Crafting a comprehensive nursing resume is important to showcase your nursing experience and relevant skills to your potential employers. To those with a nursing degree looking to present their leadership skills, previous roles, and personal information to speed up their hiring process and land a nursing role in the cutthroat healthcare industry as quickly as possible, a nurse resume template would be helpful to them. If you’re in the nursing field, this is beneficial to you and your peers.
In this article, we will give a few sample resumes, especially to help you prepare your nursing resume. We will be giving common resume forms and materials as a guide for both new and experienced employees. Whatever your nursing career may be—whether you need an ICU nurse resume or a charge nurse resume—you can make a resume that shows your diverse clinical experiences, interests, and skill-sets, and you can find them all here.
Read More: How To Write An Ideal Registered Nurse Resume
Sample resumes for new nurses should be carefully crafted to highlight the education section and relevant skills (both soft skills and hard skills) of the applicant.
Since it’s expected that new nurses may not have previous working experience as a nurse that they can add into their resume, they can instead opt to include previous training, certification, and other related work experience (e.g., working as a PSW while in nursing school) still highlight the skills, such as providing basic life support and taking a patient’s vital signs, that the candidate may have that’s relevant for the job.
New nurses can also choose to put a resume objective to make up for their lack of experience to convey the nurse’s passion for patient care and desire to make a positive impact in the healthcare field.
Below is a resume example that a newly graduated nurse without experience can use to apply for nursing jobs:
Sample resume for nurses with experience should accurately showcase their past jobs in the clinic, their qualifications, and their many accomplishments in the field of nursing.
An experienced nurse’s resume should include a professional summary highlighting the nurse’s years of experience, areas of expertise, and any specialized training or certifications. It should list specific job duties and responsibilities from previous positions, demonstrating the applicant’s practical knowledge and proficiency in various nursing procedures, such as patient assessments, medication administration, and wound care.
An experienced nurse’s resume should also be able to showcase their commitment to excellence to illustrate the nurse’s commitment to staying current with industry standards and best practices. This can be achieved by featuring relevant accomplishments in nursing, including continuing education certifications or higher educational degrees earned, awards or recognitions received, successful patient outcomes achieved, or projects completed that showcase leadership abilities.
Whether you’re an experienced nurse practitioner, an ER nurse looking for a new job, a new grad, or a nursing student looking for internships, you can still use these tips to make an outstanding resume. If you’re wondering how to showcase your compassionate care, your skills in advanced cardiac life support, or just your relevant experience to give you a leg up in your job hunt, then look no further.
If you want to make a positive first impression, include a personal statement on your nursing resume - basically a resume summary to pique the interest of your employer. In your personal statement, you should establish yourself as a registered nurse, including your area of specialty as well as the breadth and depth of your professional experience. This gives HR an idea of what you have to offer your new company by demonstrating what you brought to your previous employers, exhibiting what you delivered to your past employers, and demonstrating how your goals align with those of the business.
The summary of your resume should be sufficiently convincing to reassure the employer that you are the ideal applicant. Take this as an example:
I am a Registered Nurse with over five years of clinical experience looking to secure a position at Lutheran Medical Center that will allow me to utilize my demonstrated expertise in providing routine patient care. I maintained a satisfaction rate of 95% among patients at Centura Health. 10 new nurses were successfully brought on board.
Whether you just graduated from nursing school or have years of experience in the field, experience is valuable in the nursing profession, so it’s crucial to include this in your resume. Stick with a chronological format, which implies providing an account of your job history in an order that’s reverse chronological. This is the information that recruiters want to seeing, and the information that is designed to filter in the most accurate manner. Make use of bullet points as well, in order to make your resume more neat and organized.
If you’re building a nursing resume but don’t have any registered nursing experience, you should emphasize the work that you did before becoming a registered nurse, such as practicum placements, volunteer work, and other jobs related to healthcare. You will have gained a significant amount of this experience regardless of how you became a registered nurse (RN), therefore, everything counts very highly toward your overall score. Below is a good example of a work history for your resume:
Centura Health
Registered Nurse
2012–2020
Finishing a nursing program successfully at a university or a nursing school is how most people enter the nursing profession. In this section, see to it that you check the education portion of your nursing resume with only the information that’s necessary for your position and nothing else. Make sure to omit any references to grades or topics studied at university. List your academic credentials in the reverse sequence of their occurrence in your life, and if you already have a post-secondary qualification and some work experience under your belt, you may omit the information about your high school education from your application.
Educational Background
University of Toronto - Bachelor of Science, Nursing
2007-2009
There are a variety of settings in nursing that call for specialized skill sets. You must mention the abilities in times of accidents and emergencies, as well as those abilities that allow you to keep the inhabitants of a nursing home happy and healthy. This part of your nursing resume needs to be updated with each new application you submit, so it’s only wise to create a master list of nursing skills, then copy and paste entries from the said list into the proper positions when needed.
After this, you can return to the advertisement for the nursing job, and copy and paste around 5 to 10 abilities from your master list into your nursing resume. Make sure that you at least cover what’s required by the job description. A few examples can include the following:
You may also include other non-specific skills, like the following:
A cover letter is often expected to be included in the application. If there’s no mention of a cover letter anywhere in the application, then you should take the initiative to submit one. The ideal length of a cover letter for a nursing position is between 250 and 400 words, and it should be able to fit on a single page of A4 paper without exceeding. Put a call to action at the end of your nursing cover letter to demonstrate your eagerness to move on to the next step of the recruitment process. Below is an example of a cover letter:
Your Name
Title
Current Company (If Any)
Mailing Address
Phone Number
Email Address
Dear [Hiring Manager Name],
Managing my unit’s budget and cutting 35% from it without sacrificing the quality of patient care was one of my proudest moments as a nurse. I would be even prouder to replicate that success at the Maine Medical Center’s Portland Unit.
As a nurse with 5 years of experience, I’m drawn to MMC’s patient-centred focus. MMC’s belief in ownership and innovation creates a respectful environment where I believe my talents would shine. Among my past achievements are the following:
I’m excited to see how much more I can do in a focused system like MMC’s.
Can we set up a meeting to discuss how my past work can translate to elevated success for MMC patients?
Best Regards,
[Your Name]
Nurses should also include their volunteer experiences and certifications to showcase their dedication to the field, expanding your skill set, and demonstrating ongoing professional development. Volunteer experience highlights your commitment to helping others and can provide valuable insights into different healthcare settings and patient populations. Meanwhile, certifications indicate specialized training and expertise in specific areas of nursing practice, making you a more attractive candidate to potential employers.
When you include these experiences on your resume, you show pro-activeness in seeking out opportunities for growth and learning in the field of nursing. You also position yourself as a well-rounded and capable healthcare professional in today’s competitive job market. However, if it’s too exhausting to make resumes for each company you apply for, then you can make use of a resume builder.
If you find writing down your credentials, background, and skills time-consuming, especially because you’d rather use your energy in preparing for interviews or spending time with family, then try this free online resume builder by Caring Support. Being able to submit a quality, easy to read, and attention-grabbing resume at just a tap or click is convenient and efficient, especially for busy people like those in the field of healthcare. Here are some of the reasons why using our resume builder, instead of merely using resume templates, is a great idea:
Our free resume builder is readily customizable, allowing you to not only choose the colours you prefer but also tailor your resume for the specific role that you’re applying to. It helps ensure that your resume presents essential information in a clear and cohesive manner.
Our resume builder is designed to be visually appealing yet still professional by our professional graphic designer, thus helping your skills and experiences that are relevant to nursing roles stand out from the rest and more effectively capture the attention of the recruiter of the healthcare organization that you’re applying to. This can help you stand out among other applicants and increase your chances of securing interviews with top healthcare organizations.
Utilizing a resume builder simplifies the process of creating a polished and professional document, saving you time and effort in crafting a compelling resume. Through our intuitive resume builder, you can effectively showcase your qualifications and passion for nursing in just a few clicks, while making sure that it’s tailor-fitted for nursing roles. You may also opt to use this resume in directly applying to the jobs available on the Caring Support website, in addition to creating a video resume that can also be easily included when applying for jobs in our platform.
Nurses should use Caring Support for several key reasons. We provide a centralized location where nurses can efficiently browse and apply for job opportunities tailored to their qualifications and preferences. With Caring Support, nurses can gain access to a wide range of job listings from various healthcare facilities, saving time and effort in their job search process. Caring Support also offers resources such as resume building tools, interview tips, and career development resources that can help nurses enhance their professional skills and market themselves effectively to potential employers.
At Caring Support, we allow nurses to stay up-to-date on industry trends, networking opportunities, and continuing education options essential for ongoing professional growth and advancement in the field. Ultimately, Caring Support empowers nurses to make informed decisions about their career path while connecting them with valuable opportunities for personal and professional development within the healthcare industry. Create an account with us or log in if you already have one.
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