The impression you make on a prospective employer and your standing relative to other job seekers begins with your resume. Shortcomings in your resume can prevent you from being granted an interview. Even if you are granted an interview, a poorly prepared resume can cause you to spend precious interview time filling in gaps and overcoming misperceptions. Therefore, it is essential that your resume creates the right first impression that leads to positive and constructive interviews, and a job offer. A resume that only lists job titles at past hospitals is not enough to communicate why you would be of value and attract the kind of attention you need.

Here are some ideas on how to put your best foot forward for that next career opportunity.

Accomplishments and Benefits

Celebrate your past successes. A resume for today's market must stress your previous accomplishments - results and outcomes are critical. The new employer can most clearly understand how you can benefit their organization if they understand your past achievements. Highlight your ability to do more than just adapt to your new role, but rather, to lead the process of change and improvement.

Clarity and Organization

A resume should be positive, focused and organized in a manner that maintains your reader's interest. Make it easy for the reader to extract key information. List your employment history in reverse chronological order. Wherever possible quantify your results and accomplishments by including actual percentages and numbers to backup your claims.

• Use plenty of white space and short lines.
• Set margins to at least a one-and-a-half inch margin on the left and an inch on the right.
• Avoid long wordy sentences and large heavy paragraphs that overload a page. Subconsciously, we tend to skip overweight paragraphs.
• Use indentations to separate topics and sub-topics.
• Use bullets to focus the reader’s attention on key accomplishments.
• Make a resume ‘skim-able’ to make it easier to read.
• Include your full name on each page.
• Include the area code with phone numbers.

It is not advisable to include your social security number, marital status, number of children or religious affiliation. Provide your list of references in a separate document.

Review your resume for spelling and grammatical errors. For sake of brevity, full sentence structures are not always required. However, make certain that your wording makes sense and that your information flows logically.

Relevant Content

Be frugal with words but use as many pages as you must to communicate your attractiveness as a candidate. The length of a resume is determined by your depth of experience, education and other qualifications. A one or two page resume does not give most people, especially experienced managers and advanced practice nurses, enough space to effectively communicate what makes them valuable to the employer and different from the competition.

The resume should include your Educational Background, Licenses and Certifications, Employment History, Awards and Honors, Service and Leadership Activities, Presentations and Professional Development Activities. The resume should give a flavor of who your are as person. Include all information pertinent to your accomplishments, qualifications and standing in your profession.

Keep in mind that jobs are given to people by other people. Nevertheless, add personal facts that separate you from your competition only when the information supports your qualifications for the position. Review your resume and remove any piece of information that is not linked to or supports your qualifications.

Preparation and Handling

Forward your resume as an attachment to an email. Do not include the resume in the body of the email. The attached resume should be in text, Microsoft Word or PDF format. If you use WordPerfect, save your resume in Rich Text Format ("RTF") file.

You may also send your resume by fax or U.S. mail; but be advised that a growing number of hiring managers are refusing resumes not sent by email.

We will review your resume and make suggestions to help make certain you are putting your best foot forward.