How can students create an eye-catching resume when they have no work experience?
This is an age-old question that young people moving out into the workforce have faced forever. It can be an especially difficult question if those young people have special needs that must also be addressed.
“Update Your Resume” week falls in the month of September and coordinates with the beginning of school. For those students getting ready to transition into the world of employment, this is a good time to start looking at their resumes.
What Do You Have to Offer?
Sometimes teens believe that an employer’s job is to give them a job. They miss the fact that, instead, it is their job to give something to the employer—their skills, their attitude, their work ethic, in short, their ability to help the employer make money and be successful.
This then, is the first lesson we, as teachers, need to teach our students—how to assess what value they bring to an employer. It doesn’t make sense to create resumes, or write business letters, or practice interviews if students can’t articulate that basic truth at the root of job hunting: what value do you bring?
How to Help Students Find Their Value
Even though our students may have little work experience to list on a resume, that doesn’t mean they can’t bring value to a job. Are they motivated? Do they learn fast in school? Are they diligent? Organized? Determined? Industrious?
The free lesson offered this week helps students explore the key traits they might bring to an employer by having them look at ways they’ve already succeeded in their lives. To use this lesson you might:
Discuss positive attributes of students. Brainstorm ideas about what makes a good student/good leader in school and list those traits on a chart or the board.
Pass out “Bank of Terms for ‘Key Traits.’” Show students how a full sentence of positive action has been distilled into one phrase. For example, “I pay attention and understand the first time,” might translate into “attentive” and “fast learner.”
Help students “name” traits. As they brainstorm, help students turn their own sentences into key traits. Create as large a key trait bank as you can for your students.
Work in Teams. Allow students to work in groups to decide what key traits each possesses. Use the “My Key Traits” chart to list the 5 most important traits they have. Remind them to judge the importance of a trait by its value in their chosen profession. For example, “creativity” might be important if they are creating a website, but no so much so if their job was to count change or add numbers.
Resume building. File these worksheets away to be used when students begin to create a resume. In the meantime, have them work on building key traits that will enhance their resume and their value in the workplace.
Lately, teachers have been lamenting that their students are lacking real motivation to complete tasks at school. Covid may have fallen from the front of everyone’s minds, but its effects linger in our collective psyche. And with a fall resurgence of the disease predicted soon, motivating students can be a challenge.
Creating a resume at the beginning of the transition process (rather than the end) is a good way to help students envision their future and set clear goals to reach for as they work their way through the transition process. What traits are needed for the job they want? How can they demonstrate—through their work in high school—that they possess those traits. This lesson can be a good foundation towards framing the goals of transition.
For More Information
If you like what you see, go to our Teachers Pay Teachers Website, or check us out our shop on our very own T2L & DLS Website! Books are written on a 3rd/4th grade level and include grading sheets, answer keys and parent information letters to comply with federal standards for transition skills. The Teacher’s Manual (sold separately) provides information on program set-up and maintenance along with pre/post-assessments, written ITP (Individual Transition Plan) goals for each book, and parent/student interest inventories.
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