In Virginia’s competitive job market, a strong healthcare resume can be pivotal in securing an interview. Effective healthcare resumes communicate your qualifications, contextualize your skills, and help prospective employers understand how you fit into their teams.
Our step-by-step writing guide is designed to help aspiring healthcare professionals craft compelling resumes that appeal to recruiters and application tracking software.
Not sure which healthcare facilities to apply to? Read our blog on how to choose the right hospitals to work for..
The Key Takeaways
• Start with a master CV, then tailor your resume to match the job post. Incorporating keywords from the job description can help your resume pass applicant tracking system filters.
• Keep your healthcare resume concise and easy to skim. Your most relevant experience and skills should be front and center.
• A career coach or professional recruiter can help format and word your resume to meet your ideal role. Consider working with one if you’re having trouble.
How to Write a Healthcare Resume for Virginia Hospitals
Here are 6 steps to write an effective healthcare resume, whether you’re just starting your career or are a seasoned professional.
Use this guide to craft a master CV—a detailed document that includes all your previous experiences, responsibilities, achievements, and skills to date. Then, make a copy of your CV and condense it into a one-page healthcare resume that highlights your relevant roles, tailored to each job application.
1. Start With Your Contact Information
At the top of the page in the document header, include your full name, city and state, phone number, and email address. Avoid personal email addresses that may seem inappropriate or too casual as they can seem spammy. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you may also include the link.
2. Craft a Professional Summary
A professional summary allows recruiters and hiring managers to digest your resume at a glance. This section should be a short, engaging paragraph (no more than four sentences) emphasizing your qualifications, years of experience, and relevant skills.
Remember to customize your synopsis to meet the job description and requirements:
• Do you specialize in a healthcare field or hospital department?
• How does your experience translate into tangible skills?
• What makes you stand out?
Hiring managers may skim through hundreds of resumes in a week, so it’s important to open with a concise professional summary that puts your best foot forward.
3. Introduce Your Education, Certifications, and Licenses
Many healthcare roles have education requirements, so it’s best to list relevant degrees, certifications, and licenses. The latter can make you more competitive by showcasing your versatility and ability to tackle niche tasks. Certifications and licensure also demonstrate a dedication to continuing education.
While not necessary, you may choose to include topical coursework, a GPA if exceptional, or honors. However, you shouldn’t overcrowd the education section if it means removing pertinent information from your work experience.
4. Include Relevant Work Experience, Starting With the Most Recent
Your work experience forms the backbone of your resume and should be the bulk of the document. Typically, applicants prefer to organize their experience chronologically by relevancy, using bullet points to highlight key accomplishments. However, how you structure this section will depend on your previous experience and skills.
Some common healthcare resume formats include:
• Organizing by Role: Include the company, your role, and the duration of your role. If you stayed at one company for a long time but received promotions that entailed new responsibilities, each role can have its own section. If you are a recent high school or college graduate, you may mention internships, apprenticeships, or volunteer roles.
• Organizing by Project: Formatting your resume by project can be a great option if you’ve only had one role but worked on multiple major projects with distinct responsibilities or achievements. Start by mentioning your company, role, and duration of your role. Then, start each subsection with your project and project duration supported by bullet points outlining your impact.
• Organizing by Skill: A skills-based resume uses your skills as the main headers while supporting each section with work experience demonstrating how you acquired and executed those skills. Applicants with limited or no work experience and people switching careers tend to use a skills-based format to showcase transferable skills.
Regardless of how you format your experience, it’s important to communicate accomplishments in a way that showcases your capabilities, expertise, and impact. You’re not just listing your previous responsibilities—you’re emphasizing how you drove results.
Remember to tailor your experiences to your job description. Your experience needs to show that you can do the job.
Some tips when writing your bullet points:
• Use Active Verbs: Avoid using passive voice, passive verbs, and nominalization in your bullet points. They weaken your writing and often lengthen your sections unnecessarily.
For example:
• Passive voice: “I was tasked with administering vaccines.” vs “I administered vaccines to ~15 patients per day.”
• Passive verbs: “I helped my teammates update SOP documents.” vs “I updated SOP documents, working with a core team to streamline processes.”
• Verb nominalization: “I was responsible for the expansion of the ICU department.” vs “I expanded the ICU department.”
• Quantify Your Accomplishments: Where possible, include specific numbers to illustrate the scale of your work and its impact. This gives employers a better understanding of how much you can handle. There’s a difference between “working on patient intake” vs “managing patient intake for 50+ patients per day.”
• Demonstrate Your Impact: At the end of the day, healthcare employers want to know how you help them reach their goals, which differs based on the job description. Use specific metrics to highlight your key accomplishments.
Some example questions:
• How did your work support your team?
• Did you improve a process by introducing a new workflow that reduced processing times?
• Were you able to increase the number of patients supported per day?
• Do you have a higher patient care success rate?
5. Showcase Relevant Skills (If There’s Space)
Many healthcare resume templates include a relevant skills section to capture keywords in the job description. While listing your skills isn’t necessary if you’ve incorporated them into the work experience section, it can still emphasize your capabilities at a glance.
Common skills to include are:
• Hard Skills: Core competencies that require specialized training or certification to accomplish. This could be experience with specific software, medical billing skills, or patient care management experience.
• Soft Skills: More general abilities such as communication, time management, and empathy.
• Being Multilingual: Speaking multiple languages is a strong advantage for applicants in a patient-facing role.
6. Proofread and Edit Your Resume Before Submitting
One of the biggest mistakes applicants make is submitting their resume without proofreading. Typos can make you look unprofessional or careless—a poor sign for jobs that require attention to detail.
Read your resume out loud to help catch errors. With each pass, look for different things, starting with ideas and organization and ending with grammatical mistakes. AI tools like Grammarly can identify typos and help you reword unclear sections.
Finally, have a peer, mentor, or career coach review your resume for another perspective. This is especially helpful if they’re familiar with the medical field.
Healthcare Resume Tips
Now that you have the basics down to write a CV, here are practical healthcare resume tips to help your application stand out.
• Leverage Your Network: In-school career coaches, healthcare recruiters, and alumni networks are great resources to support your healthcare job search. Work with them to refine your resume or build professional connections.
• Start With a Resume Template: If you don’t want to design a resume from scratch, Canva offers several attractive resume templates to choose from. However, avoid sacrificing content over design.
• Create a Master CV, Then Tailor It: A master CV allows you to keep track of your work experience and skills over time. Copy sections from your master CV to adapt to the job posting, tailoring the content to match what the employer is looking for.
• Incorporate Keywords From the Job Posting: Many hospitals use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to automate their selection process. This means an ATS will scan your resume, score it to judge if you’re a fit for the job, and only forward your resume to the hiring manager if you score high enough.
You can increase your chances of passing the screening process if you incorporate keywords from the job posting in your resume, which indicates that you have the skills and qualifications the manager is looking for.
• Keep the Format Skimmable: Hiring managers do not have time to read all resumes thoroughly. Use your professional synopsis, clear headers, and bullet points to help managers understand your key points at a glance.
• Update Your LinkedIn: As you progress through the application process, hiring managers may cross-reference your resume with your LinkedIn to verify your experience. Your LinkedIn information should be consistent with your resume to avoid confusion.
• PDF vs Word Doc: When submitting your healthcare resume, use the ATS’s preferred format. This makes it easier for the system to scan your content. If no preferred format is specified, default to a PDF. A PDF can maintain its formatting across platforms and is more secure.
3 Healthcare Resume Examples
1. Nurse Resume Example
2. Healthcare Admin Resume Example
3. Medical Coder Resume Example
Craft Your Healthcare Resume Today
A well-crafted healthcare resume can go a long way toward standing out in the job market. Remember to submit your resume to multiple places—and don’t get discouraged if you don’t hear back right away. Your resume is only one piece of the puzzle. Networking, professional connections, and a polished LinkedIn profile can make a significant difference!
Not sure where to start? Leverage On Board Virginia’s interactive job board to discover thousands of healthcare roles across the state.
