Resume Tips for Jobs in the Healthcare Industry

Moving Forward in Your Medical Career

Medical Resources Staffing Services gives additional career resources to our candidates including resume tips for those looking for jobs in allied health, science and biotechnology research, healthcare administration and clinical and dental settings throughout San Diego and Southern California.

Whether you’re working through Medical Resources to find a job or managing your own job search, your resume or curriculum vitae can make or break your chances of landing an interview. Remember, applying for employment through Medical Resources should be handled with the same consideration you would give to any other employer.

Medical employers and our staffing consultants look for applicants with resumes that reflect high expertise, professionalism and commitment to overall quality. When it comes to writing your resume or CV, there are specific ways to express these and other key selling points.

The type of resume you submit to our medical staffing consultants or another employer depends on the position you’re applying for. Professionals seeking jobs in most allied health, clinical, healthcare administration and management settings should submit their work experience and other information in a resume format, preferably in reverse chronological order, so that experience and job-related skills can be assessed according to the organization worked for.

Remember, your resume is a summary of relevant professional experience. One page should suffice unless you are at an advanced professional level. Most potential employers will appreciate a concise snapshot of your most recent experience.

Typical headings in a resume include:

• Job objective
• Summary of experience (optional)
• Degrees and other education
• Professional experience
• Skills
• Activities (include activities related to professional competence, not personal hobbies or interests)

Alternatively, professionals interested in scientific and biotech or research-oriented positions should consider creating a curriculum vitae, which uses a more modest approach than a resume. While resumes create a professional identity, CVs construct a scholarly identity of the applicant. Therefore, the approach used when writing a CV is to showcase skills and abilities as a researcher, instructor and scholar.

Typical headings in curriculum vitae include:

• Degrees and other education
• Internships
• Professional experience
• Honors and awards
• Publications, speaking engagements and conference presentations
• Professional affiliations

Whether you are submitting a resume or a CV, there is some basic information that should always be included in your document:

In both a resume and CV, education should be listed in reverse chronological order from college on. List your highest degree first including the name and location of the institution you attended and the year your degree was awarded. For CVs, it is standard to list the name of your thesis title and advisor in this section.

Resumes should list professional qualifications and experience in reverse chronological order using action words that describe your job roles. Provide truthful examples of how you accomplished your duties and place emphasis on achievements earned on the job. You should provide as much information as necessary to peak the interest of the reader, saving the details for your interview with our medical employment agency or another healthcare employer.

CVs should list research, teaching and work experience. Provide brief descriptions of undergraduate and graduate research including the date and names of the projects, professors and institutions involved. You may also include your Statement of Research Interests in this section if you’re applying for science or biotech research jobs.

If you have teaching or lecturing experience, include information on what you taught, when and where. And if you have other related work experience, list it in reverse chronological order.

Your resume or CV should be well polished and free of errors in order to show our medical staffing consultants and other employers your best face and to stand out from the crowd. When reviewing your resume or CV, check for these items:

• Spelling. Double-check the spelling of names, businesses, schools and other uncommon words. Spelling errors show lack of attention to detail and a large margin of error in a field where accuracy and precision is paramount.
• Gapping. Gapping is the use of incomplete sentences to communicate messages concisely, eliminating unnecessary words so the reader can quickly grasp your experiences and accomplishments.
• Parallelism. Verbs and structure of phrases and sentences should agree and remain consistent throughout your resume or CV to ensure your messages are communicated and understood easily.
• Keywords. Our medical staffing consultants and other employers sift through stacks upon stacks of electronic and print resume documents looking for specific words that reflect the skills and abilities needed for the position at hand. The more keywords in the document, the more effective your resume or CV will be at standing out.
• Professionalism. Your resume or CV should be simple and organized in a way that is easy to read by our medical staffing consultants and/or other hiring managers. Forget fancy fonts, graphics, colors or formatting; instead, let your skills and experience do the talking.

Our staffing consultants can help candidates customize their resume or CV to jobs in healthcare or a related field they’re interested in. Submit your resume through our online application and become a candidate for jobs offered through Medical Resources Staffing Services.