Nurse Resume Templates: Complete Guide + Free Examples

• How to Write Your Best Nurse Resume

  Although there are three popular resume formats, we’ll teach you how to follow the standard combination resume. This nurse resume combines the best features of its sibling formats to showcase your work history and skill sets equally, rather than prioritizing one set of information over the others.

Pick the best resume format

• Functional resume: Also known as the skills-based resume, this format prioritizes your soft, hard, and technical skills as well as certifications. This resume reduces your work history section to a simple summary of your previous job title, employer, and dates of employment by breaking off your accomplishments and responsibilities into a separate section known as a “summary of qualifications.”

  We strongly recommend that you utilize this format if you recently graduated and only have short-length clinical experience. This format will help you showcase your academic training and experience to potential hiring managers. You need to be cautious with this resume format. The unique use of multiple skills sections makes it difficult for applicant tracking systems, or ATS, to parse and analyze your suitability for an open job correctly.

• Chronological resume: This is the most well-known format. Your work history sits near the top of this resume and takes up the bulk of your page length, followed by a brief list of your skills, your education sections, and an optional licenses and certifications section. Although this is the most widely used format, we strongly recommend that you avoid it unless you have over 10 years of nursing experience, have advanced training, or pursued valuable nursing certifications and programs.

• Combination resume: As we mentioned before, the combination resume brings forth the best of the two previously mentioned resumes. Although the resume sections follow the same structural format as a chronological resume, a combination resume switches the placement of the dedicated skills and work history sections so you can lead with your technical skills before describing your professional accomplishments.

  This resume is ideal for job candidates with extended academic backgrounds, specialized training, and three to nine years of professional experience. As a member of a highly trained medical professional, it’s the ideal format for your job search.

Helping your skills shine.

If you’re writing a combination resume, your skills section will list six-to-eight job-specific abilities. However, this dedicated section is not the only place where you can strategically share your medical training and personable manner. If you craft a detailed list of your professional skills, you can carefully include additional skills throughout your summary statement and work history, lending additional strength to your resume and application.

To start your nurse resume, we strongly recommend that you create a detailed list of your soft skills (personable skills), hard skills (learned behaviors), and technical skills (highly trained abilities) to carefully choose relevant topics that relate to each open job position you apply to.

We created this specialized list of skills that can showcase your warm bedside manner and certified nursing qualifications:

Swaying hiring managers with personable summary statements.

Your summary statement is a two or three-sentence introduction that sits directly beneath your name and contact information. This brief paragraph can serve one of two purposes:

• Summary statement: This updated statement ties directly to the needs of an open position. You place yourself as the ideal candidate by showcasing how a specific skill or specialty fills the unique needs of the hiring managers.
• Objective statement: Considered outdated but valuable to recent nurse graduates or career changers looking for nursing opportunities. An objective statement explains what you hope to gain from an open opportunity. In this case, you can share your desire to contribute toward healthy, recovery, and patient support.

You can lend additional sway to this section by carefully featuring one or two relevant skills from the list you previously prepared. Be sure to choose skills that aren’t mentioned under your skills or work history sections, but are related to a specific open position.

Summary statement example:

Building a professional narrative with your work history

Your practical work history helps you add context to your nursing skills by outlining previous employment or volunteer work alongside specific responsibilities and accomplishments related to each former role.

This section will showcase your warm bedside manner, communication skills with your medical team and with patients and their families, and nurse training, including specialized certifications.

A combination and chronological resume follow the same work history structure:

Highlighting your nursing degrees and edu

Most education sections follow this same general format:

As a nurse applicant, you can add depth and detail to your education section by including special licenses and certifications such as your Registered Nurse (RN) license number. For example, you can format this additional information underneath your academic degrees following this layout:

Remember, you should tailor this section to contain relevant information, not to pad out your resume. Only add certifications that align with the needs of an open position. Here’s a list of special licenses and certifications that you can add to your education section to offer hiring managers an in-depth understanding of your medical training:

Nurse FAQ