Your Healthcare Profession Resume

As a professional your resume is predominately a recruiter’s, or prospective employer’s first impression of you as a potential candidate. Your resume is your marketing brochure and it is crucial that your CV stands out from the rest.

You need to utilise your resume, in the same way as Sales Professionals utilise advertising and brochures to entice prospective buyers. You are selling yourself, your skills, your qualifications and your experience.

Keep your resume Simple – You are a healthcare professional your resume does not need to have a lot of graphics, fancy fonts, colours or fancy boarders. Keep your CV simple, it needs to be easily scanned by the hiring manager, in an outline form, using bullet points to organize the information in a concise way. Use the same font type and size throughout the document.

They have no time or interest in reading a long list of adjectives that you put together to describe yourself. Your CV should simply state the facts: who you are, what your education is, what you do and have done. It should give the reader the important facts that they need to know, and that is… “This is the reason you want me for this position!”

Photo – This is a professional document, this is selling your experience and why a future employer wants you. The reader doesn’t want to see your glamor shot photos, or a cropped photo of you partying with friends in Bali or you in your swimsuit at the beach or even you in your lyrca standing next to your bike! You are laughing right now, but people do use these photos! Photos are not necessary on a resume. However if you really feel compelled to put a photo on your resume, make sure it’s a professional looking photo where you are in corporate attire or in a work uniform like scrubs.

Personal Information – Start with your personal information, your name, suburb, country, contact numbers and email address. This isn’t eHarmony so the reader doesn’t need to know you are in good health, a non-smoker, divorced with 3 kids name Milo, Milko and Oatis. Make sure your email is a professional email address – “Lollypopnurse” or “mongoosedirtbikesalesgu” don’t really say “I’m a professional”.

Summary– Give the reader a short snap shot of who you are and what you want to do. “I am a radiographer with 3 years’ experience in General & CT within private practice, I am now looking to gain experience in a private practice”.

This is a great section to give the reader some further critical information. Are you relocating? What are your time frames? Are you on a Visa? If so what type of Visa? All this gives the reader an informed understanding of who you are, and doesn’t give the reader a reason to say no.

Education and qualifications – This is critical information the reader needs to know especially within the healthcare arena, your qualifications are relevant to your work. Are you a member of a professional Body like RANZCAR or RACGP or NSW Nurses Association or APHRA? Include any relevant current memberships you hold and ID numbers. Include all your tertiary and vocational qualifications, including the year you completed the course and the institution you studied at. Compile this information in reverse chronological order. ABC Hospital’s internal course in Hand Washing is not a qualification. So do not include internal employer courses, or non-relevant courses you have completed, or even list the subjects you studied during your degree.

This section should look like this…

Current Studying Masters in Marketing ABC University Completion in 2017

2010 NSW Radiation License No. 123456789. Exp 1/1/2015

2010 AHPRA registration ID No 123456789

2009 Bachelor of Medical imaging ABC University GPA 5/6

2008 Fellow of RANZCO Subspecialty in Retina

Employment history – Compile this information in reverse chronological order, stipulate the dates of employment (Month/Year), Employer, Location and Job Title.

Have a sub heading Role Specifications – We all know what a Nurse, Radiographer, Doctor, or a Medical Device Representative does, so in this section give the reader key specific information they would not know that is relevant to this specific role. Keep this information in bullet point form. For example:

• I specialise in the following modalities Obstetrics, Gynae, vascular and MSK.

• I am 1 of 10 nurses on shift in a 15 bed Neuro Intensive Care Unit.

• I cover a territory of Ophthalmology practices from south of Parramatta road down to the NSW boarder.

• As a GP I see on average 25 patients a day.

• As the Practice Manager I managed a team of 20 auxiliary support staff who supported 20 GP doctors, 13 Allied Health professionals and 15 Specialist Surgeons.

Have another sub heading Achievements – In this section you want to give the reader quantifiable achievements, list as many as you can. Did you increase revenue by billing more patient encounters? Did you improve quality by changing protocols or reducing errors? You need to spell out how your actions provided results or impacted your employer’s bottom line. For example:

• In 2002 I was awarded the Nurse of the year. This was out of 230 nurses and I achieved this because of work I did to educate new staff in regards to new Infection Control Measures.

• In 2012 I was sales representative of the year out of 35 representatives. I achieved this by increasing territory sales to 125%.

• In 2008 I was promoted to the position of Senior Radiographer, due to the work I was doing in educating junior radiographers.

There are no maximum or minimum requirements of how many points you should have. Generally 5 to 7 points is a good average. Remember your primary objective is to give the reader critical information that they wouldn’t know about this role.

2012 – Current ABC Medical Imaging, Sydney Australia

Senior Sonographer

Role Specifications

Achievements

Personal Achievements – The reader doesn’t need to know you like reading, travelling, playing the piano, or drinking wine in your spare time. What you are better off doing is writing about personal achievements you have achieved that show who you are as a person. Have you competed at a high level in sport or in regular competitions? Have you run the City to Surf in Sydney every year for the last 10 years and continually improved your time?

Additional Information –If you are going to add other information make sure it’s relevant to your role. Do you speak a number of languages? Do you have a clean driver’s licence? If not how many points have you lost? If you have written a number of clinical papers, add a section titled Publications, and add your publications. Give the reader as much information that is relevant to your suitability for the position.

MOST IMPORTANTLY Before you send your resume proof read it, check spelling and grammar.

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