We believe all of our travel nurses are rockstars, and we want to help you showcase how awesome you are by creating the perfect travel nursing resume. Perfecting the resume can help you score your dream job in your top choice city. Your resume is basically an advertisement of your work experience. It takes time to prepare and perfect, so we’ve made a list of 7 ways to help you showcase your skills to score the nursing job of your dreams.
1. Plan and Prepare
Before you start listing your work experience and educational background, establish a strategy. Check out samples of other nurse resumes for inspiration. Every nurse has a unique work history, so your resume should be a reflection of your journey. Use this nursing resume guide as to help you choose the right information and organization.
2. Examine the Job Listing
While you can have a basic resume template to work from, no two resumes you send should be exactly alike. Study the description by looking for keywords on exactly what the hospital or facility is looking for and tailor your resume to match those needs. Also, this will help you determine if you are a good fit for the position, or if you may need to look at other open jobs. Travel nursing job descriptions are often brief. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your recruiter or the facility’s hiring manager through a quick call or email to ask for more information. Having additional guidance can put you ahead of your competition and make your resume shine. Is it time for your next travel assignment? Discover these tips to perfecting your travel nursing resume: Click To Tweet
3. Research, Research, Research!
It never hurts to go the extra mile when researching a potential new healthcare facility. Browse through their website, check out their mission statement and glance at their nurses’ Facebook group. You can never be too thorough when investigating where you could be potentially working.
- List experience that exhibits characteristics of the hospital’s mission statement.
- Align your goals with their goals and mention how you have met similar goals in previous positions.
- When doing research, you may stumble onto some of their unit’s past challenges. Use this information as a way to show how you can and have overcome similar situations. Include it in your cover letter, but be sure to remain respectful and positive.
4. Tailor Your Resume to be Read by an ATS
The ATS, or applicant tracking system, is a tool hiring managers and recruiters use to speed up the administrative burden of a hiring process. Most resumes initially go through an ATS before they even reach a human, so tailoring your resume to the system expectations is critical. Check out these ways to get your resume through ATS:
- Mirror the job description language, including keywords that fit the job
- Put your most relevant experience first
- Pay close attention to the speciality listed, if you don’t have that experience, highlight any relevant patient contact you’ve had in that speciality
- Use a variety of verbs (treated, managed, lead, etc.)
5. Tips and Tricks
These miscellaneous tips and tricks are standard, but often forgotten. Be sure to keep them in mind when writing and designing your resume:
- Stack your information by listing it neatly
- Avoid using unique fonts, characters or symbols, these can interfere with the program’s ability to read your resume and make you look unprofessional
- Don’t underline words, this can make them illegible to the ATS
- Remove columns, text boxes and added white space
6. Building the Bulk of the Resume
Don’t be afraid to have a long resume. As a travel nurse, employers expect you to have many short-term positions. Use keywords and action verbs throughout your resume to grab the reader’s attention. Here is a great list of action verbs for travel nurses to use on their resumes. Be sure to hit these six key sections in your resume.
- Skills Summary / Key Skills
- Speciality
- Clinical and Relevant Nursing Experience
- Education Licenses / Certificates / Training
- Education
- Computer Skills
7. Triple Check Everything
Once the draft is complete, be sure to check for errors in spelling and grammar. A whopping 58% of hiring managers will toss out resumes if they have spelling or grammar mistakes. Finally, have someone else review it before you send in your final draft. Travel nursing is an exciting profession, and we want to make sure our nurses get hired for their dream assignments. For more tips on how to be a successful nurse check out the blog posts listed below! If you’re ready to start your career in travel nursing and experience the Freedom difference, apply with us today!
Related Reading:
What Makes a Successful Nurse 6 Tips to Take Your Travel Nursing Career to the Next Level Travel Nursing in the U.S. | What You Need to Know