Paraprofessional Resume

As a paraprofessional, you might be able to help shape the young mind of a future president, rocket scientist, or world-changing artist. A paraprofessional may not need as much education as a licensed teacher, but their effect can be just as powerful.

The role you have in a child’s development explains why schools want only the most dedicated paraprofessionals on their staff. Prove that you’re the right person for such important work with a strong, well-written resume.

Follow these three tips to draft a resume that proves your passion, experience, and ability.

1. Highlight your paraprofessional resume skills

You don’t have to limit your list of skills to your skills section. Your abilities should be incorporated throughout your resume as well, in places like your work experience and education sections.

Whatever your skills may be, make sure you emphasize only your strongest relevant skills and describe how you’ve already used them to achieve success as a paraprofessional.

In fact, if you don’t include relevant skills on your resume and the employer isn’t sure that you have them, your application stands a worse chance of landing you the interview you want.

Here are a few of the top paraprofessional skills. Working a few of these skills into your resume (assuming you have them) will be sure to catch the attention of any hiring manager.

• School-centric software (Blackboard, Automate The Schools – ATS)
• General computer skills
• Office suite software (Microsoft Office, Google Workspace)
• Teaching
• Leadership skills
• Administrative skills
• Communication skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Presenting

Work as a paraprofessional is hands-on, so it’s important to emphasize a mix of hard and soft skills wherever you can. While you’ll need to have some technical skills tied to using a computer, employers also want to be sure that you know how to interact with children and stressed teachers.

2. Include strong paraprofessional action verbs

Action verbs bring a bit of life to your resume and help you emphasize how your work made a real impact at past schools and companies. Include paraprofessional-related action verbs in your resume to show that your workplace was better because you had been hired.

Here are a few examples you can use to help get you started:

• Expand
• Raise
• Improve
• Reduce
• Minimize
• Advise
• Facilitate
• Supervise
• Administer
• Coordinate
• Deliver
• Educate
• Cultivate
• Outperform
• Succeed
• Create

3. Tailor your paraprofessional resume to the job post

The needs of a school in a major city are going to be different from the needs of a school in a small town. If you send a resume written for a small-town school to a major city hiring manager, you hurt your chances of convincing the hiring manager you’re the best candidate for the job

However, if you write your paraprofessional resume to address the specific requirements and preferences listed in the job posting, you’ll impress the employer instead. Describe achievements that correspond to skills the hiring manager is looking for, and you’ll seem tailor-made for the position — greatly increasing your chances of getting called in for an interview.

Hoping to work with students with specific needs? Cover letters for special education teachers can give you an idea of how to phrase your own cover letter