Resume Writing - CONTENT

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Resume Writing - CONTENT

The basic information that should be included in your resume is: your name; current and/or permanent address and telephone number; education; honors and awards; and appropriate professional experiences (both paid and unpaid). These are required categories. However, many sections may be added, including (but certainly not limited to!): job objective, summary of qualifications, clinical rotations/placements, presentations and publications, extracurricular and community activities, certifications, professional memberships, continuing education units, and additional information (or background, special skills and interests). Throughout your resume, in all sections, information should be listed in reverse chronological order, from most recent backward.

Name, Address(es), Phone Number(s). These can be centered on the page or in the left or right corners. Phone numbers must be included so that potential employers are able to reach you. If there are two phone numbers where you can be reached at (i.e., home and office) you may include both. Be sure to put your name on the top of page 2 if you have a 2-page resume. Think carefully about listing both current and permanent addresses. Do you know when you will leave your current address and if someone at your permanent address will take messages? Create a situation in which it is easy for an employer to reach you. If you are a frequent e-mail user, you may also wish to include your e-mail address.

Objective (also called Professional Objective, Job Objective, Career Objective). This is an optional category. There can be real advantages in using this category since it lets the reader know "up front" what it is you are looking for. It is particularly useful if you have made a career change and your past experience does not reflect your current interests.
To be most effective, the objective must be specific. An objective such as: "pediatric or geriatric nursing position in a large or small hospital" is not advisable since the reader will not be convinced of your commitment to any particular area. You are much better served by an objective such as: "Pediatric nursing position at a university-affiliated hospital." Your objective can also be even more detailed, such as: "Advanced clinical position in the field of women's health care, with opportunity for research." Avoid phrases like: "Seek challenging and responsible position" or "Position utilizing my education and skills." They are overused and tell the reader very little about what you want. It is perfectly appropriate to have several resumes, each with different objectives and/or content to suit particular fields of interest.
However, if you want to use only one resume for several types of positions, a growing trend is to exclude an objective altogether. In this case, you should use your cover letters to target your interest in particular positions.

Qualifications Statement (also called Summary of Qualifications, Profile). This category allows you to summarize the outstanding features of your background that are pertinent to the job(s) you are seeking. A well written qualifications section can direct the reader to what you want her/him to know, and provide clues about what to focus on. This kind of statement is generally used by professionals with quite a bit of experience; if you have less experience, your qualifications will be obvious from your descriptions of your previous positions.

As with the job objective, your qualifications statement must make sense to the reader, and be as specific as possible. For example, a phrase like, "Outstanding background and clinical training in pediatric, geriatric, and oncological nursing, counseling, management, budgeting, German, and Spanish", even if true, is so hard to believe that it would be discounted.

Good qualifications statements read, for example, as follows: "Experienced critical care practitioner and educator with recent work in long-term management of cardiovascular patients. Additional background in administration and supervision." or "Strong clinical background in individual and family therapy in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Track record as effective leader and consultant. Able to utilize systems approach in problem solving."

To prepare an effective qualifications statement you must think carefully about what exactly you can offer an employer.

Education and Awards, Honors, Activities. These categories can be combined or separated, as you prefer. What is crucial is that all information be easy to find on the page (see resume samples for different styles of presentation). This section begins with school(s) attended and degree(s) received. When listing dates, it is not necessary to list the years you attended the school, it is only necessary to list the date you received (will receive) your degree.

If you transferred from another school, it is only necessary to list the school from which you received your degree, unless there is a reason to include the other school (i.e., you were very involved in extra-curricular activities and want to include them). Typically high school is omitted unless there is something meaningful to the reader about the high school that you attended. For instance, if you are using your rlsume for applying to positions in Catholic hospitals and you are a graduate of a Catholic school, that is information you might want to include.

You may also want to list the title of your master's thesis (if any), research interests and relevant course work. Often nurses include senior leaderships and significant clinical rotations or practicums in this section, but they can also be presented in more detail in the "Experience Section."

Always begin with your most recent involvements and list entries in reverse chronological order working your way backwards. For both activities and honors, you may want to list entries as subheadings of the college or university where you did or received them. If there is some reason to highlight them in a separate section be sure that in addition to being clearly organized, the information is strong enough to stand on its own.

Even if you were very active in college and can write paragraphs about your extracurricular activities, you should concentrate on selecting only the most interesting/impressive ones. For example, if you were president of your student government during your junior year, you might want to omit the one semester during freshman year that you were on the hospitality committee.

Commonly known honors (such as Sigma Theta Tau, Phi Beta Kappa) need no explanation, but lesser or unknown awards can be explained briefly, for example, "Eta Pi Upsilon, Women's Honorary Society." Be sure to include all scholarships, fellowships, grants, special awards and recognition.

Experience. While there are many approaches you can take in presenting your experience, the two most common are chronological and functional. A chronological resume is organized around the dates of your experiences, from most to least recent. A functional resume involves arranging your experience around functions you have performed and skills you have developed. The most common form of resume is chronological; it also has the advantages of being easier to read and being more familiar to employers.

The approach you take to listing your experiences on a chronological resume will depend on what you are looking for, and what you have done. The only criteria are that you are consistent and clear. In some cases, one general heading titled "Experience" will be appropriate. In other cases, breaking down your experience into sub-sections will be most effective. For example; if you are seeking a Clinical Nurse Specialist position, and have both clinical and research experience, two separate headings - one "Clinical Experience" and one "Research Experience" - might have more impact than a single "Experience" heading.

Alternatively you may wish to separate related and unrelated experience, with sections headed "Nursing Experience" or "Clinical Rotations" for nursing related experience and sections entitled "Employment" or "Additional Work Experience" for unrelated positions. Categories are created so that your most relevant experience is read first. It is perfectly appropriate to include unpaid work in your experience section. However, it is important both that you make the reader aware that you have had paid work, and also that you clearly indicate whether or not a position was paid.

Your approach will be somewhat different for the functional resume. You may decide, particularly where you are looking for a position which is not related to your past specific job titles, that you want to organize your experiences around roles you've filled or skills you possess. For example; if you are seeking a mid-level administrative position you might want to describe your clinical, management, programming, supervisory and teaching skills separately from the positions at which you actually used them, and then merely list positions without descriptive passages. Since most employers want to know what your responsibilities were for each position, functional resumes may not be as effective as chronological. There are ways, however, to get the best of both.

Try to describe your experience in as interesting a way as possible, while being as brief as possible. However don't feel you need to sacrifice clarifying details about important accomplishments for the sake of brevity! The use of action verbs to describe what you did (see the verb list in this handbook) has the effect of making you seem direct and action oriented. Ask yourself the question "What did I do?" to identify action verbs that will effectively describe your job responsibilities.

Phrases like "Responsibilities included (or duties included) referring patients to community resources" can be phrased more persuasively (and simply) by saying "Referred patients to community resources." Descriptions need not be phrased in full sentences. Ask yourself the question "So what?" to determine which aspects of your past are important enough to include on your resume. The question in the employers mind is "Why should I speak with this person? Why are they different than other nurses I've heard from?" Try to answer that question in your description.

While in the preparation stage it is vital to brainstorm everything about your background, it is equally important to then weed out unnecessary information and highlight what is relevant. For example, if you've been an administrator for the past five years, a staff nurse for 10 years before that, and are looking for an administrative position, you may not want to include every single staff nurse position you ever held. You can however, find creative ways to summarize years of experience and take up a minimal amount of space. In general, giving more detailed accounts about the most recent five years and summarized versions of experiences prior to that works well.

Identify your accomplishments, achievements and successes in each of your positions and as a whole. Did you chair a fund-raising drive which raised more money that any year in the past? Were you invited by the Director of Medicine to join a hospital-wide task force? Did you develop materials on health care which have been adopted by the clinic in which you worked? If so, be specific about these achievements on the resume! Even if the job you held is not directly relevant to nursing, it is likely that you learned skills (i.e., organizational, interpersonal, time management, etc.) which are completely relevant to nursing.

Certifications. These can be listed as a separate category here or directly after "Education" section. They can also be included in your "Education" section as a sub-heading. It must be clear to the reader in what state and field you are certified. When listing your licenses, you do not need to give your license numbers. It would be sufficient to say "Registered Nurse: Pennsylvania and New Jersey." Before getting too far into the job search, make certain you know what licenses and certifications are necessary to obtain employment in your field and location of choice. Begin the paper work early. Your department/school or professional organization can give you detailed information about this.

Community Activities. Employers are frequently interested in knowing what you have done besides your work experiences, or how you have become involved as a "citizen." Such things as volunteer work with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, charity or youth organizations, alumnae/i associations, etc. can help to make you stand out as exceptional.

Publications and Presentations. These can be two separate sections or can be combined depending upon the quantity of material you have. They should be listed in standard bibliographic form for your field. If you have many entries in these areas and are applying for teaching positions in academic institutions, you will probably need to write a curriculum vitae (c.v.). See the section at the end of this article for more information on writing cvs.

Professional Memberships. Just as "community activities" show that you are a good public citizen, listing professional memberships shows that you are an active professional citizen. In every profession there are professional associations that give members a chance to interact with each other and keep up with current developments in the field. It is highly advisable that you join at least one professional association. If you have been active in any professional organization, (i.e., held leadership roles or participated in important committees) you might benefit by mentioning not only the organization but also your level of involvement on your resume.

Additional Information (or Background, Special Skills and Interests). This is the place to put interesting miscellaneous information that employers may find intriguing but that does not fit anywhere else. Some examples are: special skills (such as computer programming, fund raising if not mentioned above); certifications (if not listed elsewhere); foreign/computer languages known; travel/living abroad; sports background; and/or personal interests.

Be specific about your interests. A description such as: "Enjoy Chinese cooking, high altitude mountain climbing and reading detective stories" is a lot more interesting than "Interests including cooking, mountain climbing, and reading."

Please note that this section is optional and is generally most useful if you have limited experience and therefore want to give an employer a better idea of who you are as a person. If the body of your resume has included the things you think are important, and you feel that an "additional information" section is not relevant, it isn't necessary to include it.

References. Generally there is no reason to list references on the resume. In fact, you may want to pick and choose which references to send to any particular job. It is sufficient to state "References available upon request."

Some people consider it appropriate to omit this statement altogether as it is obvious that employers can obtain your references by requesting them. If however, you have referees who are so distinguished that inclusion of their names adds to your qualifications, then list them individually on a separate sheet of matching paper.

Career Services has a full Credentials Service for students who would like to store their references in one place. Please ask at the Career Services main reception desk for more information about this service.