Almost every PA school advertises this:
Hospitals and clinics all need PAs.
Fresh out of school, you’ll have more job offers than you’ll ever need.
True, there are a lot of job opportunities out there.
But there also are a ton of PA programs around the country,
And they are graduating many, many students.
When you have 30 new grad PAs vying for 1 position,
(In addition to experienced PAs applying to the same job)
How do you stand out?
How do you convince HR to call you?
One helpful tip is to cold call, which I will discuss in another post (and will link once I do).
But the answer here?
Create an awesome resume.
Of note, I’m no expert at resume writing- I’ve never worked in HR or anything like that. I’m writing this post because I received an interview offer for almost every application that I’ve submitted, and I attribute this to my resume format, which was reviewed and approved by my mentor (a PA, medical director, professor, and preceptor).
At the end of the day, we all more or less had the same PA school education, so how we sell ourselves on paper makes all the difference in getting that interview.
********* Page 1 *********
Basic Outline of how I formatted Page 1 of my resume:
Before I begin writing the resume, I copy the job description and paste it into a word cloud generator. This allows me to see the key words of the job and makes it easier for me to tailor the resume to the position listed.
The first thing I put in my resume is that I’m a recent grad. This could backfire because some employers may want someone more experienced. However, I do this because I want potential employers to think: 1) this candidate hasn’t been limited to 1 specialty and knows general medicine since she just passed her boards, and 2) this candidate is highly malleable.
In the objective, I like to summarize my academic and clinical experience that is relevant to the position. I also use some descriptors of myself to give recruiters a general idea of my personality.
Below the objective, I describe experiences from rotations that would be helpful for the job to which I am applying. For this post, I listed the most generic descriptors for the purpose of providing a general example. What I actually do is list unique experiences, making this portion semi-anecdotal. Yes, just about every PA student has a family medicine rotation, but how many of those students managed a patient’s HIV medication regimen or followed a child with cystic fibrosis? This is the place in the resume to create a unique and more memorable profile for yourself.
Then you have the obligatory list of rotations. For this portion, bold and place the most relevant rotations at the top of the list. Then add a few sentences below the list describing your rotation and what made it special. For instance, my family medicine rotation was a Medicaid/Medicare-only clinic, and most of my patients lived in shelters. If your rotation was unique, this is your opportunity to say so.
********* Page 2 *********
Basic Outline of how I formatted Page 2 of my resume:
Having a second page isn’t always recommended, but let’s be real here: that list of rotations takes up a lotta lotta space.
You may be able to combine your employment and volunteering history into 1 section. For positions that are relevant to the healthcare world, write a brief description highlighting what you did. And then feel free to add positions that aren’t clinically relevant. I wrote that I was babysitting and dogsitting during PA school. It may not be clinical (and my program director came close to crucifying me for it, DID YOU NOT SEE THAT WE HAVE A NO WORK POLICY IN THIS PROGRAM?!), but one recruiter was impressed that I did these things as a full-time student, and it helped me get to the face-to-face interview.
For special skills, this can mean anything that could be helpful on the job. List every EMR you’ve ever used, any languages that you speak, etc. One of my classmates was SWAT prior to starting school, and he was some kind of specialized conflict /hostage negotiator something or the other (no disrespect, I just have no freaking clue what his title was). Even though such a role might not be listed in a PA job description, having experience like this could be incredibly helpful in certain patient situations. If you have a special talent, tell them!
The most boring section of your resume probably will be the list of certifications, memberships, etc. Not much to say about this except that, if your membership/certification is expiring soon, list when you’ll recertify.
There are many different ways to write a resume, and this just so happens to work for me. I’m currently trying to do a series of posts as I go through the PA-C job hunt process (resume writing, phone interviews, face-to-face interviews, networking, etc), so stay tuned, and best of luck!
