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- Speech therapist resume: how to fill it out correctly and without errors?
The profession of a speech therapist is distinguished by its responsibility and significance.
To create a good impression, you need to present yourself correctly, highlighting your positive traits and abilities. Let's talk about how to properly write a speech therapist's resume and create a certain reputation for yourself. There are two main rules: do not overload with information, write the truth. A problem for many is the inability to fill out a resume for the position of speech therapist due to lack of experience. Then people begin to fantasize and be inventive. How to gain experience is a separate issue that can be solved quite simply. In fact, if you gave a speech to a neighbor’s five-year-old boy, this is already an experience, write real facts.
Responsibilities and capabilities
When filling out the document, focus on a specific company (medical center, clinic, kindergarten). The job advertisement usually provides a list of responsibilities and the required level of experience. Customize your draft resume for a speech therapist position using these employer templates. From the list of candidates they will choose the one who is most suitable from the list.
Standard list of responsibilities:
- patient reception;
- diagnosing the problem;
- selection of a technique that is suitable in a particular case;
- conducting classes;
- studying classes, adjusting the schedule.
If you have a special direction, indicate this in your resume. For example, you worked with children with Down syndrome. This will be a big plus in your experience. This advantage will be especially useful when applying for a job in a medical center or some kind of rehabilitation organization.
It is not advisable to use clichéd expressions. “Individual approach” is a vague, hackneyed phrase in the resume of a speech therapist or other specialist. Replace it with something or don't use it at all. Indicate: the method of teaching, the algorithm of work, you build after meeting, taking into account the wishes of the parents, a comfortable schedule.
Personal characteristics and skills
Write about work. If you are very sociable and maintain your own page on social networks, then this will not help to win over even the most modern manager or parent. Children will be entrusted to you, so a resume for the position of a speech therapist should focus on communication with children and interaction with them.
Personal qualities required for the applicant in this case:
- kindness;
- politeness and tact;
- punctuality;
- optimism;
- attentiveness;
- honesty.
It is important that you can be liked. Children do not always make contact with adults, so you need to know psychological tricks to establish trusting relationships. A speech therapist's resume must include a list of useful skills. Examples:
- speech breathing;
- sensory integration;
- speech therapy massage;
- stress resistance;
- grammatically correct speech;
- phonemic hearing.
If you include these parameters in your speech therapist resume, you will have a better chance of successful employment. Employers usually want to hire an employee who can talk to children and their parents. Adults often have to explain more than young patients.
A separate section “About Me” no longer contains banal information about hobbies and interests. Here you can write a few general sentences, mentioning special responsibilities at your previous place of work or talk about some kind of certificate, award, participation in trainings. Write useful information regarding the direction.
General recommendations
The purpose of any questionnaire
– this is to stimulate the employer’s interest and obtain the desired position. Therefore, when filling out a resume for the position of a speech therapist, it is important to pay attention to confirmation of professional competence.
Since the work of a defectologist involves constant communication with people, the photo on the CV must be selected in an appropriate style. It is recommended to choose a business or professional portrait photo of the applicant against a neutral background.
Many people believe that indicating the desired salary level is not mandatory. But when drawing up this form, voicing the salary level still won’t hurt. This will at least help you avoid receiving inappropriate offers.
When indicating the desired income, market realities should be taken into account.
Write an amount that is 20% more than your current monthly income. Thanks to this trick, the damage to your own interests will be minimal, especially if you have to bargain.
Another important aspect is the clarification of specialization
.
Not all speech therapists have the same skills. Some of them specialize in correcting speech defects in children, others work with patients with Down syndrome, and still others work only with adults.
Advantages of being a speech therapist
It’s not difficult to guess that the main advantage of being a speech therapist is the feeling of being “useful” and being able to help people. However, in addition to the “spiritual” advantages, this profession also has several “material” ones. The latter include:
- the opportunity to conduct private practice and formulate your own pricing policy, which means receiving a high income and a free work schedule;
- large “geography” of employment - speech therapists are in demand in many organizations: schools, kindergartens, clinics, rehabilitation centers, etc.;
- demand – the services of speech therapists will always be needed, so these specialists will never be left without work;
- You can continue working as a speech therapist for as long as the specialist is ready and able to work (that is, there is no such thing as a retirement age for speech therapists).
How to describe work experience
experience
– the main indicator of the competence of a speech therapist.
Where and in what position a person worked gives an impression of the level of professionalism of the applicant. Recommendations:
- If there are long breaks in your career history, be sure to indicate the reason for temporary unemployment: vacation, treatment, advanced training and internships, research activities, etc. Gaps in work experience without explanation may raise red flags for employers.
- Don’t just write common headlines, such as: teacher-speech therapist, defectologist. Try to emphasize the uniqueness of your specialization. For example, a speech pathologist who works with children with Down syndrome.
- When listing responsibilities at previous jobs, avoid blindly copying text from the job description. Be original and succinctly describe your field of activity without standard bureaucracy.
- In addition to the daily duties of a speech therapist, indicate achievements and results of work. For example, you can indicate the presence of a diploma, certificate or award. (we recommend placing this information in the “about yourself” section of your resume)
Example of work experience:
- Period:
September 2003 – October 2022 (15 years 1 month) - Organization:
British International School
- Website:
www.site.ru
- Job title:
Teacher speech therapist
- Responsibilities:
— Determination of the degree of complexity and structure of existing defects; — Organization of group classes taking into account the psychophysical state and speech pathology; — Drawing up a plan, working on correcting speech skills; — Study and analysis of individual speech characteristics and inclinations of students.
What to do if you have no work experience?
Lack of experience as a defectologist is not a problem.
If you previously had work experience in related industries, you can indicate them. Just don’t describe your entire work activity, which is not at all interesting to the employer. For example, two years of work as a salesperson in a hardware store will be a useless fact
. But experience as an educational psychologist is an excellent start to the work of any speech therapist specializing in working with children.
The situation is completely different when a specialist has just graduated from university. In this case, instead of work experience, it is worth mentioning practice and internship
in relevant institutions, participation as a volunteer in various social programs, summer schools and seminars.
What personal qualities should a speech therapist have?
Speech defects often become the cause of various complexes, which can sometimes manifest themselves in aggression or depression, so speech therapists have to show miracles of patience and endurance in their work . In addition, the following personal qualities will help speech therapists effectively perform their duties:
- communication skills;
- goodwill;
- stress resistance;
- tolerance;
- tact;
- observation;
- persistence;
- the ability to be persuasive.
Of course, all these personal qualities will not help if the speech therapist does not have a huge amount of knowledge behind him. And not only in the field of speech therapy (including mastering the most modern methods and techniques for correcting a particular speech defect), but also in pedagogy, anatomy, medicine and psychology. After all, the cause of a speech problem can be both psychological and physiological disorders, and a speech therapist must not only identify this cause, but also recommend a specialist to the person, cooperation with whom will allow him to completely get rid of the defect (for example, if the speech problem arose due to a congenital speech defect device, then you can get rid of the problem only with the help of surgery followed by speech correction).
What should be indicated in the “Education” section
Special speech therapy education is a mandatory condition for admission to engage in this type of activity.
When filling out the education column in the CV, the speech pathologist must indicate in detail the name of the university, faculty, year of graduation and specialty, which is confirmed by the certificate.
A specialized medical or pedagogical-psychological education at a prestigious university will be a definite plus. An excellent addition to this part of the resume would be information about thematic courses completed.
Most speech therapists prefer to work with Russian. The ability to communicate fluently in one of the foreign languages will be an undeniable advantage, for example, when finding employment as a speech therapist in international secondary schools.
An example of education in a speech therapist’s questionnaire:
- Higher education:
Moscow Pedagogical State University - Faculty:
Defectological
- Speciality:
Corrective pedagogy and special psychology / Teacher-psychologist for working with children with developmental disabilities
- Year of ending:
2003
Third basis - aggravating circumstances
And the third basis, after defining which we moved on to discussing career options, is “aggravating circumstances” that may interfere with the realization of a dream. There are three of them, but quite significant:
- Accommodation in the city of Dubna. The city is nice, family-friendly, but small.
- Lack of grandmothers “on hand” and help in raising a child.
- Planned for the near future are the construction of a house and the birth of a second child.
We talked about all these things for 2 hours, Elmira offered me various options, we discussed them together, graded and rejected them.
Options for professions that would suit me, which we considered, but so far do not really fit with my life circumstances:
- System analyst, project manager. No matter how you look at it, you can’t get stuck raising a young child.
- HR Director. Why not? See above.
- Science journalist, producer. Requires moving to another city.
Skills that have special weight
This section of the resume allows the employer to become familiar with the key skills of a speech pathologist .
Be specific:
this block plays a decisive role in choosing a specific candidate. Unlike other blocks, here the applicant is given the opportunity for self-presentation.
There are no ready-made filling templates.
The speech pathologist can choose specific skills that, in his opinion, are most noteworthy and which will look most advantageous in the general mass of other resumes.
An example of listing the skills of a speech therapist:
Speech breathing | Speech therapy massage |
Segmental massage | Phonemic hearing |
Sensory Integration | Working with patients with Down syndrome |
Confident PC user | Communication skills |
Stress resistance | Grammatically correct speech |
Disadvantages of being a speech therapist
But you shouldn’t think that speech therapists “roll like cheese in butter” and don’t have any problems. There are also disadvantages to their work. The main disadvantage of the profession of speech therapist is the enormous expenditure of emotional and physical strength. Quite often, a speech therapist also has to act as a psychotherapist, ready not only to listen, but also to empathize.
Another obvious disadvantage of this profession, many speech therapists call the need to maintain a huge amount of various documentation (especially if the specialist works in a government agency). At the same time, “paper” work, as a rule, is not included in the main working hours, which is why specialists have to spend their free time on “writing.”
And most importantly, a speech therapist can never be completely confident in the success of his work, since a lot depends not only on the level of his professionalism, but also on the desire and performance of the “patient” himself.
What should I write about myself?
This block of the defectologist’s questionnaire should contain a minimum of information. But after reading the “About Me” section, the employer must understand whether he needs just such a specialist.
Write the data to the point:
your personal preferences, hobbies, and leisure activities that
are in no way related to your professional activities will not interest the recruiter
.
It is better to mention the ability to work with speech therapy devices. It would not hurt to indicate your academic degree and qualification categories, if any.
An example about yourself in a resume:
- Speech therapist teacher of the highest qualification category. Candidate of Psychological Sciences. Awarded the badge “Honored Worker of General Education of the Russian Federation” in November 2011.
Work place and salary
What is the job of an advertising manager?
Here you can go in two well-known ways:
Work in an organization. These are mainly kindergartens, clinics and other private and public medical institutions. You can also work in specialized rehabilitation centers and speech correction centers.
Open your own speech therapy office. As in many other professions, there is an option to go free and go into private practice
It is important to understand here that this is only possible with specialized education and permission for such activities.
Note that the earnings of a speech therapist are not very high. Average income is from 20,000 to 50,000 rubles. You can apply for a higher income in private specialized centers.
On the HeadHunter website you can see vacancies and requirements for speech therapists
How to fill in contacts in a resume?
When filling out this part of the form, you should enter current data. After posting your resume, you need to constantly monitor messages and incoming calls.
Indicating contacts in popular instant messengers and social networks will help you reach a large audience of employers.
Example of filling out contact information:
- Telephone:
+7 - Email:
- Skype:
/LogopedMyResume
- VK
/logopedmyresume
Who is the specialty suitable for?
Speech defects often cause complexes in people. This leads to unjustified aggression, stiffness, and reluctance to make contacts and interact with society. In such cases, the speech therapist needs not only methodological, theoretical, medical training, but also psychological.
The speech therapist must be sociable and stress-resistant
If a person has such qualities as resistance to stress, sociability, tact and goodwill, then speech therapy may be the right profile.
The profession of speech therapist is suitable for people who willingly interact with society and strive to be useful. Tolerance, balance and determination will help you achieve heights in speech therapy, because people make contact with those who are favorable to them. Private clinics, medical and rehabilitation centers are waiting for such professionals.