Travel nursing is one of the most experience-rich opportunities in the medical industry. You have the chance to work in dozens of different hospitals and facilities with a wide range of duties and circumstances. Each travel position can build onto your skills and your ability to take on future nursing positions with ease. Naturally, you want to display this wealth of experience on your resume, but how can you do this without creating a long resume-inflating list in which important details are lost?
There are several different approaches to resume design and how to write a list of valuable temporary roles. Traveling and interim nursing positions have always been an important part of the workforce, and conveying the experience that comes from these roles has several established methods you can draw upon when formatting the resume for your next long-term position.
The Essential Resume Details of Travel Nursing Roles
- Employer
- Facility
- Location
- Position
- Duties
- Accomplishments
Travel nursing can lead you into many different roles in a wide range of locations. Those willing to travel may find themselves working across town or across the country. You may have worked in urban, rural, or suburban locations, in hospitals, clinics, or specialist offices. You might have even worked in schools, office buildings, and other locations that occasionally need on-site medical staff. However, in all this variety, it’s important to refine the most important details of each role.
Your “Employer” will likely be your travel nursing agency, the team who sends you on assignments. The facility will be the hospital or clinic you were working with, while the location is the city and state where the facility is located.
Next, list the position title you held and make a short list of your summarized nursing duties. If you had any special accomplishments or went through a valuable experience on assignment, mention them in one to three bullet points.
Formalize Your Format
Take all this information from your full list of roles and formalize the resume format.
Determine the most easy-to-read way to present this information. Make a header of either the facility or the job role, then arrange a short paragraph and/or bullet points that all roughly match in format from one role to the next. This creates a uniform list that will be easier for future employers to skim in your resume.
Formatting a Resume for Temporary Work
Formatting a resume is essential. Depending on the travel nursing roles you took and your pace of reassignment, there are a few different ways that might be most practical to list your temporary positions.
List by Date in Reverse Chronological Order
Longer roles and a shorter number of roles can be listed in reverse chronological order, the same as other jobs. Just a few travel roles or extended interim roles can be listed as short-term jobs, one at a time, with more details regarding your duties and accomplishments.
Categorize by Location or Region
Another option is to list your travel nurse positions by region. You might mention that you’ve worked in Chicago, Indianapolis, or Phoenix multiple times in a variety of facilities and roles. This arrangement may be more relevant if you are applying for a job in a specific city and want to show that you are familiar with the customs and medical community there.
Temporary Work Periods
If you have done travel nursing several times between permanent roles, you can group your temporary positions by timeline-category. In other words, if you often take on a sequence of travel nursing roles between one hospital and the next, each stint as a travel nurse can share a category and a list of experiences you gained during that time. This shows that there are no gaps in your resume and that you keep busy between assignments by broadening your horizons.
Tracking All the Details on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a resume-building social media platform where many people find employees or their next job. For travel nursing, you’ll want to create a list of short, sweet job entries that LinkedIn will automatically build into a resume for you. LinkedIn prefers the reverse-chronological approach, so consider creating a separate listing for each role, keeping the details brief.
You can then go into more detail by creating a list of related skills you learned during your travel nursing experience. LinkedIn skills function as keywords that help future employers find people like you with the training and experience they need.
Don’t Forget Your Top-Skills Section
Travel nursing has a way of building up your skills and your capacity for change. At the top or bottom of your resume, create a section where you list the skills and qualities you would bring to a new job. Feel free to include travel, flexible role fulfillment and the variety of roles you learned to step into during your travel nursing experience. This will give employers a secondary place to notice your wide range of nursing experience and adaptability, even if they skimmed too fast over your travel nursing resume list.
Travel Nurse Resume Template
The following is a basic travel nurse resume template. The key sections include your title and personal summary, the jobs you have held by category in reverse chronological order, and your list of skills. The summary should be in the third-person describing yourself, while the skills can act as keywords for automated resume sorting.
For each job, list any significant details in a few short bullet points.
———————————–
Your Name
Contact Information
Title & Nursing Credentials
Brief summary of your skills, experiences, and what you bring to the table. Describe the general range of roles you have held and would like to hold. Mention your top skills and passions in nursing. Note any significant accomplishments or awards. Write in the third-person describing yourself.
Job Title, Region, or Time Period
Role
Date
- Skills
- Duties
- Accomplishments
Role
Date
- Skills
- Duties
- Accomplishments
Job Title, Region, or Time Period
Role
Date
- Skills
- Duties
- Accomplishments
List of Skills
- Skill
- Proficiency
- Familiar Technology
- Familiar Management System