Nursing Student Series
Episode 1: Building Your Resume (10:06)
This podcast series dedicated to nursing students and graduates as they navigate through preparing for life after college and finding their first job as a new nurse.
Check out the link below we as hear from Amber Morrow, one of our AdventHealth Nurse Residency Recruiters, for valuable tips to elevate your resume.
Transcript
0:01 Nerissa: Welcome to the AdventHealth Careers Podcast where we hear valuable career information, resources, and advice from our team members. Thank you so much for joining us, my name is Nerissa Rampersad, I am your host and part of the HR Talent Management team. We'll be sitting down with leading experts and professionals within the organization who have first-hand experience and knowledge in their fields. Be sure to subscribe to get the latest information. This series is dedicated to nursing students and graduates as they navigate through preparing for life after college and finding their first job as a new nurse. Today, we are talking with our guest Amber Morrow, she is a nurse residency recruiter at AdventHealth and can share some great insight into how to build your resume. Welcome Amber! Would you mind sharing with us a little bit more about your role?
00:51 Amber: I sure can thank you Nerissa for having me! So I am a member of the AdventHealth nurse residency recruitment team. I support four of our AdventHealth facilities within the Tampa Bay region and I have been with AdventHealth for over two years where I supported the Medical Group and I also recruited experienced nurses as well and then prior to joining AdventHealth I have over 10 years of recruitment experience within various corporate
01:21 Nerissa: I'm very excited to hear your advice and just the wonderful insight that you bring for this episode for current nursing students and graduates and you know throughout college and before applying for a job they have to prepare a resume what would you say Amber is the value of the resume?
01:42 Amber: That's a great question Nerissa, I always remind new nurses that are graduating that this is your first impression, so this is the way you get to market yourself or as I like to say you kind of get to tell the professional story of you. This is the way for you to capture the attention of the recruitment team and then the hiring managers within AdventHealth or any other hospital system that you may be applying for. So a well-crafted resume does help demonstrate that you are a good fit and you will make a good addition to their nursing staff.
02:16 Nerissa: I really like how you mentioned telling the professional story of you. I think that's very impactful and depending on the student and their experience that story can get pretty lengthy about how long should the resume be?
02:32 Amber: Yeah we get that question a lot too Nerissa, so in my professional opinion it should be no longer than one to two pages. As a new graduate, you don't have a ton of work experience, so it shouldn't be you know a four-page document. Even if you do have a ton of previous experience you definitely want to make sure that it is focused and aligning with the job that you are applying for.
03:01 Nerissa: Yeah I think that's very reasonable and then you know anything extra they can always mention in an interview.
03:10 Amber: Correct!
03:12 Nerissa: And so now that we have an ideal length in mind that brings me to my next question is there a specific order that should be followed in a resume and if so what should the students start with?
03:21 Amber: Yep! So for a new nursing graduate I definitely think the chronological order of your resume would best support you, so that layout would focus primarily on your education and your job history and just as a reminder when you're going in chronological order you want to list your most recent work history to your oldest so as a new nurse this is where you would really want to highlight your clinical rotations along with any preceptorships or practicum that you have had when you are describing the clinical rotations. A good recommendation is always listing out the different units that you were assigned to, the number of hours that you were on that unit, and when it comes to your preceptorship or your practicum that's really where you can beef that up a lot as well because that's where you've been assigned to a unit for a longer period of time where you've been working with that nurse manager or assistant nurse manager. I also recommend too that you could highlight any volunteer experience that you've had within the healthcare field as well. Those are just some of the recommendations that I have in terms of that chronological order so always focus on it's your most recent to your oldest.
04:32 Nerissa: Yeah that sounds like a really great way to structure the resume and do you also recommend including things like extracurriculars or memberships or achievements?
04:43 Amber: I do because what you may lack in work experience you can make up for that with your accomplishments so making sure that you are highlighting maybe any type of academic excellence awards, any organizations that you were involved with especially if you held any type of a board role within those organizations that shows leadership. I also think that this is also a place as I mentioned earlier to highlight that volunteer experience that you've had so making sure you list that organization the duties that you've had along with the length of service that you volunteered.
05:22 Nerissa: I agree and I think you made a really great point here Amber. I think as long as the resume is targeted to those minimum qualifications those items can really help make the student stand out.
05:32 Amber: I agree with you Nerissa because as long as you're catering that resume to the qualifications of that job those extra you know that's kind of just the icing on the cake, so one of the things that we talk a lot about in like talent acquisition and in recruitment is a job description has the basic qualifications and then it has the preferred qualification, so making sure that your resume addresses the required and then the preferred like I said is just really the icing on the cake and so you also want to highlight those if you have them as well.
06:11 Nerissa: Yeah and I'm also thinking of other scenarios just as we talk through this and I would imagine that there are some nursing students and graduates that don't have health care work experience but they may have worked in a non-healthcare setting would you recommend including this on their resume or should they leave that off?
06:28 Amber: I definitely recommend including that, so this really just shows that you do have a job history so it does show that you are able to hold down a role the other thing I think that it will allow you to do is to be able to really tie together your non-healthcare experience to healthcare in that interview setting. So one of the big things at AdventHealth is compassionate care, so making sure that you are able to show in your previous work experience how that would correlate if you were hired here at AdventHealth also the other thing too is to really kind of beef up that clinical rotation experience that you've had, so making sure that they're more than just a bullet point and ensuring that you're really talking through what you did on each of those units for those specific amount of hours.
07:16 Nerissa: I completely agree and I think those skills are transferable and they're still valuable at the end of the day and I know throughout college things can get super busy -- resumes are often updated right before applying for a job how often do you recommend updating a resume in general?
07:36 Amber: I think that's a good question and I think my biggest recommendation would be that you update that as your skills are updated so if you maybe we're rotating to a different unit or you finished your preceptorship you definitely want to add those on there if you've gotten a new certification you want to make sure that you've updated it to reflect that as well I definitely think you want to make sure that you highlight that as your skill set changes throughout your career.
08:07 Nerissa: I think it's a wonderful approach and I know you have extensive experience reviewing nurse graduate resumes, can you share some of the things that you have seen that really stood out to you?
08:22 Amber: Yeah! One of the things and I when I say this it's gonna sound very simple but one of the biggest things that I notice from time to time or feedback that I get from hiring managers as they are reviewing resumes as well is just making sure that there aren't any typos like I said I know that sounds simple Nerissa, but it's just one of those things that making sure that we that you were using the right grammar that you're in the proper tense when you're talking about those rotations, your schooling, your previous work history as well. The other thing that I love seeing is people talking about more experience that they've had than just listing I was on a med-surg unit for 240 hours. Talk about the EMR systems that you've used talk about what you learned on that unit. The other big thing I always like to see is any type of volunteering experience that those individuals have had, so if you've ever taken like a mission health trip we love seeing those on your resumes it really does tie in with the advent health culture so I definitely love to see those highlighted as well.
09:33 Nerissa: Well Amber, this has been incredibly helpful! Thank you so much for being with us and sharing your perspective and advice I look forward to speaking with you on other topics!
09:43 Amber: Thank you!
09:50 Nerissa: And for our listeners if you enjoyed this information and would like to connect with one of our recruiters please check out JoinAdventHealth.com and sign up for one of our virtual chat sessions. Thank you so much for listening and hope you join us next time!