Essential Skills that all Nurses should put on their Resume
What Skills Belong on a Resume for Nurses?
Nowadays, skill sets are often considered more important than experience. Experience makes you look good, and perhaps even makes you look qualified. However, skills are what make you valuable to an employer. Nursing resumes should not only discuss the past, but provide an overview of what skills a nurse possesses, and how they can make a difference to the facility. Make sure your resume is concise and extremely sharp. Consider some of the most important skills to highlight.
Patient Care: This is certainly something to highlight as patient care is your most important job description. Rather than talking about your professionalism, provide specific areas in which you have expertise, such as rehabilitating patients, working in acute care or outpatient therapy. As part of the skill set, you can also list your experience in patient care with monitoring patients, taking vitals, managing their medication and diet, and other duties. Remember that resumes should be arranged according to expertise level, and all subfields should be highlighted.
Communication Skills: It’s not easy to list communication as a special skill, and yet it is a prized quality in nurses. What you can do is highlight your special knowledge, such as knowing another language, or having supervisory experience, or experience working in medical facilities before in a communicative capacity.
Technology: Most hospitals work with cutting-edge technology, so proving your efficiency in IT or high technology in medicine is a skill you can safely boast about. Your resume should reflect computer knowledge, use of equipment, and perhaps working with other high tech gadgets or equipment in previous jobs.
Management Skills: Management training is always desirable as a skill, since it enables you to assume a leadership role whenever needed. These skills do require education and an organized approach to life. What might help when lengthening your resume is to dwell on the specific accomplishments of the nursing team you were on, and how your leadership tasks (such as in schedule planning or budgeting) proves your willingness to take on challenging tasks and the educational background you need. You can also mention other projects involving counseling or mentorship experiences, in which you helped others.
Nursing jobs are in demand and it is constantly improving and will continue to do so for the near future. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, due to the rise in the demand for nurses, there may be more applicants in waiting rooms, which make it an extremely competitive environment. This is why it’s important to make sure your resume stands out. Don’t simply list empty bullet points, concentrate on the skill sets that separate you from the other candidates that are likely applying for the same position.
The trend in employment is to hire nurses with the most skills, the ones capable of fulfilling a variety of roles and working with specialized subject matter. If you find your resume lacking, then maybe it’s time to gain work or volunteer experience to boost your resume. Honest commitment and goal setting are the best way to start creating the winning resume.
