resumes???

[steph11]

Does anyone have any advice for writing my first resume? I will be graduating in a few months and want to start applying for jobs now. Should I include organizations I held positions in college, or just stick to nursing things only? Also, should I include previous work experience as a waitress, otherwise it looks like I have hardly worked.

[8jimi8ICURN]

Did you hold any officer positions in those organizations? If so, include them. Or if it was a really awesome experience, you can put a little blurb about it in your cover letter.

I know it seems like more is better, but my instructors made me whittle my resume from 3 pages down to 1 and a cover letter. But when I went to get my job... they didn't even look at my resume (at least not in the interview)! Go figure!

Waiting tables is good experience for nursing... i only say this because most people are always rushed when they go out to eat and a server must prioritize and multitask. If you had like 6 different waiting jobs, maybe you can condense it down to a sentence in your cover letter such as... "Before and during college, I waited table for 5 years." If you only had one job waiting tables that was longer than 1 year, I would include it in your work history.

There are plenty of examples of how to write resumes, I would search this site to see if any other threads have been posted specifically about nursing resumes. If you want, pm me your email address and i can send you a copy of mine. For nursing school, as part of my management class, I had to write and turn in a resume and my teacher gave me quite a bit of advice about making it concise, but attractive.