New Grad Nurse Resume Template with Examples & Tips

Your new grad nurse resume has to stand out like blue scrubs in a crowd of grey. Excelled in nursing school? The hospital’s HR team won’t know it without a compelling nursing new grad resume!

Time to make your application shine. Learn to list your experience and education in a way that gets results.

This guide will show you: 

• A new grad nurse resume example that will inspire you.
• How to list your professional skills on a new grad nursing resume.
• How to structure your new grad nurse resume template the best way.
• Sample nursing resume objective for new grads, and more.

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Still a student? Or maybe you're targeting a specific nursing job? Check these resume examples:

• Nursing Student Resume Sample
• Registered Nurse Resume Sample
• Labor and Delivery Nurse Resume Sample
• LPN Resume Sample
• Med-Surg Nurse Resume Sample
• Pediatric Nurse Resume Sample
• Emergency Nurse Resume Sample
• LVN Resume Sample
• Travel Nurse Resume Sample
• Best Resume Examples

New Grad Nurse Resume Example

Here’s how to write a new grad nurse resume step-by-step:

1. Start With the Best Format for a New Grad Nurse Resume

How can the charge nurse and hospital HR staff know you can dress a wound or take vital signs before they meet you? They can’t—unless your new grad nursing resume proves it to them. That starts by looking crisp and sharp. Your resume formatting sends a message about professionalism.

Here’s how to format a new grad nurse resume template:

• Use reverse-chronological resume format.
• Label each resume section with clear headings guide the hospital HR team’s eyes to what they’re looking for.
• Apply the right resume margins: an inch on all four edges of your resume for new grad nursing jobs.
• Select from professional resume fonts.
• Pick a legible font size: 11–12 pt for most text but 2–4 points bigger for your headings.
• Make the line spacing from 1 line to 1.15.
• Leave lots of white space to avoid looking like lisinopril instructions.
• Save your new grad nurse resume in the right format. PDF resumes work best unless the hospital calls for MS Word in the job ad.
• Use resume icons to help the hiring team find what they’re looking for fast. Add them to your new grad resume to make your experience and other sections visible.

Include these resume parts:

• Resume header: your name and contact information.
• Introduction: a briefing of the most relevant parts of your new grad nurse resume.
• License: your RN license and related certifications
• Education: your nursing school, completion date, and successes.
• Clinical experience: your time and achievements while working in patient care facilities.
• Skills: a short list of your most job-fitting abilities.
• Extra sections: publications, volunteer work, and additional activities, and certification.

Are there other layouts besides reverse-chronological? See our guide: Best Resume Layouts

2. Put Your License Near the Top of Your New Grad Nursing Resume

The nurse hiring manager has 105 tasks all clamoring for her attention. If she can’t see your RN license at a glance, she’ll skip your new grad nurse resume. List your RN, CNA, LPN, or APRN license first in its own section. Add your state and license number, plus additional certifications.

Do it like these new grad nurse resume examples:

New Grad RN Resume Example: Certifications Section

Pro Tip: Also put “RN” after your name in your resume header. Give the HR team as many chances as you can to see you’re certified and ready for the workforce.

3. List Education Next on Your Resume for New Grad Nurses

Education is everything in new grad nursing resumes. But—there are more than 200,000 new grad nurses every year. How can you stand out? By showing your education differently than the others. You won’t just list your degree, and completion date. You’ll add successes to turn heads.

See this new grad nurse resume example:

New Grad RN Resume Example [Education]

That resume education section for nursing student graduates is Cleveland-Clinic-ready. While other applicants will just add the basics, you’ll impress with achievements such as GPA or extracurricular activities. That’ll get you noticed by the charge nurse, HR staff, and patient care facility administrators.

Not fully graduated yet? No problem, you can list your expected graduation date on your resume.

Pro Tip: Sometimes you’ve got so many accomplishments you need a second page. Right? Wrong. Two-page resumes are for applicants with several years of experience.

4. Add Your Clinical Experience With Care

Listing clinical experience on a new grad RN resume takes skill. It’s not as clear cut as an internship on a resume. Since every newly-licensed RN has years of clinical experience, you won’t stand out by listing it alone. But a few tweaks to your approach will shine the O.R. lights on you.

Here’s the best way to make a work experience section for a new grad nurse resume that gets jobs:

• Start with your latest clinical role and job title.
• Write the patient care facility’s name, location, and your working dates.
• Add a two-line new grad nurse job description that describes the role.
• Make up to 6 bullet points that detail your finest student nurse achievements.
• Customize your resume by using those successes to show you fit this nursing job.
• Add numbers to show the HR team that yes, you really are that skilled.
• To make your new grad nurse job description for resumes more effective, use the PAR (Problem-Action-Result) formula.
• Start sentences with resume action words to catch their interest.

Here are two new grad nurse resume samples that show the plan of care:

Say the job ad calls for skills in patient assessment, nutrition, EHR, and wound dressing.

New Grad Nursing Resume Examples: Clinical Experience

We don’t need Meredith Grey to tell us what’s wrong with example #2. It’s not tailored to what the HR team is hunting for. The real kicker is, this is the same applicant in both cases. The difference is, she’ll wow them if she targets the right skills with numbers like in example #1.

The exact resume accomplishments you choose to show make all the difference.

Pro Tip: How much impact do resume styles have on the odds of getting hired? A standout resume template can catch the administrator’s eye, but don’t go overboard with flashiness.

Creating a resume with our builder is incredibly simple. Follow our step-by-step guide and use content from Certified Professional Resume Writers to have a resume ready in minutes.

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When you’re done, our professional resume builder will score your resume and our ATS resume checker will tell you exactly how to make it better.

5. List the Right New Grad Nursing Skills on a Resume

Patient care, assessment, education, and medication administration. You’ve got them all and more. But you can’t just copy-paste a list of skills into your new graduate nurse resume and get the job. Anyone can do that. To get hired, you’ve got to zero in on the abilities this role demands.

To start, see this list of nursing resume skills for new grads:

Hard Skills for a New Grad Nursing Resume

• Patient Education
• Budgeting
• Assessment
• Creating Plan of Care
• Electronic Health Records (EHR)
• Record Keeping
• HIPAA Compliance
• Patient Transport
• Wound Dressing
• Medicine Administration
• Triaging Patients
• Patient Mobility
• Care and Discharge Planning
• Recording Vital Signs

Soft Skills to Put on a New Grad Nurse Resume

• Teamwork
• Compassion
• Interpersonal Skills
• Verbal & Written Communication Skills
• Ethics
• Active Listening
• Confidence
• Decision Making Skills
• Presentation Skills
• Attention to Detail
• Time Management
• Problem Solving
• Physical Stamina
• Organizational Skills
• Critical Thinking

Here’s how to select the best new grad nurse skills for a resume:

• Make a list of your nursing skills.
• Find the ones the patient care facility is searching for. You can find them in the job ad online or by talking to nurses who work there currently.
• Compare the lists you've created. The matches in both lists are your resume keywords. Prove them in your bullet points.

See these examples:

New Grad Nurse Resume Example: Skills Section

Notice how we mixed both soft skills and hard skills.

Don’t put the hospital’s HR staff to sleep with handled or responsible for. Start your bullet points with resume action verbs like assessed, transported, and triaged.

6. Add Bonus Sections to Your New Grad Nurse Resume

The charge nurse doesn’t want to hire a resume. She wants a living, breathing nurse. The best way to show who you are? With extra sections in your new grad nurse resume. Added items like volunteer work or publications can take your resume from borderline to robust, fast.

Here are some examples of tempting extra sections to add to a resume for new grad nurse jobs:

New Grad Nurse Resume Samples: Extra Sections

1. Resume Volunteer Work

Why put volunteering on a new grad nursing resume? Because it shows the manager you have energy and skills to spare. Not only did you finish that complex nursing degree—you also chipped in to use your talents in the real world.

2. Trade Association Memberships

Are you a member of the American Nurses Association or another professional group? Listing that on a resume for new grad nurses can show you’re serious about your career. Here are a few clubs and groups that work:

• American Nurses Association
• Alzheimer’s Association
• American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing
• American Academy of Nursing
• National Association of Neonatal Nurses

3. Publications on a Resume

Have you written articles that show your passion for nursing? Posting your thoughts in nursing blogs, websites, and even in the school paper can demonstrate your nursing skills to employers.

4. Languages on a Resume

Do you speak Spanish or Chinese? Speaking another language can improve your hiring odds. That goes double if the facility is in a community with residents that speak that language, too.

See these new grad nurse resume samples:

New Grad Nurse Resume Examples [Other Sections]

Should everything in your resume for new grad nurses be in past tense? See this guide: What Tense to Use in a Resume: Past or Present? What Voice?

7. Compile the Best Parts in a New Grad Nurse Resume Objective

Your new graduate nurse resume is almost ready. Now you need to get the hiring team to read it. But—they’re so busy they can hardly think. So put a professional summary up top that gets them to keep reading. It’s called a heading statement, and you’ll build it from the best moments of your school and clinical experience.

Here’s how to write a career objective:

1. Start with Licensed RN.
2. Add your number of years of clinical experience.
3. Share your objective for the job (Seeking to become a top nurse at...)
4. Add the facility’s name.
5. Share 1–2 of your most Mass-General-level successes.

See these new grad nurse resume objective examples:

Nursing Resume Objective for New Grads

Whoops. That second new grad nursing resume sample is on life support. You sound as generic as a tongue depressor in a box of 2,000. But look again at example #1. It’s got your license, practical experience, goal for this specific job, and two measurable nursing achievements.

Pro Tip: Are you planning to email your resume? Export it as a PDF, then attach it to your email. Write your cover letter in the body of the email. (That’s next!)

8. Write a Job-Winning New Grad Nurse Cover Letter

Does your new grad nurse resume need a cover letter? Yep. Your resume cover page shows you’re not just applying to every hospital, nursing home, and clinic you can find. It’s where you show this nursing job is important to you. Plus, our HR statistics report shows almost half of managers toss resumes sans letters.

To write your new grad nurse cover letter:

1. Format your cover letter before you start.
2. Begin your new grad nurse cover letter with the hiring manager’s name.
3. Write a UCSF-worthy cover letter introduction.
4. Recap the job responsibilities to show you understand the role.
5. Put the healthiest parts of your resume in your letter.
6. To end your cover letter right, ask for the interview.

Read more: Nursing Cover Letter Examples, New Grad RN Nursing Cover Letter, and Nursing Student Cover Letter

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

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See more cover letter templates and start writing.

Key Takeaway

Here’s a recap of how to write a new grad nurse resume:

• Format your new grad nurse resume template in reverse-chronological order.
• Find new grad nurse skills in the job listing online.
• Start with your RN license, then add your clinical experience.
• Include your best healthcare achievements to show you’re ready for the job.
• Add numbers to prove your skills are as strong as you say.
• Spotlight the best parts of your nursing education.
• Inject some other sections like volunteering or an ANA membership.
• Write a new grad nurse cover letter to raise your chances.

That’s it! Now, we’d love to hear from you: 

• What’s the worst part about writing a new grad RN resume with no experience? 
• Does writing a new grad nurse cover letter make you nervous?
• Do you worry that you’ll vanish in a sea of applicants?

Let’s chat below in the comments, and thanks for reading!

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This article has been reviewed by our editorial team to make sure it follows Zety's editorial guidelines. We’re committed to sharing our expertise and giving you trustworthy career advice tailored to your needs. High-quality content is what brings over 40 million readers to our site every year. But we don't stop there. Our team conducts original research to understand the job market better, and we pride ourselves on being quoted by top universities and prime media outlets from around the world.

Sources

• https://www.nursingworld.org/ana/
• http://www.alz.org/index.asp
• http://www.aaacn.org/
• https://www.aannet.org/home
• http://www.nann.org/