It’s not enough to be a very good physician assistant, it’s very important people know about your expertise. Your resume is the strongest expression of your strength and most times, a lot of physician assistants fail to create good resumes.
Hence, we will show you how to write an irresistible physician assistant resume.
According to Business News Daily, 70% of employers say that certain resume deal-breakers would cause them to reject a candidate before they’ve even finished reading the application.
So, you see that at this point they might not care to learn more about you.
Hence, in this article, we will show you how to write an irresistible physician assistant resume, mistakes you should avoid making on a resume, and the best format for your PA resume.
The table of content clearly outlines all you’ll learn in this article.
Table of contents
What is a PA Resume?
A PA Resume is a resume which clearly outlines the professional experience, capabilities and the promise of a physician assistant professional.
For a long time, resumes have been the first interaction employers usually have with their employees. In fact, it is your first voice in the interview room.
However, since the introduction of the Applicant Tracking System(ATS), a lot of things have changed. Resumes are now more objective and strategic because no human eyes see it.
So, you must ensure your physician assistant’s resume fits the professional recommendation.
Read Also: Cover Letter For Scholarship in 2024 | Best Samples
What are the Objectives of a PA Resume?
When preparing your physician assistant resume, you must keep some objectives in mind. Your resume has to agree with these objectives which include;
Show Professionalism
Your physician assistant resume must show your professionalism. In essence, it must depict that you understand responsibilities and what it takes to get things done.
You have to use clear and understandable language to communicate everything about yourself in your resume. Whoever reads your resume must be able to learn what they need to know about you in seconds.
Outline Experience
In simple, clear and concise words, you must communicate how much experience and how profiting that experience can be.
Ensure you outline all relevant experiences as concerning your PA career. No matter how little it is, ensure it is documented.
Express Character
No one likes to work with someone who has a terrible character no matter how good they are.
Hence, you must highlight your character in the best light. You have to ensure you talk about how your character has pushed your career forward.
Demonstrate Willingness to Work
Dragging a mule to the stream is a difficult task. Just imagine what it means to force someone to work. No one likes it!
Hence, you must show you have the willingness to work as well as dedicated to every task.
Communicate Teamwork
You must be able to work with a team. Teamwork is necessary for progress. So, you must show that you can manage and work with teams.
A very important tip for you is to express yourself as a team leader. That way you will be taken very seriously.
What Needs To Be in a PA Resume?
A lot of times, people make certain grave mistakes by filling up their resume with a lot of jargon just to make it look long and full. If you think that still works, I’m truly sorry to disappoint you because it doesn’t.
The idea behind a resume as I earlier outlined, is to express how your interests and capabilities can merge and positively influence that of your target industry. So, outlining so many words is not necessarily the best idea. In fact, it might give up a very wrong impression about you.
Due to the development of ATS, the idea of a bulky-looking resume is gone. Every employer wants to only take a glance and judge if you’re a good fit for his industry. Hence, you must highlight only what is very important. Let me reiterate that; highlight what is very important.
For this cause, your resume needs to contain certain essentials such as;
- Work Experience
- Education
- Profile Summary
- Skills
- Leadership/Awards
- Personal Projects
In the later part of this article, we will show you how you can structure all these ideas in order to produce an astounding resume.
Read Also: Letter of Recommendation for PA School: Samples that Won & Secret Tips
What Mistakes Should You Avoid While Writing Your PA Resume?
A physician assistant resume can be very tricky. It’s not like every other resume you can find, however, it still holds certain similarities with other professional resumes.
As our research said, over 90% of resumes never get to the hiring manager’s desk due to avoidable mistakes. Indeed, writing a good resume is not a big deal, but competent professionals make these mistakes as well.
So, don’t you agree it would be better if we could all avoid these mistakes? Well, I will highlight some of the mistakes physician assistants make in their resume and what should be done. These mistakes include;
Excessiveness
Excessiveness has always been a problem. In fact, there’s a misconception that connotes “The more you write, means the more you know”. This is fallacious on every level and has bitterly caused some applications to falter.
No matter the level of experience you must learn to keep it in simple formats. It’s totally unacceptable to use more than six bullet points when describing your duties in a particular job position. In other words, it means you don’t know what you’re doing.
Similarly, once your resume exceeds two pages, it’s excessive. You must limit it to only two pages about your important offerings. There’s a secret that a lot of people don’t know.
And it connotes, “Put information in your resume which will make your target employer inquisitive”. That way you can land in the interview room to express yourself in person.
Grammatical Errors
Grammatical errors are normal. However, they are highly avoidable. You must be able to totally eliminate every form of grammatical blunder in your resume.
The presence of a grammatical blunder can be very deadly. ATS machines trash your resume at the sight of the simplest blunder.
So you must review and ensure your resume passes all grammar checks. A full stop is as important as a sentence in your resume.
You can do this either by reading through it severally or having your friends read through. Better yet, you can use a grammar checker such as Grammarly or Heminway.
No Contact Information
When you submit your resume, your target employer must be able to reach out to you to inform you of an interview date or something else related to the job.
You should clearly avoid the mistake of inputting a piece of wrong contact information. Your contact information must be your accurate.
Outdated Information
Very experienced professionals often make this mistake. They love to talk about their early years’ experiences which has made part of their present realities.
When writing a physician assistant resume, it shouldn’t be so. You have to use the date your experience from the closest to the farthest.
Unquantifiable Results
Results are a testimonial to your professionalism. However, results have to be measurable. Most times, PA’s outline results which cannot be judged on a quantifiable scale.
This is a very big mistake which expresses your inability to understand the core goal of any project.
Ensure you never add unquantifiable results to your physician assistant resume.
Use of “Career Objective”
Nowadays, you must avoid using words such as “Career Objective” in your resume. In plain words, no one is interested in your objective, they’re only interested in the value you can offer.
So, instead of using “Career Objective”, you can say “Profile Summary”.
In summary, you can see that these mistakes are avoidable. And you know when you avoid all these unnecessary mistakes, you increase your chances of getting your job.
Read Also: Killer Part-time Job Resume For College Students
How do I Write a Resume for PA School?
Now, we have come to the most important part of this article and this is where you should pay strict and concise attention. In here, we will outline the key steps and patterns that you must follow for a beautiful and amazing physician assistant resume.
A lot of people might advise you to meet professional resume writers to help you create a resume for yourself. Well, why that is one way, it is added value for you if you can create it for yourself. So, it’s good you put into practice what you’ve learnt from this article.
If you want to write a very good physician assistant resume, then you must do seven necessary things in your writing. These things include;
1. Choose a Simple Template
I understand your attraction to beauty and sophistication. I really love beautiful things but at times, it’s important to measure essence ahead of attraction. In a physician assistant resume, the essence should trump attraction totally.
Your template must be plain with few lines to separate the different parts of the resume. You can use a template which has two columns so as to make it a one-page document. However, if you have a lot of experience in this role, two pages are still fine.
In summary, you can access good resume samples from either Resume.io or Zety.
2. Outline Contact Information
Your physician assistant resume template will have a header section right at the top of the document. In that section, you have to input your name and other contact details so that you can be contacted.
It’s very important that you input your address, current phone number, email address and your LinkedIn account – you can leave out other social media profiles.
After your interview, ensure you always check any of these addresses for any message that might come and be ready to respond promptly as well.
3. Summarize Your Profile
Immediately under or beside your contact information should be your Profile Summary. Now, when you’re writing a profile summary for a physician assistant resume, there are certain things you must know.
You must know how to float the right professional keywords in your summary. These keywords actually depict your association with the profession. Hence, ensure you float the right keywords into your summary.
You should try to keep your summary between 50-150 words. It’s important so it doesn’t look bulky and scary. As you may know, this is the first place that the eye of your target employer goes to. Hence, it should be simple, nice and straight to the point.
4. Highlight Professional Experience
Experience is key, experience is necessary, experience is everything. If you don’t have the required experience for any job, your chances of getting it can become very slim.
So, immediately you finish summarizing your profile, you must outline your experience. Your experience must outline the key roles you played in every organization you served in addition to the results you achieved.
Now, when writing this experience, you need to write the name of the organization, timeline from the beginning till the end of your stay and your office in that organization. Then, you can use about five bullet points to tell what role you played and the goals you achieved.
It’s very important that you mention key areas of success using these bullet points. Additionally, you can chip in how your suggestions lead to organizational growth. Your experience area is key and you must list them in descending order – from last employment to the first one.
5. Input Education Details
Your education detail is the next item after your work experience. In this item, you basically highlight your education experience especially those with certifications.
All you need to do is list the name of the educational institution, course of study and year of graduation. It’s imperative you don’t include any educational experience irrelevant to the opportunity you want. The lesser, the better.
6. Record Skills
Skill separates achievers from underachievers. No matter how you want to view it, being highly skilled is very necessary. And having the skill of writing a physician assistant resume is not left out.
So, after you have listed your educational detail, you have to talk about your skills. You can either list your skills as a simple item in bullet points or you section them into interpersonal, I.T, communication and administrative skills.
You have to list relevant skills necessary to your line of duty. While communication and interpersonal might look more important, the other skills give you an added advantage among our fellow applicants.
7. Underline Personal Projects/Leadership and Awards
After you have listed the skills, you can then intimate your target employer with other details regarding your professional and personal career. In essence, you can talk about your leadership experience, awards and personal projects.
As a need for leaders remains, you can easily be considered for a leadership position when you portray an ability to take up such a position.
PA Resume Samples
Find samples of Physician resumes Samples here.
Conclusion
A good number of people have taken up career paths in resume writing. Therefore, it is a huge deal. So, if you quickly rushed through this content, you need to peruse it carefully to understand and replicate it.
You can see that writing a physician assistant resume requires much more than just an ordinary resume. And there are simple hacks which can help you do well. I’m sure you won’t make those poor resume mistakes again.
References
- topresume.com/career-advice/top-10-resume-mistakes-that-cost-you-the-job
- zety.com/resume-templates
- resume.io/examples/physician-assistant
- indeed.com/career-advice/resume-samples/medical-and-nursing-resumes/physician-assistant
- kickresume.com/en/help-center/physician-assistant-resume-sample/
