Nurse tech resume for career changer

crosew · Jun 12, 2015

I was having the same problem, to be honest. There's no problem in leaving out the fact that you have an MPH--it could be that HR people are filtering you out because they think you'll want more money, etc (I used to screen applicants at my old research job, and yes, we do screen out people who have a degree that's more than what we wanted--they might want more money, or they might just quit if something better comes along).

Make sure that you keep things short and sweet on your resume. Research can be okay if you worked with human subjects, but you need to highlight that. Make sure you put your education/training at the top of the resume, starting with the CNA training. I put that first and then put some details about the length of the program, the clinical site and skills, etc. I put my BA underneath that. I'm not a fan of objectives but I ended up putting a line under my header that said "Pre-nursing student looking for such-and-such" or something like that.

askamanager.org has really great resume advice, too.

BeachsideRN, ASN · Jun 12, 2015

I was having the same problem, to be honest. There's no problem in leaving out the fact that you have an MPH--it could be that HR people are filtering you out because they think you'll want more money, etc (I used to screen applicants at my old research job, and yes, we do screen out people who have a degree that's more than what we wanted--they might want more money, or they might just quit if something better comes along).
Make sure that you keep things short and sweet on your resume. Research can be okay if you worked with human subjects, but you need to highlight that. Make sure you put your education/training at the top of the resume, starting with the CNA training. I put that first and then put some details about the length of the program, the clinical site and skills, etc. I put my BA underneath that. I'm not a fan of objectives but I ended up putting a line under my header that said "Pre-nursing student looking for such-and-such" or something like that.
askamanager.org has really great resume advice, too.

Thank you so much! Actually, after I wrote this post I was able to (finally) get in touch with the HR at hospital that I had been applying to and spoke with someone about what was going on. I told her that I was concerned that if I left information off that I would be violating terms of the application since it says "list ALL" then asks me to sign saying it was "true and valid". She said that it was ok, and beneficial, to only list things pertinent to the job being applied for. She also said that someone would review my submissions and call me back next week.

So, I went in and updated my profile omitting the MPH and even my BA completely and cleaned up my previous experience to where the "job duties" were VERY basic like "managed day to day lab operations" as opposed to "applied biomedical techniques to establish a photodepletion protocol to reduce cytoreactive T cells in order to prevent graft v host disease in transplant recipients". We shall see what happens.

crosew · Jun 13, 2015

I had to modify my resume almost the exact same way (I used to do psychology research, and convincing people that that translates into good people skills is difficult!). And a great idea to contact the HR person directly. Good luck to you!