
Make a Perfect Resume in 8 Easy Steps: Examples & Tips
Beautiful design? Amazing layout? Exciting contents? What's the perfect resume really about? This guide explains it all. Just follow the instructions to make your resume perfect.
You made it through school, and your RN license is shiny, new, and ready for duty. You’ve even got some brand new scrubs. Show your skills with a new grad nurse resume that works.
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 resume for new grad nurses!
Time to make your new grad nursing resume shine. Learn to list your experience and education in a way that gets results.
See a resume example for new grad nurses and tweak it to fit any nursing job. Learn to write a resume for new grad nurse jobs that’ll land 10x more interviews than any other.
Want to save time and have your resume ready in 5 minutes? Try our resume builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click. See 20+ resume templates and create your resume here.
Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume samples here.
Before we start, here are a few other healthcare resume samples and guides:
Kathy Moffatt
Registered Nurse
773-839-1414
kathyzmoffatt@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/kathyzmoffatt
Summary
Licensed RN with 2 years of clinical experience. Seeking to become a top nurse at Chicago General Hospital by following protocols and promoting efficiency. As student nurse at Daily Medical Clinic of Chicago, achieved 20% higher-than-average patient satisfaction scores and 97% favorable preceptor evaluations.
Certifications & Licensure
Education
BS in Nursing
Illinois State University, Normal, IL
Completion Date: May 2020
Clinical Experience
Student Nurse
Illinois Central Hospital, Chicago, IL
October 2019–May 2020
Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Key Achievements
Student Nurse
Blye Street Urgent Care
September 2018–May 2019
Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Skills
Volunteer Work
Here’s how to write a new grad nurse resume step-by-step:
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 nurse 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:
Include these resume parts:
Are there other layouts besides reverse-chronological? See our guide: Best Resume Layouts
Don’t get stuck starting your new grad nurse resume. List the easy parts first—your education and clinical experience. Then create your heading and introduction.
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 samples:
Certifications & Licensure
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.
Education is everything in new grad nurse 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:
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Education
BS in Nursing Illinois State University, Normal, IL Completion Date: May 2020
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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 gratuated 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.
Listing clinical experience on a new grad nursing 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:
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.
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Clinical Experience
Student Nurse Illinois Central Hospital, Chicago, IL October 2019–May 2020 Key Qualifications & Responsibilities
Key Achievements
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Experience
Student Nurse Illinois Central Hospital 2019–2020
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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.
When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.
When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.
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 skills for new grad nurse resumes:
But—
Here’s how to select the best new grad nurse skills for a resume:
Make a list of your nursing skills. Then 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. The matches in both lists are your resume keywords. Prove them in your bullet points.
See these examples:
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Notice how we mixed both soft skills and hard skills.
Pro Tip: 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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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Additional Activities
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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?
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:
See these new grad nurse resume objective examples:
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Licensed RN with 2 years of clinical experience. Seeking to become a top nurse at Chicago General Hospital by following protocols and promoting efficiency. As student nurse at Daily Medical Clinic of Chicago, achieved 20% higher-than-average patient satisfaction scores and 97% favorable preceptor evaluations. |
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New grad nurse, seeking a position in a hospital, clinic, or long-term-care facility. A fast worker and a quick thinker who handles pressure well. Strong knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, and patient care. Eager to start my new nursing career. |
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!)
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:
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:
See more cover letter templates and start writing.
Here’s a recap of how to write a new grad nurse resume:
That’s it! Now, we’d love to hear from you:
Let’s chat below in the comments, and thanks for reading!
Beautiful design? Amazing layout? Exciting contents? What's the perfect resume really about? This guide explains it all. Just follow the instructions to make your resume perfect.
How you finish depends a lot on how you start. Write a cover letter salutation that will have recruiters reading to the end.
Face it—you need a killer cover letter or your job search is burnt toast. But what elements go into writing a truly exceptional cover letter? Let a career expert show you the plan.