Your Passport to the Interview Room
Travel nurses will be used to the recruitment system, with contracts lasting for usually around 13 weeks and providing an incredible work/life balance.
But is your resume really showing your true ability? Or are you in the 10% of job seekers that have applied for 50 or more jobs without hearing anything back? If you’re finding it hard to get the travel nurse position you most desire, your resume will likely be the problem.
To land the best travel nursing jobs, your resume must tackle many obstacles, including:
- Application tracking systems
- The golden 60 seconds to make a good first impression
- Avoiding a messy and confusing nursing employment history
Don’t lose out on incredible travel nursing opportunities because of a poor resume. In this article, we share nine essential tips to help you maximize the power of your resume.
1. First, Scale Back
The purpose of the resume is to get you an interview with a snapshot of your professional life, as quickly as you can. To do this, you must:
- Lose the fancy backgrounds (they’re unnecessary, and you risk sending in a non-compatible format)
- Stick to clear fonts only
- Not write long paragraphs
- Use bullet points
- Try not to exceed two pages (no more than three at most)
You’re not creating a decorative pamphlet. Fancy tricks never sell – recruiters want the facts.
2. Take Advantage of ATS
An ATS (automated tracking system) searches resumes for keywords that match those in the job description. This saves a lot of wasted time for recruiters sifting through irrelevant resumes from people applying for every job posted.
How do you navigate ATS? Identify the keywords in the job description and make sure they’re engrained within your resume. Without doing so, your resume may not even reach a real human.
Extra tip: ATS trackers may dismiss you based on your residential address even though you’re applying for a travel nurse job. State the location of the posting, and offer your residential address on request.
3. Tidy Your Employment History
This is a crucial part of your resume. You want to give the employer full details of where you’re competent and have experience. But you also need to keep it clear and concise. Include:
- Facility name
- State
- Department, role, and employment type (Travel Nurse)
- Date of contract
- Specific abilities required
- Bed count/patient to nurse ratio
- Specific population/culture
Make sure you keep this bullet-pointed and to the point. The statistics and details will sell your ability.
Employment gaps of less than four weeks are not problematic for travel nurses. Any longer, insert the date and brief reason for it (for example, travel experience).
4. Clearly List ALL Licenses and Certifications
In one section, list all your state licenses and certifications, so it is immediately evident where you can work and in what specialization.
Make it routine to regularly check that you update this section.
5. List Technical Ability
In another column or section, list ‘Technical Abilities’. As a travel nurse you will have gained various software and technical experience, as well as your direct nursing competencies.
Check the job description for certain software requirements. If you have it, make sure it’s right at the top waiting for ATS to track it down.
6. Include Bilingual
If you’re bilingual, make sure you add this in your skills and abilities. It’s another string to your bow that will broaden your target search and appeal.
7. Include Your Availability
Stating your availability will make it clearer to the recruiter what your requirements are. If you don’t, and the recruiter must choose between you and another candidate who has clearly stated their availability and it suits, you are likely to lose out.
8. Tailor to Each Job
Recruiters want to see your interest in the company, and not just a paying job. Do your research on the facility’s values and mission, and their culture, and describe why you want to work with them.
Include your reason in your cover letter or in your professional summary. Despite the recruitment process often being a rather savage one, the personal touch will always go a long way.
9. What Not to Do
Hiring managers put up with these aggravating mistakes daily:
- Overused/pointless phrases – the most disliked is ‘I can work independently’.
- Long paragraphs – a resume is for facts, figures, and evidence, not a short story about your life.
- Poor grammar and spelling – get it checked.
- A photo – there’s no need. In fact, some recruiters ban resumes with photos in respect of potential discrimination and prejudice.
- Writing in the third person.
- Unprofessional email address.
Stay on the recruiter’s good side and avoid these mistakes.
Summing Up
Your resume is a crucial tool in the recruitment process for recruiters to figure if they should spend more time getting to know you. Getting it right is your passport to the interview room to land that dream job you know you’ll be good at. It’s all about presenting yourself on paper first.
Is your resume ready? Let’s get going. Contact Loyal Source today so we can get you on your next rewarding travel nurse job.