Sometimes you reach a point where you’re ready to move between the RN job role and a totally different occupation that will make use of the professional abilities you already have. You’re totally ready to take the interpersonal communication, teamwork, and critical thinking knowledge from your RN experience and apply it to a whole new career!
But how do you navigate your resume for this unique career change? What do you include, and how should it look?
Not to worry: We’ve helped plenty of people from the medical field make their desired career changes—and we can help you with these three resume examples and seasoned advice, too.
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Job Experience
When you’re listing your skills, think technical! Many of your soft skills may seem to overlap with other fields at first glance, but with a bit of creativity you can break them down into more detailed (and impressive) abilities.
For example, listing something like “negotiation” is far more powerful than simply saying “communication”. You don’t want to say the same thing that the recruiter just read on nine other applications!
To really pack a punch with your skills, ensure that each one is specific to your new profession and super fine-tuned. List software programs by name alongside honing your interpersonal abilities.
9 most popular RN Career Change skills
- Negotiation
- Problem-solving
- MS Excel
- Planning
- Persuasiveness
- Active Listening
- Google Docs
- Salesforce
- Employee Training
Sample RN Career Change work experience bullet points
Recruiters are looking for someone who knows how to translate their skills into deliberate, impactful actions. Address your past role and cite examples of versatile skills from your previous job, like negotiation or employee training. Then make sure you tie your accomplishments in with the new job you want.
The positive impact you made in your previous field can still bolster your credibility in the new one: Just make sure you feature experience points that relate closely to your new job and demonstrate your positive impact.
Oh, and always include quantifiable data to measure that impact! Metrics make all the difference between a nice success story and an impressive credential.
Here are some samples:
- Answered questions in alignment with physician’s protocols, educated patients regarding health and lifestyle, and encouraged follow-ups, resulting in 83% of patients returning for preventative care
- Assisted fellow RNs with filling out patient charts, conducting basic health checks, and maintaining a safe and sterile environment, reducing errors by 6%
- Handled and cleared up complaints, responded to online reviews, and monitored incoming and outgoing phone call quality to raise client satisfaction from 85% to 96%
- Managed 12 account executives, training and motivating the team to meet or exceed sales goals 93% of the time
- Evaluated sales objectives and results and drafted weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports to analyze statistics and adjust budgeting goals, reducing budget by 11%
Top 5 Tips for Your RN Career Change resume
- Show steady development
- One way to simultaneously close the gap between your two career areas and also show off your ability to grow, feature a number of increasingly complex accomplishments on your resume. Show how you succeeded in your previous job role, and then share how you recently beat those metrics!
- Use a sleek template
- Pick a template that will organize your experience points in a visually pleasing and highly organized manner. Our templates all look a bit different once you fill in your unique info, so see which one fits best! You want to set off your overarching skills but also emphasize continuity and advancement throughout your career change.
- Keep bullet points brief
- Your bulleted list of experiences and achievements should be super easy for recruiters to skim. Keep each point to just one or two lines, and stick with just the essential information: What did you do? How did you do it, and why? What measurable results did you achieve?
- Utilize context
- The “why” of your ideal experience example involves a bit of backstory. By using examples that feature variety from one point to the next in terms of setting and motivation, you can keep recruiters interested for longer!
- Don’t run on
- You can’t let your resume go over one page, no matter how good the contents are! Recruiters are usually working with a bit of a time crunch, so cut to the chase and share your various career experiences as concisely as you can.
If you have some great points that you just don’t feel right about parting with, use them to kick off a great cover letter! Be sure to grab some from each career area so that you’ll have solid examples for all stages of your journey.
Yes, absolutely! Even if you have a qualifying credential that doesn’t relate to your new career direction, like an ALS or RN certification, list it: You’ll be showing that you can supplement traditional qualifications and get the training you need for any field.
Showing that you’ve read the job description can take you far: Do this by revisiting the job ad and finding skills, objectives, or mission statements that you align with. Reflect these back in your resume, with focus on your most recent relevant RN duties.
