Personal Support Worker Resume Templates: Guide and Free Download Examples

The first step you should take when starting your resume is deciding on one of the three resume formats. Resume formats define where you should emphasize your resume’s content, whether it’s your experience, skills or both. Let’s break down the three types of resumes and their pros and cons:

Chronological resumes are ideal for candidates with a long work history, typically more than 10 years of relevant experience. This format focuses on your work history section, where you’ll expand on the achievements and skills you developed in each position. For example, a personal support worker with 10 years of experience in home care, hospital and hospice positions will go best with the chronological format since it will display this experience.

Functional resumes work in favor of candidates with no formal experience; think recent graduates or first-time applicants. The skills take center stage in the functional resume, where the candidate’s knowledge and know-how compensate for the lack of previous experience. A candidate who has just completed a personal support worker certification and wants to apply to their local assisted living center should apply the functional format to their resume.

Combination resumes balance out the importance of the candidate’s work history and skills. This format is perfect for candidates who have some experience but want to highlight a strong skill set. Candidates who are vying for a promotion for a senior position as staff manager at a hospital can benefit from the combination format because it shows you’re a well-rounded professional.

The summary statement sits at the top of your resume and introduces you to your potential employer. To craft a powerful summary statement, you need to express more than just your desire to work for the company.

A strong statement should list your top qualities as a professional, years of experience, skills, and impressive achievements.

Check out this summary statement example for a personal support worker:

Before jumping into writing your resume, you need to establish a list of your skills. Skills are one of the pillars of your resume and what employers will be looking out for. To decide on the most effective skills, study the job description and pinpoint the skills the employer is emphasizing. Both hiring managers and applicant tracking systems will be searching for these specific keywords.

To get the most of your skills, try to have a balanced selection of all three skills types: soft, hard and technical skills.

Hard skills are learned through education and training and help you perform job-specific tasks. For personal support workers, some examples of hard skills are proper techniques of personal hygiene, first aid skills, and understanding of nutrition.

Soft skills relate to the way you behave when you’re working with others. They’re crucial to perform the job efficiently and harmoniously. Some crucial soft skills personal support workers should have are patience, empathy, verbal communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills.

Technical skills refer to your proficiency utilizing certain digital tools. For example, common technical skills for personal workers are knowledge of Electronic Health Record (EHR) software, and e-prescribing software.

We’ve gathered a list of skills you can use as reference to include in your resume.

Although a listed skills section suffices for chronological and combination resumes, the functional resume requires adding an expanded skills section. To format this skills section, you first need to choose three main skills, for each skill you will add three to four bullet points describing how you demonstrate your capacity for each skill.

Check out the example below to visualize it better.

Your work history section is one of the sections hiring managers will look for first. You must format this section clearly and concisely and pack it with the most remarkable achievements. Your work experience should be listed in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent role and working backward.

Each work history entry needs to have the job title, company name, location and dates of employment. Each role should be followed by three to four bullet points describing your top accomplishments. One of the most effective ways to maximize your work history is by peppering in additional skills and quantifiable achievements. Go beyond naming the daily tasks you performed at each job, and instead show your employer the impact you had in your role with numbers, percentages and dollar amounts.

This is how your work history should look if you’re a personal support worker:

Although education and training requirements for personal support workers vary by state and by employer, a high school diploma or equivalent is typically expected. When filling in your education section, you can omit your graduation dates to prevent any hiring bias because of your age. If you have any certifications or CPR license, create a custom section to add these features on your resume.

Look at this example for guidance: