resume help

[lauraadora]

I was wondering if I could get some advice on my resume/CV... I am just about to finish PA school and since my rotations are really the most relevant thing for the jobs I'll be applying for, that's what I focused on. It's 2 pages right now and I could probably cut out the skills section to cut it down, but I'd like to know what everyone thinks about it as-is. I was also told that it's better NOT to put GPAs on my resume because no one cares about it, so I'd like to hear people's opinions on that. I'm also a member of AAPA and PSPA so I can add that if people think it would help.

 

Anyway, let me know what you think about it because I'd like to start applying for jobs soon! Thanks! :]

LK_newCV_PAforum.pdf

[rcdavis]

drop the skills section all together.

 

Most of the ones listed are standard PA fare...

 

Are you REALLY skilled in placements of ports? In first assisting? Do you have a hundred or so cases or a case log? (if so, or you have other unusual skills such as big lines, tubes, .. bring this out in the interview process).

 

Just drop it. If there are special skills necessary to the job, when I interview you, I will ask you specifically about them.. (how many have you done? can you document enough that I can get you credentialed?..)

 

if you had a lot of extensive pre -education experience (nurse, medic, corpsman, emt, paramedic), be sure to bring this out.

 

Another hint: while flooding the market with your resume is always good (casting a wide net), ask yourself what you want to work in, and where.. then selectively target those job opportunities.. and do what JMJ11 did with united health care: learn as much about the company as you can (and there is a lot of info in wallstreet journal, business and professional journals.. and college/ medical school alumni news letters).. and personalize your introductory letter.

 

try to get a preceptor to help you with a personal letter of introduction to someone they know in the field you are interested in.

 

good luck

[lizchao74]

Agree about dropping the Skills section altogether. It is understood that you are a new grad, and an in-depth discussion about what you learned/did during your rotations can be saved as a conversation piece anyway for the interview. Plus, it is overstating what you are actually able to do at your level, as the other poster said.

 

Clinical Rotations: delete the line saying “Ten rotations…” since you are already listing them individually below and therefore don’t need to reiterate it this way. Just keep the header and dive right into the list.

 

OB/GYN: I would suggest consolidating the descriptions for these rotations; you can list the two locations with dates and then have a single paragraph description (or consider changing to bullet points, which can be easier on the eye). Otherwise you are taking up valuable space with redundant information (no one likes a loooooong resume, and CVs are more valuable if their length comes from other achievements, publications, etc., also not really expected at your level). Keep it to 2 pages.

 

Family Medicine: You can shorten the description by removing some extra words like “directly” and can also just say “outpatient setting” (remove “office”); can just say “Refined skills” (delete “personal," we know they’re yours!). It’s good to try to include something unique beyond the usual stuff you are expected to see in a typical rotation like Family Medicine; for example, the transition to EMR is a good thing to include.

 

Internal Medicine: I think you may be overstating things when you say “functioned as a regular staff member.” Best to delete that as it doesn't say much and again overstates what you were doing (even if to you it felt like you were treated the same). And to say “management of personally assigned patients” is unnecessary, since that is how it always works when there is a student around, i.e., they assign you patients (but would not have YOU actually managing them without supervision). I would recommend deleting this and rephrasing it so as to indicate which units you worked in (there are lots of Medicine services/subspecialties and you couldn’t have possibly covered them all in 1 month, so you can mention the specific ones if you did Cardiology or Pulmonary, for example). Also don’t need to say “under the supervision of the chief hospitalist and resident team” since this is standard, nor do you need “researched and presented a new medical topic each day for teaching rounds” since this is another expected student function. Keep the focus on the specific duties, functions, procedures; this is what is translatable and useful to a potential employer. You want to show off your knowledge, not fill up your resume with words and things that are germane to the clinical world (and which take up space and aggravate the reader). Also keep the part about assisting with ER admissions; maybe mention that you helped with venipuncture, or performing EKGs, for example.

 

Emergency Medicine: I would delete the “was exposed to” and rephrase it to maybe say “Assisted in the evaluation and management of a wide variety…” Good that you indicate both fast track and main ED, that’s relevant to areas within the ED that you want to know the difference between. Good list of procedures. Recommend maybe saying “Performed and/or assisted with” instead of what you currently have (you need the “with” in there grammatically). Can also add “/removal” to the staple part.

 

General Surgery: Chg “operative” to “intraoperative.” I would delete the last line “Refined skills in surgical care including sterile technique”; that stuff is all implied in being a 1^st/2^nd assistant. Delete this and just mention wound care somehow, since that’s important to know. Did you learn any other procedures like Foley placement and/or NGT placement? Include those if you did.

 

Pediatric Medicine section looks fine.

 

Pediatric Cardiology: Nice adjunct to your usual Cardiology exposure. Overall looks good except I would rephrase the beginning to say: “Participated in the evaluation and treatment of patients with a wide variety of congenital heart disease, … and initial consults in the outpatient clinic, inpatient CCI and catheterization lab.” Meaning take out the first sentence where you only talk about the settings and incorporate it. Everything else looks great.

 

Psychiatry: Remove the line for “Scheduled” in the interest of saving some more space (and since your reader’s eyes have now come to expect that the section below your title is for an actual description; this single line looks odd on its own.). Can just have the line with the dates say “scheduled for 6/10/13-7/10/13.”

 

Research Assistant: Again, you can condense this beyond what you currently have. Can simply have a bullet point for each of the teams, and don’t need the line at the beginning that says there were two of them, e.g., can say “Assisted in neonatal research … studying surgically-induced pulmonary hypertension…” and “Assisted cooperative research team focusing on the electrophysiology of…”

 

Medical Assistant: Delete the part that says “started out in the summer of 2008” then promoted, etc. That is what the dates at the far right are for, to indicate chronology. If you want think you need to mention your time as a Clinical Student, then do it separately as its own entry. All the other items seem fine.

 

A word about spacing: you can probably delete the space after your headings “Education, Clinical Rotations, and Professional Experience” to save space. Just make sure everything is consistent. Also, go through the whole thing at the end and make sure all your formatting is consistent (so far it looks like it is, but always good to re-proof at the end of making edits).

 

Other things to consider adding:

-Your name at the top should have “PA-S” at the end until you can use PA-C (you earned those little letters after your name!)

 

-Re: date of graduation: add the word “anticipated” to your date of graduation. Don’t need to include full start/end dates for education, can just indicate date of graduation (August 2009, for example, on your undergrad degree), and “Anticipated - August 2013” for PA degree. If you are going to use abbreviated dates, make sure you do that everywhere dates occur.

 

-Foreign languages, if you have any (can indicate “proficient” or “fluent” as applicable.

 

-Certifications (and Licenses): if you have BLS, ACLS, or other certifications, create a section for them and include those. Later on if/when you get your NCCPA certification, state license, and/or DEA registration and any other certifications, you can include them here.

 

-Professional Activities/Memberships: If you have done any volunteer work or participated in any student leadership activities/committees/groups, include them here. Leadership is a valuable thing to showcase.

 

Other advice: make a list of references with their contact information so that you can have this handy in case this is asked of you, and so that you don't have to hunt it down somewhere when you are asked to produce it.

 

Hope this helps! I’m happy to offer additional help if you’d like.

 

All the best,

Lissette :)

[winterallsummer]

Just a student but my advice would be try to make it more concise. Also are your references listed on a separate paper? If not list them.

[c0untingstars]

Do not send references with resume. Have a separate paper ready for when they ask for them.

[lea122682]

I am not sure what area you are looking to work in but you should tailor your resume to whatever specialty that might be. So for instance if you are applying for a job in family practice drop all the clinical rotations that aren't general med. If they are looking to hire a family practitioner they don't care about that surgery rotation where you were first assist 20 times. Also since you aren't listing all 10 of the rotations you did you can expand on the descriptions of the couple of the rotations you are listing. Hope that helps :) Good luck with the job hunt!

[lauraadora]

Thank you all for your help! I will be applying for a job at my current rotation for pediatric cardiology, but I will also be applying to other peds and peds sub-specialty postings. To Lissette (lizchao74) thank you so much for taking the time to go through it section by section - it was exactly the sort of info I was looking for. Would you mind taking a peek at my updated version? In response to your post, I don't know any other languages fluently and I haven't done any significant volunteer work or leadership stuff in quite some time, but I do have some memberships and certifications that I added. If you have the time, I'd love to know what you think! Thanks again everyone for your help!

 

Laura

LK_newCV_PAforum_v2.pdf

[lizchao74]

You're welcome! Just looked at your updated version, it looks fantastic. :) Only additional suggestion is to spell out the full name of the AAPA and PSPA and place the abbreviations in parentheses (just because most docs or HR people aren't familiar with PA organizations, so this just gives it a bit more completeness). Nice job! Best of luck. :) Let us know how things go and feel free to write me if there's anything else I can do to help.

 

Lissette :)