Need help with CV

[eveglass]

Okay, I'm calling on the collected wisdom of my friends' list for this particular question:

The last time I updated my CV was back in March. Since then, I've added another two employers to the list of "companies I've worked for" (namely ELAM and Vanier). That makes 4 companies I've worked for in the past year, 5 if you include the place I did summer secretarial work last summer (2006). To read through the list, it would look like this:

- ESL Teacher, ELAM (Sept. 2007 - Nov. 2007, potentially more contracts in the future)
- ESL Teacher, ILSC (Nov. 2006 - July 2007, potentially more contacts in the future)
- ESL Writing Teacher, Vanier College (Sept. 2007 - Nov. 2007, potentially more contracts in the future)
- Writing Tutor, Dawson College (March 2007 - present)

These are, of course, not counting previous work experience from more than a year ago, such a my stint as a T.A. at Concordia, four summers of summer secretarial work, and paid peer tutor work when I was at Dawson (around 2000-2001).

That's a lot of repetitions of "ESL Teacher," and most of the job descriptions would be the same. I don't want to start cluttering my CV with a bunch of job descriptions of short-term contracts, even though I think they're all valuable if I intend to persue teaching. How should I go about writing this up so it highlights my experience and downplays the fact that these are all short-term contracts for multiple companies? Or should I even try that track?

LJ Friends, I'm counting on you! Help, please!

Comments

[manganese.livejournal.com]

Just do all the ESL teacher things as one entry.

ESL Teacher, Company A, Company B, Company C. Inclusive dates.
Then list what you accomplished, which should have a great deal of overlap between all of them.

[nearlyvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I think the magic word you're looking for is "Functional Resume" or maybe "function-based."

I found at least one article here: http://jobstar.org/tools/resume/res-func.php
and several more on Monster (but Monster's being unusually difficult to navigate at the moment, and landed in my snark-box for password limitations).

The idea being to organize your resume by skill areas or similar jobs, and bullet-point which companies you worked for.

So Manganese is right - it'd look something like:

ESL Teacher; planned and delivered 8 weeks of daily 1-hour lessons
-- Miskatonic High School April-May 2007
-- Starfleet Academy Career Center June-July 2007
-- Watsamata U. June - August 2007

ESL Tutor; analyzed client progress and created individual instruction plan
-- Creative place name, timespan
-- Creative place name, timespan
-- Creative place name, timespan
-- Name of Partner Organization, timespan

Writing Tutor; analyzed client portfolio and created individual instruction plan
-- Creative place name, timespan
-- Name of Partner organization, timespan
-- Name of Partner school, timespan

Hope this helps....

[manganese.livejournal.com]

Also, if you're looking to cut length, leave off the peer tutor job, since everything you did as a peer tutor you will now have done more and better as an ESL teacher.

More CV/jobsearch resources

[manganese.livejournal.com]

OK, since I cannot leave well enough alone...

Let me recommend these handouts on writing an effective resume (and the interview ones are good, too!) from my undergraduate college's career office.
http://www.smith.edu/cdo/students/handouts/index.html

I've found their advice enormously helpful and recommend them to pretty much everyone I know.

Actually, you might find their "self-assessment" tools kind of fun/useful too -- they are quite good, a step beyond the usual quizzes and so on.