Resume should reflect achievements, value to employer
Irecently received a letter from a nurse who had relocated and is seeking employment. She asked me to critique her resume in the hope that she will find a job that she will love and that will allow her to help others.
Here’s my response:
First and foremost, thank you for the wonderful and caring work you do. I appreciate your willingness to have your resume critiqued. I believe this will not only help you identify ways to improve its effectiveness, but also provide guidance to others with similar backgrounds. I see three critical areas in which you can dramatically improve your resume.
AESTHETICS AND FORMATTING
I am a big fan of employing creativity when it’s appropriate for a client’s career objective and intended audience. As a nurse, you can be more creative in your design, possibly even incorporating imagery — or at the very least highlighting such areas as your recent Employee of the Year award much more prominently.
Additionally, it is not a good idea to have your entire resume written in all caps. While this is fine for headings, it is inappropriate for the body of your resume, and it’s challenging to read. You also have to ensure that you are consistent in your formatting style and grammar. Currently, I see bullets of different sizes, misused punctuation and numerous spelling mistakes.
If executed well, your entire resume can reinforce your professionalism, attention to detail and organizational skills — all vital elements to your candidacy as a health care professional.
QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY
You have some great differentiating factors to highlight. However, since you begin your resume by saying what you want instead of what you can do for a potential employer, these highlights are buried in your professional-experience section.
A qualifications summary will provide the reader with a critical overview of your candidacy, your key qualifications, how you have contributed value and generally what you can offer the employer. This is information the reader needs to know before completing the brief (usually seven seconds or less) screening process. You need to sell what you can do versus what you want.
I suggest that you omit your objective statement entirely and replace it with a summary of who you are and what you can offer. Highlight areas such as your experience in developing new programs, leading entire teams, coordinating resource utilization, establishing best practices, assisting in the design of a new lab, and developing patient-education and nursing-training materials. These are all areas that position you as a highly skilled, experienced and seasoned nursing professional who can offer more to an employer than just direct patient care.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Given the amount of experience you’re presenting in your resume, there isn’t enough content to explore your roles fully and give them the focus they deserve on paper. In addition, it isn’t a good idea to include specific roles from the 1980s, sometimes even the 1990s — unless the information specifically enhances (not just supports) your candidacy.
In your case, I believe you could begin your resume with your early 2000s experience; this would also eliminate the employment gap that is currently obvious. If you want to include your earlier jobs, the experience can be bylined. This simply means to mention the roles without dates — for example, “Additional experience as a Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory Supervisor and as a Critical Care Nurse.” By doing this, you can present the foundation of your career and avoid unnecessarily aging your candidacy.
By exploring your roles more fully and focusing on more recent engagements, you will also have room to highlight your achievements. Achievements are how you tell a hiring manager that you have gone above and beyond your job description to add value to your role and employer. Achievements also predict your ability to perform in your next professional engagement and can differentiate your candidacy in the competitive marketplace.
Explore your achievements thoroughly, being sure to present the result of your efforts first, followed by some of the key actions you took to achieve a favorable outcome. I am not proposing using your resume as an opportunity to write a biography, but you do need to explore your background thoroughly enough to pique the reader’s interest. You can go into greater detail during a personal interview.
The great news is you have a fantastic career to present to a potential employer. There are many opportunities to improve the appearance and effectiveness of your resume to better engage the reader, differentiate your candidacy and showcase the value you offer.
— Samantha Nolan is an advanced personal-branding strategist and career expert and is the founder and CEO of Nolan Branding. Do you have a resume, career or jobsearch question for Dear Sam? Reach Samantha at dearsam@nolanbranding.com. For more information about Nolan Branding’s services, visit www.nolanbranding.com, or call 888-9-MY-BRAND or 614-570-3442.