The International Schools Review Forum

I am signing up with Search Associates and am curious what others have included in their biographical history. The instructions are:

Please include any biographical information you consider important. Try to provide information about yourself which would make you a more interesting candidate to those that read this. This is NOT a place to provide standard resume type information, but a place for recruiters to learn more about you.

I'm not sure where to start. They don't want resume type information. Thanks in advance!

Who are YOU as a person? What events have shaped you, and how does that relate to you as an educator? What experiences have you had that you want to share, or that you have built upon in your personal life? What are your passions? How do you indulge in them?

Basically it gives an introduction to you the person, rather than you the educator. For me, I talked about my belief that fairy godparents exist, that rainbow crapping unicorns are rampant around the world, and that cotton candy clouds taste really good any day of the week :-)

Just my two cents,

shad

Admins/Recruiters dont typically read the Bio section. Like cover letters and your "message of introduction/interest" they tend to be self serving statements about how awesome you are.

Think of it more as a free form text entry, to include information or responses that you would like to expand on from your resume and application. Links to offsite media such as digital portfolios, etc.

For what it's worth, we both wrote about what lead us overseas (we had never been out of the US until we headed off to Tanzania working for a start-up NGO with our 3 kids), what we learned about ourselves in the process, and how an international world view has shaped our children. We kept it light and informal, and steered away from educational philosophies, experiences, etc. as employers can get that in other parts of the interview process.

My associate (signed up this past fall) told me to make sure my bio was "not a repetition of what the reader will find on your resume and application, but to [use] the opportunity to bring yourself to life for the reader." Actually talk about you and reveal a little about yourself. I wrote about what I like to spend my time doing outside of work and how that, in turn, helps me to be a better teacher.

But, at the end of the day, I am not certain my bio helped get me an interview or not. I have a feeling that, like many college application essays, it has more to do with your ability to write well rather than what you say.

First time around with Search I wrote a bio of myself and some of my experiences before becoming an educator. I doubt anyone gave it a second glance. I ended up getting hired at a job fair.

Second time with Search, I wrote a philosophy of education type statement and threw in some interesting anecdotes of certain life experiences that led me into teaching. I had a few schools mention it and one school even emailed me about it a couple of days before the job fair and invited me to interview. However, that school had loads of bad reviews on the paid section of ISR, mediocre salaries, and was in a location that was far from my 1st choice. I passed on the interview, but got hired by another school at the fair.

Thank so much for all of the advice!

Like many said, it's not something one should be able to read about in your resume. I ended up editing mine again and again over time as needed. It's not set in stone, which is nice!

For my Search bio I wrote about one of my best teaching moments. After that I added a bit about taking on a math coordinator role even though it was outside my comfort zone. Both of those stories were brought up during my interview. The school offered me a contract via email about 10 minutes after our Skype interview.

My Search recruiter suggested making it like a story, so I did.

Good luck!

HI joanveronica, i too had the same conundrum . I'm happy to share my bio if you'll send me email to post offline if that's allowed.
p

You could also cut and paste the bio into a PM and send it through the site.