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Discussion

Second-career resume

I'm overhauling my resume, as are most of my classmates in preparation for graduation. I'm having trouble deciding what to put on it, as I have varied experience from a previous career. I want to stand out from the crowd. I'm hoping for an ER or critical care position. Here's what's on my resume, currently (in short form, for ease of reading here):

Education:

-BSN student, 3.9 GPA, honors, scholarships

-EMT certificate; NREMT, currently inactive status

-B.A. in journalism

Experience:

-Patient Care Tech - current. Obviously, this stays.

-Emergency Room Tech - 10 years ago, but I really want to work in ER/critical care, and this shows experience in ER. Keep or remove?

-Utilization Management Support Coordinator - over 10 years old. I could probably drop this, but it gave me an interesting perspective on utilization review. Not sure if that would be helpful or not. Keep or remove?

-Freelance journalist - 2001-2015. I ran my own freelance journalism business while traveling around the country and world for 15 years. Not remotely nursing related, but the skills I developed doing this have helped me become a good communicator with my patients and have honed my organizational skills. Keep or remove?

Regarding clinical experiences, I'm just planning on a simple list, like this:

Clinical Experiences:

Adult Medical-Surgical - Spring 2016, XXX Hospital, Anytown, USA

Adult Medical-Surgical II - Summer 2016, XXX Hospital, Anytown, USA

Pediatrics - Fall 2016, Children's Hospital, Anytown, USA

Obstetrics - Fall 2016, XXX Hospital, Anytown, USA

I presume I don't need to elaborate on my clinical experiences, as they're pretty standard, correct? I will elaborate on my practicum, once it's finished.

Thank you for any input you have.

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    • Expert

    I think your general game plan is a good one. Include the basic information about your previous jobs, but condense the information as much as reasonably possible.

    I recommend putting your student clinical experiences on a separate sheet in order to keep your basic resume as close to 1 page as possible. Simply state your education, degree, graduation date, etc. and use 1 line to list your practicum experience (maybe 2 if it is very pertinent to the job you seek). Then say along the line of: "See addition page for more information about nursing school experiences." That allows you to provide the information without cluttering up your main page.

    Good luck.

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    There are tons of great professional resume services out there that offer free resume service trial offers. I used one. Don't use the template that comes in MS office, because you're less likely to stand out.

    Keep it to one page. As a nursing student/new grad, even as a second career, more than one page can look like you're fluffing it up.

    Sections I included in mine

    A professional summary, just an overview of me in three-four sentences.

    A skills list, put your CNA, EMT, CPR, relevant CE stuff in here

    Education, Yours looks good, but I would drop the GPA/honors at that section there's a place for honors later, and honors means high GPA

    Clinical experience, I had to shorten my stuff to bare minimums to get it to fit, but it did

    Work History, I dropped anything from before I went back to school, mostly to save room/not relevant. It also helps avoid aging myself.

    Additional Info, Where I included things like Honor society, NSA, volunteer work, etc in a nice neat package of "look, I get involved and work hard."

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