ESL WORKSHEET - Jobs

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

WRITING A RÉSUMÉ

LinguaHouse
Oct. 3, 2023

Level: Mixed Levels (B2-C1 and C1-C2)
Type of English: Business English
Tags: Companies and Jobs; Jobs; Business Skills; 16-18 Years Old; 18+ Years Old; Video Talk; Vocabulary Lesson
Publication date: 10/03/2023

This lesson looks at how to write a résumé. Students will watch a video on the topic and give feedback on a résumé. They will use this information to write or improve their own résumés after the lesson (by Joe Wilson).

Note: This version of the worksheet uses British English. However, as the video was created in American English, then the term résumé (also “resume”) is used instead of CV (short for Curriculum Vitae). Both terms are understood internationally, but students should tailor the term they use depending on which English is used in the country they are applying for jobs in.

• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in American English (L5).
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in American English (L6).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in American English (L5).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in American English (L6).
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in British English (L5).
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in British English (L6).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in British English (L5).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in British English (L6).

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Part 1
Paige Cohen: OK, so you’re writing a résumé, and you want it to be perfect. What does it look like? What does it sound like? I want to look professional, but I want to be myself. But do companies care about who I am? Do I have enough to fill a page? I don’t have five years’ experience. This is an entry-level job. This looks so old-fashioned. Is this really still how you’re supposed to do a résumé these days?
Paige Cohen: Do you know it takes hiring managers less than 10 seconds to decide whether your résumé lands in the accept or the reject pile? There is a lot riding on this piece of paper, and it’s important to know how to catch a recruiter’s attention. It’s also hard to do and very easy to obsess over. Are you doing too much? Are you doing too little? What if I don’t have enough experience? Does this even look good? The rules around what makes a résumé great are always changing. So, let’s unpack how to stand out. In the modern world, how do you stand out on paper?
Kristi DePaul: It’s a shame that recruiters, at the moment, seem to have the attention span of a goldfish. But it’s also a necessity because there are so many roles to fill, and so many résumés to read, and only so much time.
Paige Cohen: That’s Kristi DePaul. She’s a content creator who writes a lot about career navigation and personal branding. She helps people with résumés, productivity, job interviews, and lots of other stuff. So, I heard that when a human looks at our résumé, they’re giving it like 10 seconds of consideration before it lands in the accept or reject pile. Can you tell us what’s happening in those 10 seconds? Where their eyes go first. What, kind of, makes them say yes or no?
Kristi DePaul: As someone is scanning your résumé, of course, they’re going to notice your name. It’s at the very top, and then moving on down to your most recent experience, and then do they have the requisite skills and education?
Paige Cohen: Kristi has a lot of advice for people around how to write résumés. Here’s what she had to say.
Paige Cohen: There used to be this trend where you’d write a little mission statement at the top of your résumé. Like, I’m an experienced, thoughtful, ambitious person who’s interested in this industry, et cetera, et cetera. But just ditch that. It’s taking up real estate on your résumé. Kristi says you should just replace this with a simple headline that describes you and your speciality, like content creator, marketing specialist. And this can be really useful if you’re trying to switch industries.
Paige Cohen: You do want to hype yourself up on your résumé but not too much where it seems cliche or insincere. Instead, use bullet points to list out your achievements, data, responsibilities, and specialities.
Kristi DePaul: And if that is something that mirrors the job description, that’s going to be a box that is ticked.
Paige Cohen: One last bit of context to add, unless your company is very recognizable, include a little blurb about what they do.
Kristi DePaul: Well, I like to see when someone adds a single line beneath the organization name that says, this is the premier professional development association for engineers. And you’ve just given me, like, a cheat sheet to your résumé.
Paige Cohen: If you’re early in your career or fresh out of school, it can be really daunting to fill out a blank résumé, especially if you feel like you just don’t have a lot of experience. But you do have more experience than you think.
Kristi DePaul: I would look at your past project experience. I would even look at what you might think are roles that aren’t at all applicable. So, I had a slew of retail and service roles and - way back in the day, I was a Subway sandwich artist. There’s a lot of things I learned folding clothes at American Eagle. There’s a lot of transferable skills that you gain from roles that even seem like they’re way outside of what you want to do. Whether those have to do with interfacing with the public, whether it’s customer service in some way. I would take a hard look at what you’ve done, whether it’s internships, volunteer work. There are a lot of ways that you can position yourself as somebody who has more experience than you really think.

Part 2
Paige Cohen: I know one résumé is hard enough, but 75% of US employers use AI technologies to filter through résumés. It’s mostly used to save recruiters time and narrow down a high volume of candidates. But yeah, robots are analyzing you.
Kristi DePaul: It’s almost impossible to predict if you’re going to do something, formatting-wise, or if you’re going to say something that is going to either downgrade your résumé or possibly get it excluded altogether. If you’re giving one to a human being, it could be a lot more elaborately designed. You could create something really beautiful and a little bit more complicated. But if you’re submitting something through an applicant tracking system, it should be a standard Microsoft Word document or whatever they’re requiring - a PDF - and be free of a lot of ornamentation that could throw the applicant tracking system totally off.
Paige Cohen: This is where having two résumés comes in handy. One for AI, and one for people when you’re networking in person.
Kristi DePaul: People talk about bringing their whole self to work. Now, we’re seeing that people are bringing their whole self to their résumé, and that is a really interesting shift for 2022. That it’s not just about a laundry list of skills, and aptitudes, and past experience, but it is something that can be all-encompassing and include some of your personal interests, causes, whether you’re an activist. It can include past career gaps. They’re no longer stigmatized or taboo because we all just lived through, collectively, the toughest couple of years in recent memory, and that’s a relief.
Paige Cohen: Kristi says if you have a great recommendation letter, or maybe a note from someone on LinkedIn, and it’s eye-catching and sincere, go ahead and put it on your résumé. Kind of like those little blurbs you see on movie posters. Writing about yourself is tough. Just let other people do it for you.
Kristi DePaul: There will always be people who say that your résumé should be limited to one page. But I think, generally speaking, the more résumés I’ve seen lately are at least two pages, some are three.
Paige Cohen: Kristi says not to overstuff your résumé. You don’t usually need more than one page, but if you have a lot of great experience, own it. Most applications these days are online, and Kristi said, it’s not hard for recruiters to scroll between pages. I would say that this process was challenging. I sort of went into this thinking, I had it figured out. I have a few years of work experience. I’ve written several résumés, but there were a lot of things that surprised me when I talked to Kristi. I did end up making some changes to my résumé. I made it look a lot more boring, added some endorsements, some metrics. I was really surprised by cutting out the line at the beginning and just having a regular title for myself - I also have my old résumé, which I used to be pretty proud of - and it looks pretty, like, it’s fancier - but I do still have to make a lot more changes to it, even though this is the one for people and not the AI system. There you have it. Writing a résumé will never be easy, but at least now that you have a little context around how to stand out today, you’ll have an edge over your competitors when applying for a job.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/business-english/writing-a-resume. Accessed on October 5, 2023. © 2008–2023 LinguaHouse.com. All rights reserved.