Help please! Will knowledgeable nurse critique my resume and cover letter?

[smilingfaces]

Will someone please help critique my resume and cover letter!?!?:)

[MrChicagoRN, RN]

Post it Up! I've critiqued some, as have others here.

Just redact the personal stuff so we don't know who you are, where you are, or exactly where you worked.

[smilingfaces]

My name

St address

city, state, zip code

phone number

Objective:

To obtain a position within a challenging acute care setting as a Registered Nurse.

Skills and Qualifications:

Registered Nurse: license number. Expiration: 04/30/2013.

BLS from AHA: Active. Expiration: June, 2013.

Medical terminology.

Charting and documentation of patient care.

Administration of medication and injections.

Bilingual (English and my language)

Education:

Associate of Science Degree in Nursing, March 2011

Fresno City Community College, 2003-2011

1101 E University Avenue

Fresno, California 93741

High School Diploma, 2003

Buchanan High School

Clovis, California

Experiences:

Phlebotomy

Fresno Community Regional Hospital, 2006-2009. Responsible for drawing blood, collected urine specimen, and processed specimens.

Academic Honors:

Fresno City College- Member of Student Nurse Association

Deans List, spring 2006

Technical Abilities: Efficient at using Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

References:

References are available upon request.

[smilingfaces]

Date

my name

st address

city, state, zip code

my phone #

The address of the employer

To RN recruiter:

I am writing in response to your job listing as a full time Registered nurse. I graduated from the Fresno City College in May of 2011. I attained my registered nursing license in June of 2011. I believe that my education background and past clinical experience will help provide the best patient care when hire by your hospital. I thrive when I am faced with a challenge, especially in a stressful fast-paced work environment.

Putting 100% effort everyday in nursing school has shaped me to become an efficient person who uses the nursing skills and care planning in a precise and consistent manner which allows me to care for each patient holistically. My ability to adapt to the ever changing environment allows me to be a valuable resource that will not only accomplish your hospital’s goals, but become a vital asset to your team. The experience of working as a phlebotomist has given me insight on how to approach and care for our diverse population of the San Joaquin Valley.

I am requesting a personal interview to discuss the possibility of employment. You can reach me at my phone # and/ or my email.

Sincerely,

my name

[smilingfaces]

Thank you MrchicagoRN! BTW, I'm a new grad.

[MPKH, BSN, RN]

Hi smilingfaces, I'm going to offer you some tips and advices on your resume and cover letter :) Hope it'll help you!

Resume

1) Personalize your objective as much as you can. The one you have right now is a bit too generic (everybody can write the same thing that you wrote)...personalize a targeted objective to the unit/hospital that you are applying to tend to stand out more.

2) Take out your high school education--it is assumed that you have graduated from high school if you completed post secondary education.

3) I would separate your certifications from the skills that you have...it's just a bit confusing to clump those two together. Likewise, you can put your technical skills in with the skills you put in your skills and certifications section.

4) It's great that you have experience working as a phlebotomist! But I think your resume would be stronger if you elaborated more on the phlebotomist job you had--while it's good to list some of the key duties you had, it's equally important to list the skills (technical and behavioural) that you gained from this job.

Cover Letter

1) Indicate the unit and hospital of the nursing job that you're applying for--recruiters are in charge of filling multiple openings at one or more hospitals and units. Indicating the unit and hospital that you're applying for will help them sort your application appropriately.

2) Take out the "I thrive when I am faced with a challenge, especially in a stressful fast-paced work environment" in your first paragraph. It fits more in with the second paragraph than the first.

3) I felt that your last paragraph didnt' end on a strong note...perhaps you can "remind" the recruiter why you'd be a great hire in the last paragraph before you end the letter.

4) I liked how you made the point of what you can do for the hospital and not what the hospital can do for you :)

Hope it helps :)

[smilingfaces]

Thanks! I am open to any more suggestions!

[trinnylax0484]

At the hospital I work for (and a lot of others) there are fields asking what you're interested in during the online application process. Make sure you fill those out correctly.

However, it would probably take me 10 seconds to look at your resume and reject you at the moment. You have not listed ANY of your clinicals, hours completed, or any information that makes you stand out from the 200 other resumes I look at a day. Your nursing options are limited with a ASN as my and many other hospitals will take BSN or MSN prepared nurses only.

If you want acute care there better be something highlighting your clinical experiences in acute care and what you did. It's not uncommon for new grads to be hired directly out of nursing school but they tend to have had a leadership, capstone, etc. in the area they're applying to.

Other recruiters here may also reject you immediately because you have zero work history. You've either never worked in healthcare, never held a job, or don't want the hospital to know where you worked last. Who are your references going to be if that is the case? Professors and family friends aren't going to work, and clinical supervisors aren't the best either except maybe your capstone supervisor. Nonetheless you're going to need more than one.

[smilingfaces]

trinnylax0484, I had my school clinical experiences and hours on my old resume but an critique told me that it doesn't count as experience, so that's why I took it out. Please Correct me if I am Wrong. Would it be better for me to put it back on? I have Phlebotomy work history, does that count?

[smilingfaces]

trinnylax0484,Should I mentioned that I had experience with NG tube, urinary catheter, and trach care? bc I did all these during my rotations.

Skills and Qualifications:

Medical terminology.

Gastric and Nasogastric tube feeding

Skilled at Tracheotomy Care

Catheter and suctioning skills

Charting and documentation of patient care.

Administration of medication and injections.

Clinical Rotation

Completed over 1,000 hours at acute facilitie (4 different hospitals)

????????

Please help me because I need something that will stand out!

[trinnylax0484]

Clinicals count as experience in the sense that they're the area you're most familiar with or have spent the most time in. They're just not RN experience.

So when it says, what are you interested in :

How many years of exp do you have in that area (as an RN)? You answer .

You could add something like

Phlebotomy work experience is fine to leave in, especially if you held the position for 2+ years because it'll show a more stable work history. It also shows that you had a job but wanted to further your education (which many teaching universities highly value). "Worked at McDonalds" "Worked as a bartender" or whatever should all be left off. Unless of course, they're the only work experience you have. Huge gaps in work experience should also be explained.

Specific skills don't hurt to add but don't list everything (that isn't relavent to the position you're applying to) as it may clutter your resume. Your first goal is to get the recruiter to send your resume to the hiring manager. The hiring managers are more concerned with skills in their resume reviews and of course, their interviews.

Recruiters only want to match you to the open position which means your interest, where most of your experience may be (for new grads this would be your leadership, capstone, etc.) and your qualifications (able to work nights, degree, license, etc.)

You don't need to list general things like "medical terminology" because it is expected that if you didn't have that you wouldn't have passed your nursing exam or graduated. More specific skills or areas of experience stand out, like "bone marrow transplant" versus simply saying "transplant" or "hematology / oncology".

On a side-note a lot of openings are in 3rd shift, (because internal candidates get preference when a 1st shift opens up) so if you want days / evenings only you may be rejected by the HRIS sytem itself for giving the wrong answer. "Any shift" if probably your best answer with the understanding you're probably going to work 3rd. As a bonus, 3rd shift generally gets paid 20% more than 1st.

You need to research every single place you're applying to and know what units they have, what their specialties are and what the culture, mission, and vision statements are. You don't need to list them on your resume per say, but you should at least be able to explain that it was those things that made you want to work there.

I see so many resumes where new grads want pediatrics and I simply reject them without reading the rest of their resume because our hospital doesn't even have a pediatric unit. They obviously didn't do their research and don't care that much if they're just applying to every single RN position they can find. I realize that some new grads just want a job, so theyre going to do that. But they must expect a high rejection rate from that tactic.

Even really bad resumes may get a call from a recruiter if they list their experience in an area, apply to that area, and there is an opening in the area. Some nuances can be overlooked when a position needs to be filled (perfect candidate for a position but they also listed all their non-nursing jobs on their resume back to 1995).

Hope that helps!