

So in this next segment, we’re going to take that red pen and we’re going to turn it on your own resume.

Because it’s time to grade your story with the credit it deserves.

Stop Sabotaging Your Job Search

Here’s a hard truth: a lot of teacher resumes…. are a hot mess.

And it’s not your fault. You’ve never had to write a resume to leave teaching before. You were taught to write CVs, if anything. You were trained to list credentials, not impact. To focus on standards, not outcomes.

But hiring managers? They don’t care about your standards alignment. They care about what happened because you taught.

So let’s talk about what’s going wrong—and how to fix it.

 

🔍 Mistake #1: Writing Duties, Not Results

You’re listing what you did, not what it accomplished. You’re saying things like:

  • “Planned and delivered daily math instruction.”

That’s fine. But it doesn’t show the impact..

✅ “Designed and implemented math lessons that increased benchmark scores by 18% in one semester.”

Now you’re speaking results. Now you’re showing what a hiring manager actually needs to know: what changed because you were there.

If you’ve ever watched “The Big Bang Theory”, you might remember there’s an episode of it where Sheldon shares his favorite movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Amy Farrah Fowler.  She said it was nice. She seems clearly underwhelmed by what she saw.  He is pressing her on it as to why she didn’t like and she finally says  “Look the main character had no impact on any of the movie. The Bad guys still would have gotten the Ark, they still would have opened it up and still would have disappeared on that island.  Which is true. And many of the characters spend the rest of the episode being thrown by this thought. 

Make sure that you are detailing your RESULTS!

 

🧾 Mistake #2: Drowning in Details

You’ve got a whole paragraph describing your “interdisciplinary thematic unit tied to Common Core anchor standards with cross-curricular vocabulary integration...”

Stop.

No one outside education knows what any of that means—or cares.  

✅ “Created cross-functional learning units that boosted student engagement and supported literacy across content areas.”

See what we did there? Cleaner, clearer, and tied to corporate-friendly language like “cross-functional” and “engagement.”

I’d also make the argument against using the word ‘student’ at all in your resume if your goal is to be completely out of education so that it might read: 
 
 Created cross-functional units that boosted team engagement and increased understanding of core objectives.
 
 

💼 Mistake #3: Burying the Transferable Skills

You’ve managed chaos. You’ve led people. You’ve juggled five priorities at once on a Monday morning with no coffee and an AWS outage making the copier nothing more than a paper storage container.

But your resume says:

  • “Managed classroom behavior.”

Let’s punch that up.

✅ “Led diverse teams of 30+, navigating high-stress environments and consistently achieving learning objectives under tight deadlines.”

That sounds like someone who could lead a project, doesn’t it?

 

Your Resume Is a Lesson Plan

Think of your resume like a lesson plan. (Similie!!)

Would you turn in a lesson plan with no clear objective, seven standards, and a half-page reflection about why you love teaching?

Of course not. You would start with the goal. You’d break it down into actionable steps. You’d build in assessment.

That’s what a resume should do. It’s not a diary. It’s not a memoir.  It’s not a collection of things that make *you* proud. It’s a strategic document that says, “Here’s what I bring. Here’s what I’ve done. And here’s how I’ll do it again—only now, for you.”
 
And remember – companies want to know what you’re going to do to help them meet their goals – usually those goals are to increase profits by making more money or preventing them from spending money. 

✍️ Quick Fix Checklist

And if you go to the show notes you can check out the transcript, you can just copy and past this. 

Here’s your homework. Grab your resume and check for these:

  • ❑ Are you leading with results instead of tasks?
  • ❑ Are you using corporate-friendly language?
  • ❑ Are you quantifying where you can? (use those numbers and percentages.  It’s OK to round and provide a guesstimate, it’s not OK to create complete fiction
  • ❑ Are you cutting the edu-jargon?
  • ❑ Are you owning your leadership and innovation?

 

Your challenge:  Find one bullet on your resume that makes you cringe a little. Rewrite it using the framework: action + impact + translation.

Then say it out loud. Get used to hearing yourself tell the truth.

As someone who sat in my chair and looked through a lot of resumes trying to find the right person for a job (or the right job for a person), I want to share a little of how the process works.
 
 So let’s talk about The Mechanical First-Pass - What Hiring Managers Really Look For in 10 Seconds or Less

To you, your resume is deeply personal. It’s the highlight reel of your career, the proof that all those late nights and extra duties meant something.

To a recruiter? It’s fair to think of it more like an egg carton.

They’re sorting through stacks of resumes -  much like an egg sorter - looking for the right size, shape, and shell integrity to fill an order. It’s not personal. It’s logistics.

The first-pass scan is not about your worth. It’s about:

  • Speed
  • Fit
  • Non-negotiables

If you get passed over? It doesn’t mean your work wasn’t good. It means your resume didn’t make it easy for them to check their boxes.

Here’s what they’re scanning for—often in under 10 seconds. I’ve timed myself.  I spent 7-8 seconds per resume. 

 

✅ 1. Employment Dates

  • Are there big unexplained gaps that has nothing to do with COVID or a  bad economy?
  • Has this person job-hopped?
  • Do the years line up with the required experience?

🟦 Your move: List jobs clearly with years (not just school years always use two-digit month and 4-digit year.). Stability counts. Don’t hide the stability.

 

✅ 2. Must-Have Qualifications

  • Do the candidate meet the “have to have” items in the job description?
     
    • Years of experience
  •  
    • Certifications or tech tools
  •  
    • Specific subject matter or industry knowledge
  •  

🟦 Your move: Skim the job post, find the dealbreakers, and mirror that language in your bullet points.  Chat GPT or the AI of your choice can be very helpful here. 

 

✅ 3. Education & Credentials

  • Do they hold the required degree or certification?
  • Is it easy to find?

🟦 Your move: Don’t bury your degree under a wall of text. Make it to find and scan

 

✅ 4. Clean Formatting

  • Can I read this easily?
  • Are job titles, employers, and dates obvious?

🟦 Your move: Keep it simple. Use bullet points. Bold your titles. Let white space breathe.

✅ 5. Clarity of Role and Impact

  • Do I understand what this person did?
  • Is there measurable impact?

🟦 Your move: Swap out duties for results. “Improved assessment scores by 22%” says way more than “Administered tests.”

 

✅ 6. Language Match

  • Are they using corporate-friendly terms?
  • Or is it still written in full Edu-glish?

🟦 Your move: Translate. “Instructional strategy” becomes “training design.” “Behavior management” becomes “team leadership.”

 

✅ 7. Bonus Value

  • Is there a differentiator? A unique skill? A spark?
  • Something that makes this candidate stand out and makes them memorable?

🟦 Your move: Think “specials teacher” energy—what’s your bonus skill? Languages, tech tools, crisis management? Lead with it.

📍 Remember: This first scan is about elimination, not evaluation.

It’s not personal. It’s quite literally a checklist. 

Your job isn’t to be the most interesting egg in the basket. It’s to make sure the person sorting knows you won’t crack under pressure, and that you fit the order.

A next pass and a deeper dive will look for evaluation  and might even lead to your LinkedIn page  and so we want to make sure all that is in place. 

And usually this segment is in the middle, but today I am closing with the teacher hack – these are hacks that are designed to make your life easier.   This hack might seem scary, but take your resume to someone you know who doesn’t work in education and ask them to use a highlighter to highlight all the things that don’t make sense to them as a non-educator.  Do this with your resume template – the one you use before you start tailoring. 
 
 The hack is that we don’t know what we don’t know, so it’s time to find someone who does know. You know? 
 
 A non-educator can tell you all things that wouldn’t resonate with someone in the corporate world so that you can know exactly where to target your efforts.

If this episode hit home—and you’re staring at your resume thinking “Help”—I’ve got you. Helping teachers translate their brilliance into language that lands is part of what I do in one-on-one coaching.

I don’t use a red pen—but I do know how to turn “classroom teacher” into “standout candidate.”

You can book a free consult at TeachersinTransition.com—just scroll to the calendar and grab a spot.

And…if this episode made you feel seen, share it.
Text it to a friend, post it in that teacher group chat.
We’re stronger together, and you never know who needs to hear that they’re not alone in this.

There are a variety of ways to get in touch with me all listed in the show notes, but the important thing to know is that I am ready to help.  Because the best time to start a job search is 6-12 months before you need it. And the next best time is now. 

*******

Email me at Vanessa@teachersintransition.com
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