You’ve put in the hard work of learning a dental specialty. Now you're ready for the next phase of your endodontics career. A great endodontist resume will help get you there!
Your challenge is to develop a resume that highlights your skills in oral surgery, root canals, and other endodontic procedures. But it should also to play up your chair-side manner — the ability to calm and connect with patients — as well as your working relationships with healthcare staff in a dental practice.
Take advantage of Resume.io's job search resources, including more than 350 occupation-specific resume examples with corresponding writing guides.
This is what we’ll discuss in this writing guide, supported by an endodontist resume example you can modify for your own use.
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Sometimes referred to as “tooth savers,” endodontists are dental specialists with expertise focused on diagnosing and treating tooth pain. They commonly perform root canal therapy and other procedures involving the tooth’s interior. To qualify for practicing this specialty, endodontists complete an additional two or more years of training beyond dental school.
As the American Association of Endodontists points out, all endodontists are dentists, but less than 3% of dentists are endodontists.
Today’s aging population ensures that the job outlook for endodontists is strong. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, projected employment growth for dentists overall, from 2020 to 2030, is 8% — on par with the occupational average. For dental specialists other than orthodontists, prosthodontists and oral/maxillofacial surgeons, job openings will increase by 5%. teeth.
Endodontists may work in a dental practice that specializes only in endodontics. Others may work in a general clinic, or with another type of dental specialist. Because of this, you should be careful to tailor your resume depending on the environment you are targeting as a workplace.
Your endodontist resume should be structured the same way as virtually any other resume, regardless of occupation. All of these components should fit on a single page:
Only if your endodontist practice includes a lot of consulting work, or perhaps academic positions, a functional resume format may be worth considering. It allows you to emphasize specialized skills, clients or areas of interest rather than employers or workplaces.
Otherwise, the most commonly used chronological format is recommended for outlining your employment history in reverse order of dates, starting with your current or most recent position and working backwards.
A hybrid (combination) format provides even more flexibility by incorporating both functional and chronological elements.
Don’t overlook the importance of well-designed resume header design. Professional and accessible — that is the first impression hiring managers will have about you, even before they read a word of your endodontist resume.
An eye-pleasing header sets your job application apart visually from everyone else’s. It also draws the reader’s eyes to where your name, occupation and contact information are displayed prominently on the page. The surrounding white space makes every other part of your resume look more inviting to read.
As an aside — and we don’t think you would do this — avoid that fun email handle that some job candidates might still be hanging onto from college ... along the lines of partyanimal@hotmail.com. Go with firstname.lastname or some variation on that theme, with a gmail suffix.
For very little extra effort, you can double the visual impact with a cover letter header that matches your resume header.
Where once you may have written an objective, resumes now call for a profile paragraph. This section (also known as the resume summary or personal statement) serves two purposes: to summarize your achievements and give office managers an idea of your personality. After all, you don’t work by yourself. You rely on dental hygienists, dental assistants, dental receptionists, office managers and other office staff , and perhaps general dentists or those with other specialties, such as orthodontics, especially if you work in a dental clinic.
Your resume profile allows three to five sentences (about 100-200 words) to showcase your ability to provide optimal oral healthcare to patients. It also conveys that you provide a calm and reassuring presence during a time when many patients may be nervous. You should also call attention to your ability to properly assess and diagnose tooth and mouth issues, and prescribe appropriate treatment plans. But this is not the place to get specific about procedures you have performed. Leave that for the job descriptions in your work history section.
Try describing your approach to patient care and your philosophy on oral care and health. Use strong action verbs and adjectives. Don’t be afraid to pat yourself on the back — with no out-and-out exaggerating, of course! If you feel you left something out, remember that you may have a chance to include it in your cover letter, but don’t rely on that.
Below is an endodontist resume sample profile you can customize.
Dedicated and innovative endodontist with a proven track record of helping patients to achieve optimal oral health and overcome complex mouth and tooth problems. Adept in root canal therapies, cosmetic dentistry, and comprehensive patient dental care. Over 20 years of experience, with the expertise to accurately diagnose patients and prescribe effective treatment plans. Committed to achieving the highest patient satisfaction levels.
Take care in writing the bullet-point descriptions for the employment history section of your endodontist resume. This is where you want to emphasize the extent of your work experience by listing your successes, not your job responsibilities. Brainstorm any particularly difficult cases you have diagnosed, or detailed treatment plans you have conceived and completed. Include those here.
Detail is better than generalization and it’s better still if you use facts and figures to quantify measurabe outcomes.Try to highlight as many different dental procedures as you have performed as possible, without repeating yourself. Remember, hiring managers are busy; you need to give them as much easily digestible information as you can, as succinctly as you can.
Also be aware that your resume may first have to pass through an applicant tracking system (ATS), which will be scanning for keywords and phrases to rank your candidacy. Make sure your professional experience matches the job requirements by placing keywords from the ad listing into your work experience descriptions. Remember, you should be personalizing your resume for each different job, and this is an essential reason for doing so.
Your residency should be listed at the bottom of your employment history section using the reverse chronological order method. If you have more than 10 or 15 years of professional experience, you can drop your residency from your resume..
Below is an endodontist employment history resume sample you can modify.
Endodontist at Wilcox and SIlva Endodontics, Charleston
June 2008 - Present
Endodontic Resident at Columbia Endodontics, Columbia
August 2002 - June 2003
All of your college degrees, from bachelor’s level on, should be listed in here in the education section. Of course, that includes your dental school graduation and endodontics specialty training. (But as stated earlier, include your endodontist residency in the employment history section instead.) The correct format for listing this postsecondary education information, once again, is reverse chronological order from highest to lowest levels. There’s no need to go as far back as high school.
Don’t forget to list your certification from the Board of the American Association of Endodontists. If you have completed any other relevant professional development programs, you may list those here, too.
Here is the education section from an endodontist resume you can adapt for your own use.
Doctor of Dental Surgery, Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine, Stony Brook
August 1999 - May 2003
Bachelor of Biology, University of South Carolina, Columbia
August 1996 - May 1999
You use dozens of skills every day in your work as an endodontist. For your CV listing, choose your most impressive ones — and the ones that best match the description of the job for which you are applying.
We recommend making a separate master list of all your abilities and attributes so you can easily swap them out for each application — that is, cherry-pick the most appropriate ones for each employer. You should have a mix of:
If you have any high-level skills or specialties that will set your candidacy apart from others, make sure you give those priority.
Check out an endodontist CV sample for the skills section below.
While your skills and work experience are priorities, you must also pay attention to the design of your resume. You need a clean, professional look to polish your perfect resume!
Hiring managers see dozens of resumes for each job. So you want a design that not only impresses them, but also makes it easy to find what they are looking for. We’ve already discussed the importance of a distinctive header displaying your name and contact information. Also pay attention to the formatting of section titles and your previous employer headings.
Here are some general resume design guidelines to follow:
Use Resume.io’s field-tested resume templates to take the guesswork out of your layout. For an endodontist resume, we suggest a design from the professional template category, or perhaps a simple style. Our builder tool will format for you, so you won’t have the headache of trying to align columns and tabs.
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