Licenses & Certifications: Dont Forget Them
As a healthcare employee, this section is crucial to include on your resume. The licenses and certifications youve earned not only make it possible for you to work in a certain state, they also increase your value in the eyes of a hiring manager depending on how many youve earned. Make sure to include:
- Your license number
- The state you can practice in
- When your license expire
Required Vs Preferred Qualifications
When reading job postings youll likely come across the terms Required Qualifications and Preferred Qualifications. Understanding the difference between these two is key.
Required qualifications. These are just what they say – requirements. Those who do not possess these qualifications will not be considered.
Preferred qualifications. These are the skills that are desired but are not deal-breakers for the employer. You may still be considered even if you do not possess these. If you dont have all the qualifications listed, dont sweat it, you could still apply and be considered for the role.
Make Sure You Include The Following Details:
- Current Registered Nurse license, applicable for practice in the requested state
- Where are you registered as a nurse?
- Where did you study? And what is your GPA?
- Medical and nonmedical volunteer work
- The placements you did in school
- How many shifts and how many hours per shift you worked
- Prior experiences as a Registered Nurse including your duties and responsibilities
- Your specialization as a Registered Nurse and the line of patients you worked with
- Proficient in PC software computer skills that include Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook
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Split Your Education And Certifications
The field of nursing is constantly evolving. Registered nurses often take continuing education and certification courses to stay up to date with technology and best practices. If you have certifications, accreditations, or professional memberships, give them their own section.
Certifications like Basic Life Support and Advanced Cardiac Life Support are often necessary to get hired. More advanced certificates like Critical Care Registered Nursing arent always required, but theyre valuable for moving into roles with more responsibility. When you put these certificates in their own section, readers can spot them easily and use them to make hiring decisions.
Registered Nurse Resume Samples
A Registered Nurse will perform a variety of nursing duties apart from the core job of treating and caring patients. The roles and responsibilities listed on the Registered Nurse Resume include the following educating patients about their medical condition, providing emotional support to the patients families, performing diagnostic tests, analyzing tests, administering medications, recording patients symptoms, operating medical equipment, assisting with patient rehabilitation procedures, performing routine procedures, inspecting the facilities, providing prompt medical care during emergencies, assisting physicians during operations and providing treatment as per the physicians orders.
A well-drafted resume should highlight these skills powerful knowledge of nursing care techniques and methods, knowledge of emergency care, a deep understanding of health and safety guidelines and procedures and a friendly disposition. There are several routes to become a Registered Nurse, although earning an Associates degree in Nursing is the most popular one.
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How To Write A Nurse Resume Summary Or Objective
Fun fact – recruiters spend less than 6 seconds reviewing each resume. This isnt that surprising, though. You cant expect them to read the hundreds of resumes they receive from end to end.
So, if the recruiter doesnt see that youre relevant for the job in a single glance, your resume wont even be read.
Now, the question is, what can you do to hook the recruiter the moment they look at your resume.
The answer is simple: use a resume summary or objective.
As a quick intro, both the resume summary and objective are sections that go on top of your resume, just under the contact information section.
The main difference between the 2 sections is that
A resume summary is a 2-4 sentence summary of your professional experiences and achievements.
- Trauma Certified Registered Nurse with more than five years experience working in emergency care. Compassionate, ethical health-care provider with a proven ability to stay calm during crises. Hold a Masters of Science in Surgical Nursing.
A resume objective, on the other hand, is a 2-4 sentence snapshot of your professional goals and aspirations.
- Patient-focused nursing student with 2 years of healthcare experience. Pursuing internships as part of career goal to become Certified Hospice and Palliative Nurse.
So, which one do you pick? A summary, or an objective?
Search Terms For Hospitals
When searching for a new nurse, hospital nursing position, it might be helpful to use the following search terms:
- Nurse Intern
- Registered Nurse
Most hospitals and medical centers today have a searchable careers website, where the candidate can enter job search terms. When doing so, less is often more as broad terms such as intern or “nurse” will turn up a large number of results to parse through. For those just starting out, this is likely preferred. Job candidates can narrow search terms as needed by adding “intensive care” to “nurse.”
Large hospital systems, meaning one large company with many hospitals, will often allow for a user profile to be created based on the resume. This profile can be used for multiple positions.
The sought-after new nurse graduate positions in hospitals include:
- Medical-Surgical
- Aesthetics offices
- Adult family homes
Like hospital positions for new graduate nurses, non-hospital jobs will also provide training to those fresh from nursing school. Most nursing graduates have some experience in skilled nursing facilities and home health so they should highlight this information in their resume and cover letter if possible. As with hospital positions, nursing leadership will ensure the new nurse is proficient and well-trained before they are tasked with solo patient care.
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Registered Nurse Ii Resume
Summary : 12+ years of experience as a Registered Nurse. Strong clinical and hospital background. Experience working alongside physicians and nurses to provide excellent patient care in multiple facets of the office, hospital and home setting.
Skills : Advertising, Staffing, Accounting, and Sales. Computer literate in Microsoft Office Suite, Excel, QuickBooks, PowerPoint, IMed, Epic, Mysis, Centricity, Net fusion: website builders.
Description :
Nursing Skills And Areas Of Expertise
It is a common mistake to list hard skills last on a resume. With the popularity of ATS this mistake could cost you an interview. This is especially true in nursing as the profession requires very specific skills. List skills within the top of the resume. Your hard skills should be directly targeted to the role as it is expressed in the job description.
Is the employer asking for a specific EMR that you are experienced with? List it! Are you an expert at starting IVs because of your five years of experience in the emergency room? List it!
This should not be a generic list of skills, but a specific list that is as quantified as much as possible. Its possible that if you are a newer nurse or are making a specialty pivot that you may not have hard skills to include. In that case, its okay to omit this section and highlight your transferable soft skills within your job history.
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Achieve The Ideal Icu Nurse Resume Length
Caring for ICU patients isnt easy. But because your ability to handle challenging or emotionally-taxing circumstances is a huge part of the job, employers will mostly only be interested in hearing about your skills and experience in relevant roles.
To make it easier for employers to assess your qualifications, present your skills and experience in a one-page resume.
The only time you might need a two-page resume is if you have 10+ years of experience to showcase. Otherwise, achieving the ideal resume length ensures youre only including information thats pertinent to the job.
Here are some tips on how to achieve the ideal ICU nurse resume length:
- Keep it concise and cut out any jobs where the skills arent necessarily transferable to caring for patients with critical needs.
- Add hard numbers to your resume bullet points and use strong action verbs to make your contributions sound more impactful. For example,
Delivered nursing care in a 12-bed critical care unit for patients with trauma/neurological related injuries.
- Make your resume ATS-friendly by including ICU nurse-related keywords, such as Vital Signs, ICU, Registered Nurse, Inpatient, and Critical Care.
Avoid wordiness. Pair your resume with a well-written cover letter to further outline your work experience.
Make A Good First Impression
Traditional resume formatting has become the standard for a reason: it lets you explain a lot of information very quickly. One major element of this format is your resume summary, which is the first full paragraph between your header and your job history. This summary works like an abstract, explaining the rest of your resume in two or three sentences.
One great registered nurse resume example summary is, Experienced registered nurse eager to provide compassionate and ethical patient care at Brown Hospital. 12+ years of nursing experience include coordinating patient care during staff shortages, assisting with complex medical issues, and maintaining a positive attitude in fast-paced environments.
Employers reading this summary will take away three important facts. First, theyll understand what the nurse considers to be their most important skills. Second, they know how long that nurse has been in the industry. Finally, they see three significant past successes that are relevant to the position. This combination helps employers decide whether to consider the candidate for an interview.
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Example Nursing Graduate Resume
Now that weve discussed each piece of the nursing graduate resume, lets put it all together in this example resume using a simple format:
Nancy A. Mazin RN, BSNSeattle, WA 98052 555-5555
Registered Nurse InternCaring, patient-focused nursing graduate seeking entry-level nursing position at a large public hospital. Skilled communicator and technically proficient in electronic medical records. Proven ability to establish rapport with patients and staff in fast-paced setting. Adaptable and able to learn skills / procedures quickly.
Education:
Bachelors of Science in Nursing , Smith & Brown University, City, ST 2022
- Award: Graduated magna cum laude
Associates Degree in Nursing , Charleston Community College, City, St 2018
License: Registered Nurse, Active Ohio, #55443322 expiration 01/2023
Certification: Basic Life Support , American Heart Association, expiration 11/2024
Experience
University Hospital, Seattle, WA, March 2018 to August 2019
Registered Nursing Student-Non-Intensive Care Unit
- Performed blood draws for needle-wary patients in a high-volume setting.
- Provided wound care to 12 patients per shift, including those with diabetes, pressure sores, and other slow-to-heal sores.
- Calmed down upset patients enabling them to receive needed treatments.
Cook Medical Center, Seattle, WA January 2017 to March 2018
Registered Nursing Student-Intensive and Surgical Care
Skills
Technical Skills
Epic and Cerner Alaris IV pumps, Microsoft Office / 365
Other
Resume Layout And Formatting: First Impressions
The visual appearance of your nurse resume is what employers will notice first about your job application. That makes it the first impression they will have about you. A messy, cluttered resume format, or a poorly organized CV layout that lacks clearly defined sections may hurt your chances of being considered for an amazing professional nurse opportunity.
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The Guide To Resume Tailoring
Guide the recruiter to the conclusion that you are the best candidate for the registered nurse med / surg job. Its actually very simple. Tailor your resume by picking relevant responsibilities from the examples below and then add your accomplishments. This way, you can position yourself in the best way to get hired.
New Graduate Resume 101
An attention-getting new nursing resume is professional and concise showing the best possible view of the job candidate. It should summarize the candidate’s capabilities and background, while persuasively relaying all they have to offer. The nursing resume includes name, contact info, job title, summary, education and certifications, job experience, and skills sections.
- A one-page resume is sufficient in length for recent nursing graduates. The resume is not the place for verbose writing style or the play-by-play of every clinical experience.
- Resumes should be free from typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and the like. Such errors demonstrate carelessness and lack of attention to detail. Having a friend proofread the resume or hiring a professional proofreader for a nominal fee is a good idea.
- Resumes no longer include a hobbies and interests section. Resumes should not include age, marital status, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and the like.
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Is A Photo Required In The Nursing Resume
You might have a wonderful, professional-looking photo lying around that you want to include in your nursing application to make it look more effective. However, we advise against it.
We believe that effective cover letters are more focused on showing potential employers their proven ability to provide quality care in a fast-paced environment. This can be done by focusing on the resume layout sections weve discussed.
Tailor It To The Role
Use keywords that will capture the attention of the hiring manager. More often than not, these can be seen in the job description. Study what they need and clearly state how you will apply your knowledge and skills to answer the needs of the institution. Tailor your CV to match each of the criteria they are searching for.
Avoid fluffing up your skills or overstating your experience. Employers dont want to read paragraphs about every little task that you have done. But rather, how you will be the one to help them ease their workload and improve the performance of your healthcare institution.
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Registered Nurse Care Manager Coordinator
A work at home environment that required extensive knowledge regarding current standards of HIV/AIDS care and case management processes.
- Responsible for case load of approximately 300 HIV positive patients. Educating regarding latest treatment protocols in HIV/AIDS management.
- Interviewed patients and families to assess needs and risk categories to develop and implement appropriate plans of care.
- Monitored hospital, emergency department, outpatient and ancillary services lab values and patient satisfaction to determine patient satisfaction to determine program effectiveness.
- Established long and short term goals for the patient/family which were S-M-A-R-T
- Implemented, monitored and evaluated the plan of care and its effectiveness. Revised as necessary.
- Educated patients regarding the disease process and medications, methods for improving medication compliance, available community resources and other pertinent information.
How Do I Get Past The Ats
DO THIS:
- Target your resume to the specific position. Do this by reading job descriptions and selecting keywords noted in the descriptions – competencies, skills sets, education, experience.
- Match individual experiences to keywords/key skill sets found within the job posting.
- Research the employer and target the resume based on the facility values and culture.
- Make strong assertions within the top of the resume.
- Follow those assertions with supporting evidence.
- Include a Professional Summary if you are an experienced Nurse.
- Only apply to roles that you match 100% of the Required Qualifications.
- Use simple fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri, never smaller than 10 point font. See Part 5 for more styling suggestions.
- Use simple black bullet points not special bullet symbols.
- Save your resume as a .doc, .docx or .pdf format
- If using an abbreviation, always spell out the words followed by the abbreviation or acronym. You never know how the abbreviation was entered into the ATS.
- Use standard, simple section headers such as, Work History or Education. List specific skills, including:
- Settings youve worked in
- Patient demographics
- Equipment used
DO NOT:
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Organize Your Resume According To Ancc Preferences
Once youve written your introduction, skills, and experience sections, its time to move onto your education and licenses.
However, nurses have a lot of education and certifications compared to other professions. It can be confusing deciding how to include all this extra information on your resume or how to organize it.
Fortunately, the American Nurses Credentialing Center has a standardized order for how you should list your nursing credentials on your resume.
List your education and credentials according to this order:
Heres an example of a nursing resume that follows proper ANCC order when listing education and credentials:
Full Time Registered Nurse Resume
Summary : Compassionate and Dedicated as a Registered Nurse with more than 9 years of experience providing nursing care to adults in clinical settings that include medical-surgical, telemetry and psychiatric units.
Skills : Word Processing, Excel, Powerpoint, Answering Phones, Patient Care, People Person, Appointment Scheduling, Critical Thinking, Management, and Delegation.
Description :
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Case Manager/registered Nurse Resume
Summary : 19+ years of experience as a Registered Nurse. Looking to obtain a position as a professional nurse ensuring quality patient care, utilizing my assessment, critical thinking, and therapeutic communication skills, while working within the nursing code of ethics.
Skills : Medication Administration, Time Management, Detail Oriented, Documentation, Geriatric Care, IV Therapy, BLS, ACLS, TNCC, Non-Violent Crisis Intervention, and Dementia Training.