Top Five Tips To Building Your Nurse Practitioner Resume

CREATE A FOCUS.

Focus is the name of the game when writing nurse practitioner resumes. The NP hiring managers and recruiters want to see how your skills and background match up with what they are looking for in a nurse practitioner. So, if you use one resume for all job applications, it makes it harder for the hiring manager to identify what specific clinical skills you have that will serve their patients.

To create a focus, you must have a good understanding of what the job requirements are. Reflect on your experiences and educational background to pull out what is most relevant in the role. This is particularly important in specialties because you will need to understand what specific skills are necessary in this new role.

If you are a new graduate nurse practitioner, this might be very difficult for you since you do not yet have experience working as a nurse practitioner. However, this does not mean that your clinical experiences do not count for something. Try to reflect on the clinical skills you gained in your practicums. List out the skills you learned as they relate to the job at hand. For example, if you were in a family practice clinical, and you managed congestive heart failure patients and read EKGs, include this experience in your cardiology nurse practitioner application.

WRITE YOUR PROFILE SECTION.

The profile section of a resume is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when resume writing for nurse practitioners. This is your opportunity to show potential employers your interest in their opportunity and how your background aligns with what they’re looking for. Be sure to include any relevant experiences you’ve had in the specialty and/or interest you have. For instance, if you are applying to a family nurse practitioner job, include experiences where you were providing health coaching, disease prevention, and/or health promotion. If this is relevant in your nursing background, then you can absolutely include this. The goal for this section is to get the hiring manager’s attention, so they keep reading your resume.

WRITE A SKILLS SECTION.

As nurse practitioners, there are certain skills that are essential to function in your highest capacity. For example, if you are proficient in well-woman exams and joint injections, then having a separate section dedicated to these skills will make it easy for the hiring manager to recognize how you align with their opening.

If you are a new graduate nurse practitioner, consider aligning your nursing skills and your newly gained nurse practitioner school skills into dissection. For example, if you did a women’s health rotation where all you did was Pap smears and well-woman exams, and you are comfortable performing these procedures with limited to no supervision, then this should be included in the skills section of your resume. You also want to consider adding skills that make you an advanced practice nurse, such as health coaching and disease prevention strategies.

AWARDS AND HONORS.

Don’t forget to include any awards and/or honors that you have been awarded or nominated for within the last 10 years. Also, include any scholarships that you received. This should be a separate section of your resume.

KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET.

I recommend you list your experiences from the last 10 years on your nurse practitioner resume. Even if you’ve had 20 years of experience, employers are typically only interested in the most recent 10 years. If you are seeking to apply for a role that you’ve had experience in over 10 years ago, then consider adding that experience into the current resume. Keep in mind that maintaining focus is more important than listing old experiences that are irrelevant to your desired position. This is what I love about resumes versus CVs—we are always tailoring our resumes according to the position we are looking to apply for.

If you need a template or want a step-by-step process in building your nurse practitioner resume with video lessons, check out the Mini Resume Workshop to use our interview-winning resume templates.

Not ready to tackle the task of writing your own resume? Let us write your resume for you! We offer customized resume writing services and we’ve helped hundreds of nurse practitioners just like you get interviews and even land their dream jobs.