How to Craft the Perfect Medical Resume to Get Hired

Header

The header will be at the top of your resume so hiring managers can easily locate your contact information. Be sure to include your name, preferred phone number, email address and location.

Resume objective or summary

The resume objective and summary serve slightly different purposes. Experienced healthcare professionals would generally use a resume summary to highlight their critical areas of expertise, their years of experience, their desired job title and what they hope to achieve in this new role.

Newly qualified practitioners, who perhaps don’t have as much experience to call upon, should write a resume objective and focus more on skills,recently completed training and career goals. Be sure to highlight key skills and personality traits closely linked to the role that is being applied   for.

Skills

Your skills section should include the essential aptitudes that make you suitable for the role. You should make sure that you list both soft and hard skills.

Soft skills aren’t specific to any particular job role or sector but instead personality traits and character attributes. For example, soft skills that a certified medical assistant might list in their resume include communication skills, compassion and interpersonal skills such as active listening.

Hard skills are those that have been learned for a specific role and can be taught to others. This is a particularly essential section of the resume for highly specialized sectors such as medicine. A medical practitioner might include hard skills such as first aid, CPR, understanding vital signs, patient care, working with medical records and administering injections.

You may also wish to include a technical skills section where you can list expertise on specific equipment and processes.

Work experience

Your experience section will list the most relevant professional experience to the role you are applying for. Each entry should include the job title, work location, key responsibilities and start/end dates.

The strongest  resume will list jobs in reverse chronological order. If you are looking to secure an entry-level position, then you can still list any previous roles where you performed  specific transferable skills.

Education

Your education section should include the qualifications obtained (starting with the highest level), the institution, the grade achieved and the study dates.

If you are looking to secure a role that doesn’t require specialist training (such as a medical receptionist), or you are fresh out of school, then make sure to list that you achieved your high school diploma.

Certifications

Many medical practitioners who go on to specialize in different areas will usually have to complete additional training. You should make sure a hiring manager knows you have achieved the various certifications needed for these types of roles. Additionally, if your efforts have been recognized through awards and recognition, you should mention them here.