Revamp your Resume

Nurse Beth, MSN

No matter what a fantastic employee you would make, if your resume does not immediately impress, you may never get the chance to show them.

An ineffective resume gets tossed in under ten seconds in a competitive environment. Along with your chance of an interview. So how do you make sure you impress in such a short time?

Succinct

Here's a number one problem with resumes. Verbosity. Read the following two versions of the same message below and vote in the comments below for your favorite version. Number one? or number two?

1. "Many, and some would say most, employment resumes are detailed, lengthy renditions and descriptions of the applicant's prior and previous responsibilities, accomplishments and endeavors designed to impress the reader with the use of designated trendy words and terms commonly used by many other similar applicants in their industry in addition to the use of extensive and complex sentence structures for the purpose of making the applicant sound smart."

2. "Most resumes are too wordy." Simple, right?

Beware verbosity. Lose the cliches, buzzwords and fillers. They do not add value or meaning.

The average length of a resume must be no more than one page, two pages, tops. That one page should succinctly show your skills and strengths.

Visually appealing

Avoid dense blocks of text with balanced use of white space to make it easy on the eye.

Your resume must be visually restful, not too loud on the eyes. Loud meaning the use of italics AND bold AND underlines AND font mix AND CAPS. Use standard fonts such as Tahoma or Arial- they translate on all computers.

Use bullet points judiciously for emphasis and to draw the eye.

Headers should be consistent in boldness, use of capitalization, and level of importance.

Headers, bullet points and indentations need to be precisely aligned throughout.

Perfect

There must be zero typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Your potential employer may see errors as an indicator of future careless performance. Have two or three people with eagle eyes review your resume.

Watch out for "their" and "there" and other spelling mistakes spell check may not catch.

Cut and Delete

Skip lengthy descriptions of your clinical rotations if you are a new grad. It's a given that you attended school, and in so doing, met your clinical hours requirement. An exception is if you did a senior practicum in the speciality area you are applying for, or at the targeted facility.

By the same token, skip long descriptions of duties if you are an RN. Skills such as "starts IV" and "completes care plans" do not set you apart. Do not include your GPA unless it sets you apart (3.75 or above).

You can skip the "Objectives" statement or "Summary" statement unless it's something other than "seeks job" (see "verbosity" above) or variation thereof, because it's self-evident.

A Performance Summary or Qualifications Summary is best used by an experienced nurse.

Update

Including "References on Request" is outdated. The employer already knows they can request references and doesn't need a prompt to do so.

If your email address is aol.com, change it to firstname.lastname@gmail.com

Include your LinkedIn url. Go back 10 years max in your work history. If you wish to conceal your age, do not put college graduation dates. Of course your age can be discovered, but you do not have to make it prominent.

You may also want to read Age Discrimination in nursing.

Keywords and Customize

Use keywords from the job posting to match keyword scanning software and to show that your skills match their needs. It's all about you meeting their needs. Tailor the resume to the employer. Do not blast the identical resume out to 100 different employers.

What are their mission and values, the major service lines?

Every and by that I mean, every, employer is looking for employees who will be a good fit.

Find out if they are for-profit, or are they community or faith-based ? Are they actively expanding service lines, certified in disease-specific care (stroke, chest pain)? Are they seeking magnet status?

Magnet hospitals in particular value advanced nursing degrees, speciality certifications, and Shared Governance. Were you a unit based council member or leader?

A hospital applying for Oncology Program accreditation needs oncology certified nurses.

Hospitals with an accredited Primary Stroke Center need nurses with NIH Stroke certifications.

Faith-based organizations seek nurses with the same values. Were you ever a Prayer Partner? Active in your church?

Format

Top load the most important information, such as your qualifications: RN license, BLS, ACLS, to make it easy to spot.

Consider a functional/skills based or combination format rather than a reverse chronological format if your work history is sporifice. Many recruiters agree that these are easier to scan and provide information that is needed instantly. Functional/skills based resumes highlight the skills that they are looking for.

The format could look something like this:

Qualifications, Certifications and Education
Skills
Volunteer Experience
Work experience

Past Work Experience

Make past work experience relevant by including desired skill sets. Working as a waitress shows your experience in customer service and more so if you were voted Best Waitress or always got the most tips. Include it.

Patient satisfaction is highly important to all Medicare reimbursed employers. Show how you can help them with that.

Give Examples

Examples are really stories, and stories are remembered and powerful. For example, rather than saying "reliable" say "worked 2 years with no call-offs"- that will get their attention and speaks to your work ethic.

I hope these tips help make your resume relevant and most of all, I hope you land your dream job!

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