Career Corner

• Educational Services is the largest employing industry in Southwest and South Central Minnesota, providing just over 16,000 jobs.

• Accounting for 1 in every 11 jobs, education is among the most prevalent and portable industries – jobs are available in almost every community in the region.
  

• Education, training, and library occupations are expected to gain 200 new jobs, but will have more than 5,000 replacement openings as current teachers retire or change jobs for other reasons. This means there will be hundreds of jobs available each year in school districts and colleges and universities across the region.
  

• Educators make a difference in peoples’ lives!
  

About 70% of workers in Educational Services are female, but the number of males increased over the past decade. Because of that imbalance, several education careers are non-traditional for men.

In a 2019 report, school districts indicated that the demographics of their teachers did not reflect those of their students. The number of students of color increased in every region of the state, yet school districts reported that it was difficult to recruit teachers of color from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

To encourage new teachers, the state of Minnesota has implemented a Teacher Shortage Loan Repayment Program!

Mankato Public Schools developed a video regarding a career in teaching. Several educators provide feedback on why they love teaching and advice for students interested in becoming a teacher. The video also encourages students of color to explore a career in education.

Learn more by watching videos on education careers through CareerOne Stop.

Here is a sample of the many videos available:

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare

Education Teachers, Postsecondary

Educational, Guidance, and Career Counselors and Advisors

Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School

Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary

Interpreters and Translators

Click here to view more Career One Stop videos on Education careers

This information is from Education Week's article: Education Statistics: Facts About American Schools published January 2019 and updated in February 2021.

How many schools are there in the U.S.?

There are 130,930 K-12 schools in the U.S., according to 2017-18 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Here’s how they break down:

• All: 130,930
• Elementary schools: 87,498
• Secondary schools: 26,727
• Combined schools: 15,804
• Other: 901

Please check out the full article on Education Week.

Note: The data above reflects the following categorization from NCES: Elementary schools include schools beginning with grade 6 or below and with no grade higher than 8. (This includes middle schools.) Secondary schools include schools with no grade lower than 7. Combined schools include schools beginning with grade 6 or below and ending with grade 9 or above. Other includes special education, alternative, and other schools not classified by grade span.

Maya Riser-Kositsky. '"Education Statistics: Facts About American Schools" Education Week, Jan. 3, 2019, Updated February 22, 2021. https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/education-statistics/index.html, Accessed 23 March 2021

Scrubs Camp is a healthcare career exploration program hosted at Minnesota State University - Mankato. At Scrubs Camp, you will get to explore a variety of healthcare careers through hands-on activities with working professionals! This years camp will be held on June 9th and 10th.

South Central Construction Trades Boot Camp is a two week interactive day camp that will provide hands-on experiences for youth to gain exposure to careers in the constructions trades and learn about union apprenticeship training opportunities. Camp will be held in Mankato on June 21st through July 2nd.

Registration information for Scrubs Camp and South Central Construction Trades Boot camp will be sent to schools soon.

Many employers don’t have the people power to have a real person review every resume they receive. Instead, employers often rely on an applicant tracking system that does an initial screening of resumes for keywords associated with the open position. This helps narrow their human review process to those resumes that were identified by the applicant tracking system as containing the required skills. If your resume isn’t scannable by the system or doesn’t contain the right keywords, you likely won’t get the job even if it’s perfect for you. In fact, about 75 percent of resumes never make it to a human reviewer, because scanning software rejects them first.

Making your resume scannable by applicant tracking software

1. Make sure you target your resume content to the position for which you are applying, so you have the keywords the applicant tracking software is looking for
2. Create your resume in Microsoft Word because it is easily read by most applicant tracking system (ATS) software (some systems can’t read PDFs)
3. Use fonts that are readable by most systems, this includes Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Garamond, Georgia, Helvetica, Palatino, Tahoma, and Verdana
4. Use 10 to 12 point font, including body and headers (your name can be in 14 or 16 point)
5. Avoid italics and underlined words or phrases
6. Use bold text sparingly
7. Avoid graphics and shading
8. Use horizontal or vertical lines sparingly
9. Use simple bullets
10. Use color sparingly or avoid altogether
11. Avoid tables (even if the borders are invisible, text within a table is usually not readable)
12. Avoid double columns (ATS readers usually read from side to side)
13. Use only common abbreviations, otherwise spell words out
14. Use common names for resume section headings, like Summary, Skills, Experience and Education, because ATS systems will look for those sections
15. When saving your resume, use your first and last name and the job title in the document name to make your resume easier to find in the ATS database

View this information online at CareerForceMN.

Develop and Maintain a Quality Workforce for South Central Minnesota

Email: sara@workforcecouncil.org
Website: www.workforcecouncil.org
Location: 706 North Victory Drive, Mankato, MN, USA
Phone: 507-345-2402
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scworkforcecouncil/