Dance Teaching Resume Submissions: Using Videos
If you are a dance teacher looking for work and want to apply for dance teaching positions, then I strongly recommend including a video as part of your resume submission.
Having a video of your choreography is a great way to set you apart from other applicants.
I know I hired a hip hop teacher in the past strongly based on the videos she linked to of her hip hop choreography. It was a great way for me to know that she taught hip hop that was fun and interesting yet age appropriate for the children and teens she would be teaching. It was also important for me to see the choreography because I was hiring her to teach (and choreograph for) competition hip hop classes.
On Dance Teacher Finder, the website I run with fellow studio owners where dance teachers can submit their resume to our dance teacher resume database, we give dance teachers the option to post a link to a video when they submit their resume. The cool thing about Dance Teacher Finder is that registered studios can check out teachers in their area without you even applying for a job, so having a video uploaded on our website means it could be viewed by many studios who could then contact you for a job.
Even if you have not had many teaching jobs, you could perform your own choreography, upload it to YouTube and then link to it on Dance Teacher Finder. This is a great option for new teachers/choreographers without a lot of experience, because your great choreography could help make up for your lack of experience.
If you do not want other people to be able to see your work, you could make the video unlisted on YouTube so then only the registered dance studios at Dance Teacher Finder would be able to see your work. YouTube also gives you the option to disable comments and ratings.
Now when I was applying for college years ago I had a teacher recommend burning a DVD of yourself when applying to set myself apart, as there was no YouTube. Obviously we are way past that point technologically speaking and now with the relative ease of being able to upload videos for everyone to see, using videos really is the best option for hopeful dance teachers.
About Elizabeth Emery
Elizabeth Emery is a former dance studio owner. She owned Dancers Unite in Charlotte, NC for 6 years, where she helped run the studio as well as taught dance classes six days a week. She sold her studio to one of her teachers and now dedicates her time helping other dance studio owners as well as dance teachers with her new business, Dance Teacher Finder, which helps pair dance studios with dance instructors. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and double majored in Business Economics and Marketing. Elizabeth currently splits her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah.