How to present your au pair experience to boost your CV

In addition to being a great work experience in the childcare field, being an au pair gives you a wide variety of desirable skills that many employers look for when hiring. Yet, how can you present what you’ve learned as an au pair in a way that will impress potential employers? Here are some clever ways to include your experience as an au pair successfully in your CV.

Include why you wanted to be an au pair in your CV

Whatever your reason or reasons might be, identifying what your goals were and how you accomplished them during your time as an au pair needs to be included your CV as well. For instance, if your goal was to learn more about your host country’s culture, then mention that in your resume: being able to work in a multicultural environment is something that many employers look for.

Have you run out of ideas? Here our 5 reasons why it's worth it to become an au pair.

Be specific in your CV about your au pair experience

Try to be as specific as possible about the details of your experience: the start and end dates of your au pair experience, list your duties and your responsibilities, how many kids you were looking after and what their ages. Also, include any language courses you have attended during your experience. The more specific you are, the more skills you can show to your potential new employer.

Talk about your transferrable skills

When you are writing or updating your CV to reflect your au pair experience, it’s important to recognise and include all the skills that you picked up that are transferrable to other jobs. Yes, you looked after children and probably did some basic housekeeping, which on the surface doesn’t sound exciting and relevant for an office job, for example. However, if you take a closer look you picked up skills like organising daily schedules, collaborative communication skills, and being able to prioritise tasks. These three skills are skills that transfer from your experience as an au pair to the office, and these are what the focus should be on when writing your CV

Identifying and include the hard and soft skills you learned as an au pair

Hard skills are abilities that you’re taught, they’re often learned in school, through certifications or in previous work experience, are quantifiable, and their proficiency can often be measured. Some examples are skills like typing, reading comprehension, Maths, and writing. On the other hand, soft skills are traits that speak to your work etiquette and personality, are non-measurable, and subjective skills that aren’t specific to any one job or career. Some examples of soft skills are problem-solving, leadership, and teamwork.

Chances are you have learned several hard and soft skills while you were an au pair. Make sure to list and clarify any of the hard and soft skills you have learned along your journey as an au pair and highlight how they can serve you in the position you are applying for.

Have an updated LinkedIn profile

Most employers look for their employees online and LinkedIn is one of those sites. LinkedIn acts as your personal online business card. Therefore, it is wise to make sure that has been updated and the best it can be. This includes your au pair experience, similar to what you will include on your CV. Make sure that you are using the right keywords when you are updating your profile. Also, make sure that any dates and relevant information you include from your au pair experience match the dates and information you have included in your CV.

Including your au pair experience in your CV for your next job is essential. Being an au pair gives you valuable skills that will help you get hired.

Sobre la autora:

Lauren Groff writes CV’s at Ukwritings and Academic Writing Services. She writes about changing careers, as well as other topics. Lauren also is a blogger at Custom paper writing service UK.