Nursing homes employ various kinds of health care professionals, including nurses, physical therapists and caregivers, in addition to workers who might be needed in any residential facility: cooks, housekeeping staff, security guards, receptionists and managers. If you feel called to serve in this field, a well-crafted nursing home resume is the key to getting in the door.
This writing guide, along with the nursing home resume examples it contains, will cover everything you need to know about creating this essential job application document:
Other related resumes from the same industry
Nursing home workers are needed to address all aspects of the care of aging clients. Also known as retirement homes and assisted-living facilities, nursing homes offer various levels of assistance, some catering to seniors who are mostly independent and some offering more intensive care to those who are bed-ridden or otherwise incapacitated.
Nurses, CNAs and nurse’s aides are commonly employed by these facilities, as are personal caregivers who may help clients with mobility, bathing, dressing and eating. Physical therapy and rehabilitation specialists are also needed to guide residents through recovery from injuries or illness, or to lead the healthy in exercises aimed at preventing physical and cognitive decline.
Some nursing homes have full-time doctors on staff, while others have doctors on call or physicians who visit the facility on a part-time basis. Some nursing homes have drivers who transport clients to doctor’s appointments or other outings.
Nursing homes serve three meals a day to their clients, so they employ cooks, servers, dishwashers and other food service workers. They also need janitors and housekeepers to clean common areas and residents’ rooms, as well as laundry workers to wash sheets and clothes.
Security guards, groundskeepers, maintenance workers, medical receptionists and management staff are also needed at nursing homes.
Nursing home workers need big reservoirs of empathy, compassion and patience, as well as a stomach for doing unpleasant chores that most people wouldn’t want to do. These qualities should be highlighted prominently in any nursing home resume in the appropriate section.
Speaking of which, there are five essential sections in any resume:
So you have just five things to write, which doesn’t sound so bad. The challenge is making all five fit on one page, and it’s strongly recommended that your resume not exceed one page. Let’s talk about how to do that.
Resume format is another critical consideration in creating a nursing home CV. (And CV or curriculum vitae, by the way, is simply what most countries outside the U.S. and Canada call a resume.)
One important format consideration is the order in which you list your past jobs and schools. By far the most popular, and usually the most advisable, is reverse chronological order (sometimes, oddly, referred to as chronological order). This means you list your current or last job first and your first job last.
If you’ve had a more or less traditional medical career path, working your way up in your occupation from lower-ranking to higher-ranking jobs, then listing them in reverse chronological order allows you to put your latest and most impressive job first (rather than your first job as a teenager at Burger King).
Another option is the functional resume format, where past jobs are grouped under categories that emphasize specific skills and types of experience. This option can be the best choice for those who have followed a non-traditional career path, who have spent a lot of time as a freelancer or contractor, who have big gaps in their employment history or whose recent work experience is in a totally different field.
The header is an attractively designed element at the top of the page that contains your name, occupation, address, phone number and email. Some people add a photo, and you can also add your LinkedIn profile or another link to a site that highlights your professional qualifications and experience.
The header is the easiest part of the resume to write and the hardest to design. A good header is carefully crafted in an attractive font and varying font sizes, with good spacing, a sense of visual balance and perhaps an accent color.
Unless you’re an expert page designer, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and potential errors by using a pre-designed layout. Take a moment to review some of our 350+ occupation-specific resume examples and writing guides at Resume.io, and you’ll find a wealth of header designs to choose from. Click on one you like, and our builder tool will guide you through the simple steps to making it your own.
Once your header is in place, you have just four things left to do….
The summary of your nursing home resume is a short but carefully written statement that describes what you do and why you do it well. It may mention your experience, the education and training that qualifies you for the job, and the job-critical skills at which you excel.
But isn’t that what the rest of the resume is about, experience, education and skills? Yes, but the summary gives you a unique opportunity to highlight your “greatest hits,” your primary qualifications, in the language of your choice, and in sentence form rather than in bullet lists.
We mentioned that compassion, empathy and patience are all qualities that should be highlighted in a nursing home resume. The summary is an excellent place to describe these kinds of intangible traits that are so important to those who make hiring decisions at nursing homes.
Optimizing for ATS: How to beat the bot
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are software programs that most larger employers use to green-light resumes that contain crucial keywords and reject those that don’t. These keywords are terms that describe essential qualifications for any open job, and they are input into the ATS by the employer.
When the job is posted and and you apply online through an ATS, it searches to see if the resume contain the necessary keywords. Resumes that contain none of these words are likely to be rejected automatically without any human review. But resumes containing text that closely matches the stated job qualifications will rise like cream to the top of the pile.
This is why it’s essential to read job listings closely and make sure your resume mentions the nursing skills the employer is seeking. It’s also why you should customize your resume for each employer.
Take a look at the summary from our adaptable nursing home resume sample:
Highly capable and compassionate Nursing Home Assistant with experience providing optimal assistance and care to residents in collaboration with other staff members. Committed to ensuring the highest level of care and support through best practices.
The crucial employment history section of your nursing home resume is a listing of the jobs you’ve held, starting with the name and location of the company, your job title and the years of employment. Under each position, include a bullet list of your achievements on the job.
Be specific, using facts and figures wherever possible, and use strong action verbs to describe what you actually did at these jobs. Avoid saying “Was responsible for” and instead emphasize your actual accomplishments and successes.
If you have a long work history, you don’t need to list every job you’ve ever had, especially those in the remote past that have nothing to do with the role you’re currently seeking. But if there are significant gaps in time between the jobs you do list, employers may wonder about this.
Gain more insight from our nursing home resume example:
Nursing Home Assistant at Hillsdale Nursing Home, New York
November 2017 - Present
Home Care Nurse at Edgewood Living, Newark, NJ
May 2014 - October 2017
Every resume should contain a list of job-related skills that will be of interest to the employer. This list should include a mix of hard skills and soft skills. Aim to include the skills found in the job listing, since that is what the employer is looking for.
Hard skills are specific, job-related technical capabilities acquired through education, training and experience, like the ability to move patients from beds to wheelchairs, to administer injections or to lead group physical therapy sessions. Soft skills are more intangible people-related talents, like being a good listener, an effective communicator and a compassionate caregiver.
Here’s the skills section from our resume sample:
In the education section of your nursing home, list the universities, colleges and/or trade schools you’ve attended, along with any certifications you’ve received that are relevant to nursing home work. Depending on the job you seek, you may also need to list any certifications you have.
Name the institution, where it’s located, the degree you earned and the years you attended. If you have specific educational achievements worth highlighting, like a stellar GPA or membership in an academic honors society, list these in bullet points under each one.
If you have a postsecondary degree, it’s generally not considered necessary to mention where you went to high school, though it does no harm if you have room.
Check out this adaptable education section from our nursing home resume sample:
Bachelor of Science in Biology, Manhattan College, New York
September 2011 - May 2015
High School Diploma, Yonkers High School, Yonkers
September 2007 - May 2011
Other critical formatting decisions include layout and design, which determine the look and feel of your resume. You can write perfect text for your resume and then totally botch the job by poor design choices that make it look terrible.
There are many design decisions to make when creating a resume, including fonts, font sizes, text alignment, margins, achieving an eye-pleasing balance and making judicious use of white space. And again, unless you’re a whizbang page designer, your best bet is to use a pre-designed resume template where these choices have already been made for you.