What is a resume?
Your resume is probably the most important document you will write in your professional life. It is the sum and substance of your work history, your education, and your goals for the future. Your resume is a personal advertisement designed to market your skills in the best possible light. It should convince a potential employer that you are an outstanding candidate for a job and can contribute to the organization. Good resume writing is not easy, but it is vital. The tools you need are organization, attention to detail, and concern for appearance. Then let your resume speak for you.
The Job Search: Getting Ready
The first step in creating a good resume is understanding what you want for your future and your career. Preparing an organizational strategy or work plan will help you to answer the not-so-simple questions like What do I want to do? Where do I want to do it? Sometimes the answers to these questions are obvious, but often they are not completely clear in your mind, especially if you are considering a career or geo graphic change. And if your aspirations for the future are cloudy, your resume will reflect indecision. So begin by getting your thoughts organized and getting them down on paper. Ask yourself some of these questions:
What Are the Most Important Elements In My Work Environment?
Do you want to manage people or would you rather concentrate on patient care? Some love the challenge of leading a department or organization. But for many, this aspect of professional life seems to get in the way of doing what they love best--the one-on-one care for people who need their expertise.
This is an especially important question for people who are considering changes in their career path, but it is also important for people just starting out. What kind of person you are and how you wish to contribute to an organization determine the first major section of the resume -- the objective-- and it is the first piece of relevant information your potential employer will evaluate you on,
In What Type of Health Facility Do I Want to Work?
Many health care professions may be practiced in a variety of facilities, but you probably have an idea or preference for where you would like to be. The choices can include
- Hospitals-large or small, public or private, general or specialized
- HMOs and clinics
- Private practice--individual or group
- Research facilities
- Home care
- Teaching institutions
- Insurance and medical finance companies
- Schools
- Corporate health facilities
Now that you have done some thinking about the type of job you want and where you would like to work, your next consideration should be the benefits offered by employers. Family needs, continuing education expectations, and personal preferences all influence what you need from your employer. You may not find the ideal benefits package, but knowing ahead of time what you prefer can save time and you can read the career ads with a more critical eye. Some work-related considerations are:
- Shift work. When do you want to work?
- Alternative work schedules or flexible hours. Do you need to work part-time, job share, or arrange other alternative scheduling to meet personal needs?
- Continuing education opportunities. Will your employer pay for continuing education classes or an advanced degree?
- Salary considerations and geographic differences. Where do you want to live and how much do you need to earn to live there? Salaries are often linked to the cost-of-living in a particular geographic area. Salaries will be lower in Des Moines than they are in Boston, but so will the cost of housing and transportation.
Some of the journals are local or regional. Some describe jobs from all over the world. If you want to stay in one part of the country or have lifestyle preferences, your job search must be more focused.
Are you an avid skier? Do you want to live near the ocean? Do you like city life, or do you prefer suburban or country life? These considerations may be reflected in your career choice; for instance, if you are an emergency care professional, you may prefer a large urban hospital. A private practice in a small town may give you a closer relationship with your patients and the community than a large city would offer. There are many opportunities for health care professionals overseas, in service organizations like the Peace Corps and the International Red Cross, as well as corporations and governments.
Remember to watch local and metropolitan newspapers for ads for health-related jobs, many of which will not be advertised outside of the geographic area. Many employers feel that the job applicant pool is sufficiently large in their city or metropolitan region and they need not look further.
Some of these jobs may be high-turnover positions, and advertising nationally or state wide would be too time-consuming and expensive. Newspapers often have a special section in the employment classifieds with the heading "Medical/Professional" or "Medical-Health."
Components of the Resume
The type of resume you choose to use will depend on which elements of your background and career objective you wish to emphasize. We will discuss the chronological resume, as it is the most efficient style and is preferred by most employers because it delivers the most relevant information in a compact, easy-to-read style. Employers do not have time to hunt for the information they need, and they probably will not bother if a resume is hard to read. All resumes should have these basic elements:
- Name, address, and telephone number
- Career objective
- Employment history, including job title, institutional or company name and location, and dates of employment
- Description of work experience
- Educational background
- In addition, you may need sections for
- Professional memberships
- Community activities
- Licenses or certifications
- Publications
- Seminars or workshops attended
- References note
Objective
Most career counselors and resume guides strongly advise resume writers to include an objective, even if it is written in very general terms. An objective gives your resume a clear focus and allows you to customize your resume so that the employer does not have to guess what position you are applying for. Objectives should be brief and realistic, such as, "Dental Assistant," but not overblown, like "Dental Assistant in a Modern, High-Technology Practice."
Professional or Related Work Experience
This is the most vital part of your resume. The basic elements to include for each position are the dates you started and left (if you held the position for less than a year, such as a summer job or a temporary job, include the month; otherwise the year is enough), the name of the organization with the city and state, and what you did in that position.
This is perhaps the most difficult writing you will do on the resume because you need to describe not only the basic responsibilities of your job but also significant achievements or assignments you completed that may have been outside your normal job duties.
A potential employer wants to know what you can do and how well you can fit into their organization. Do you take on added responsibilities? Can you work independently? Are you project oriented? Were you appointed to special teams or committees? Have you written grant proposals? Did you receive a promotion or an increase in responsibility? Emphasize the positive aspects of your experience and how you contributed to your workplace, and keep your objective in mind as you write. Start each sentence with a strong action verb. Remember too that a job title does not always mean the same thing from job to job or in a different region of the country. You should always explain the work done,
Don't worry if there are gaps in your work history. Most people have these, and employers are generally not concerned about them if they are less than a year in duration.
Any conspicuous gap that appears in the resume can be explained in the cover letter if you wish to explain. If your spouse has been transferred frequently, or if you took some time out for family needs or returned to school, you should present these times in your life in a positive light. Time off from active employment can be as beneficial to your professional life as your work experience and should be viewed as such.
If you are just starting out in your career, include all the jobs you have held, a description of your work, and any job-related activities that you feel are related to your new profession. A summer spent as a lifeguard can show reliability, initiative, concern for the safety of others, CPR skills, and a desire to work with children. Every job teaches you something important about you and your relationships with others. Look again at your objective and relate your job experiences to that goal. Be sure to include intern ships, residencies, fellowships, and other in-training experience as well.
Education
If you are just out of school and have limited work experience in your field, your education should appear before work experience. This section should include
- Schools attended, degrees earned, and major
- Educational workshops attended
- Continuing education classes
- Certificate programs
- Grade point average and any scholastic honors earned (if you are a recent graduate)
Use this section to highlight your professional interests. Include professional organizations and activities. Emphasize meetings you have attended and papers or presentations you have given.
Licenses and Professional Certifications
If your profession requires licensing or certification, list the accrediting agency or organization.
There are some things that do not belong on your resume:
- Personal data. Your age, gender, marital status, children, weight, and height should not go on a professional resume. This is not relevant information and can lead to either deliberate or inadvertent discrimination.
- Hobbies. Most employers have little interest in what you do with your leisure time. Resumes should relate only information that is relevant to your work.
- References. References, like personal data, are no longer customary on resumes. You may add a note at the bottom of your resume that references are available on request.
- Under no circumstances should you include names of references from whom you have not received permission.
- Salary history. Do not put anything on your resume that indicates what salary you are expecting to receive, unless this information is specifically requested by the employer. In this case, you should attach a salary history page to your cover letter. Otherwise, salary expectations will be considered presumptuous and are inappropriate.
A new graduate's resume should be no longer than one page. Even experienced professionals should limit their resume to two pages. A good rule to follow is one page for the first ten years of experience and two pages for the second ten years. Extensive experience may require going on to a third page, but remember that recruiters want summaries, not autobiographies. Recruiters may not take the time to read a long resume, so be concise!
Your resume should look as good as it can. To an employer, the appearance of your resume reflects the care and responsibility you will show on the job. The resume should be either laser printed with a clear type font or professionally typeset. The best type fonts are Times, Helvetica, and Palatino, and these are available on most word-processing programs. Avoid fancy or unusual type fonts--they may make your resume stand out, but they detract from the content of the document. Your name and all of the headings should appear in capital letters typed in bold. Select high-quality paper for copying or printing. White is the first choice as it has a clean and crisp appearance. Ivory and linen are also acceptable colors. Like the type font, do not let the color or texture overwhelm the reader. If you are unsure of textures and quality of paper, ask at a stationery store or copy or print shop. No corrections should be seen, and all margins and indents should be uniform.
Always proofread your final draft for any grammatical and typographical errors. Then give it to a friend or teacher to recheck. If you are word processing on a computer, save the finished resume on a computer disk. This will make corrections and updating very simple. Always review and update your resume for every job application: The more experience you have, the more important the most recent accomplishments become. Descriptions of less-recent jobs will need to be reexamined and shortened. Re-date your new resume so that it always looks fresh and new.
