As per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the registered nurse (RN) job outlook expects to see a 9% growth from 2020 to 2030, a rate about as fast as the average for all jobs. This opens up about 194,500 nursing jobs each year, many of which will result from the need to replace workers who have shifted careers or retired from their posts. RNs also have the choice to be travel nurses, so this may be a good opportunity for you to pursue your desired career path.
With this data, you know that your field is a competitive one. Hence, you need to ensure your job application stands out from those of other job seekers. This is possible by starting with your travel nurse resume. We’ve written this guide to help you learn more about this career and how you should go about your travel nurse resume writing. You can also choose to ask for expert help to take care of your job search tools!
What is a Travel Nurse?
A travel nurse is a healthcare worker who travels to patients, assists at healthcare facilities, and performs common nursing roles and tasks. In some cases, travel nurses also come to the rescue when hospitals or clinics are short-staffed. Often, travel nurses take on temporary roles in high-need locations. They commonly jump into various areas to give patient care.
What are the Duties of a Travel Nurse?
Travel nurses have these common job duties:
- Travel to patients’ homes, schools, and other sites to perform healthcare
- Help sick or injured patients
- Administer medications
- Perform and assess health tests
- Inform patients and family members about their health and the needed treatments
- Follow up with patients post-treatment
How Do You Become a Travel Nurse?
In most cases, travel nurses need to have at least a year’s worth of experience working as an RN. More often than not, nursing jobs now require a bachelor’s degree, most notably for travel nurse roles. Other universities and colleges also offer programs that allow aspirants to study and earn their degrees while working. To secure a job in this field, you may choose to reach out to staffing agencies for any openings.
What to Include in Your Travel Nurse Resume
One of your key skills as a travel nurse is having a keen eye for detail. In your job search, the same thing goes for ensuring your resume has all the key parts and info. This helps you write a strong job search tool that gives a great, lasting impression on the recruiter or hiring manager. With that, here are the main things you should write as you market yourself fit for the job you’re aiming.
Your Contact Information
Placed at the topmost part of your resume, your updated contact details must include your full name in a larger font size to make it easy to read. To add, put your highest earned degree, licensure, and certification number. Lastly, include your email address and phone number. You may also opt to state your mailing address under your name.
A Compelling Intro
As most recruiters and hiring managers spend fewer than 10 seconds scanning resumes, there’s one thing you must do to ensure yours won’t make it to the discard pile. Strive to catch your reader’s attention through your profile intro.
For this part, you can choose from various formats based on your job level and career goals. This part aims to highlight your main traits, skills, and feats. Hence, you can consider writing in one of these formats:
- Qualifications Profile
- Resume Summary
- Resume Objective
List of Your Core competencies
After your intro, add a section for your top areas of expertise to highlight your top hard and technical skills. This will help show recruiters that you have the required skills for the travel nurse job you’re aiming for.
Relevant Work Experience
This section is one of the most vital parts of your resume, which allows you to discuss more about yourself as a professional healthcare worker. With that, make sure that this part includes your past jobs, the names of your past employers and their locations, and the inclusive years of experience you spent with them. Under each job, make sure to list your top tasks in bullet points. Just state the ones that clearly define the kind of work you did in the past.
Your Education
Earning your state license is often required for you to land jobs. With this, ensure your travel nurse resume reflects your academic background. If you’ve earned a master’s degree, you must also use this section to mention that.
List of Your Top Skills
Often found on the last part of a resume, the skills section tops off a great job search tool. Opting to state your skill sets not only helps you enrich your resume with words or phrases you found on the job posting, but also lets you highlight your background in the field.
To guide you, here are some samples of resume skills you can list on your job search document:
Soft skills
- Flexible
- Strong social skills
- High emotional quotient (EQ)
- Love for travel
- Teamwork
- Empathy
- Ethics
Hard skills
- Patient care and safety
- Urgent care
- Vital signs checking
- Carrying out treatment plans
Technical skills
- Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS)
- Telemetry
- EHR proficiency
- Basic life support
Your Top Credentials
You may include a section for your earned feats, so as to highlight them, as may be required by some employers. Make sure all key details are complete and tailored to the travel nurse job you’re vying for.
How to Write Your Travel Nurse Resume
Now that you know the main parts and details you should include on your tool, it’s time to learn how to piece them together to form a well-written resume. Heed these foolproof techniques to get you started.
1. Pick the right resume format.
Based on your job level, the ideal format you can use is unique to help you best present your background and skills.
Use this guide on the 4 most common formats to help you pick the most suitable for your career level:
- Reverse Chronological: Hence its name, you need to list your work history from your most recent job working your way backward. It’s best to use this type when you aim to maintain the same career path or want to show steady growth in your line of work.
- Functional: This showcases your skill sets as your major strengths. If you’re a job shifter or you have career gaps, using this format helps make your work history more catchy to recruiters.
- Hybrid or Combination: Highlighting both your work and skills, this format combines the first 2. For that reason, this may not be the best choice for those who have yet to gain job exposure and career feats.
- Targeted: This format aims to focus on relevant job experiences as you outline them in the Professional Experience section. As for other qualifications that aren’t related to your target post, you may add them in a new section—Other Experience or Additional Experience.
2. Ensure job match.
Being a hands-on travel nurse must reflect on your resume. Thus, you need to ensure that your job search tool is tailored to your target role. To do this, review the job description and check if your background well matches what the job requires. This will help you avoid sending a generic resume for every role you want to apply for, and not put yourself at risk of giving the impression that you’re not putting as much effort into your application as you should.
3. Use resume keywords.
As various firms use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to screen resumes, how do you stay on top of the latest resume trends such as this? Simple! Make sure you’re using keywords that are found on the travel nurse job posting, most notably the needed skills and other required traits for the role.
4. Mind the layout.
For normal text such as the body of your resume, make sure to use 12-point size, in font types that are easy to read. Furthermore, put your larger texts such as headings and titles from 14 to 16 points in bold font for clear emphasis. Then, use at least a single space to give your resume enough whitespace. Moreover, unless stated otherwise on the job posting, it’s best to save and send your resume as a PDF file to maintain the layout and format.
5. Do a final check.
Lastly, ensure your file is free from typos and grammar errors so that you’re only left with a neat, strong travel nurse resume. Before sending out your job search tool, read the whole thing at least twice so that you can spot what needs to be removed or edited. If it helps, you can also ask a peer or friend to do the checking for you. You can even ask for detailed feedback to further improve your work.
Travel Nurse Resume Sample
Now that you’re aware of the best techniques you can apply in writing a resume, you must now know how it should look like. Do that by checking out sample travel nurse resumes! In fact, we prepared this one for you.
Note: You may check out other resume samples written by top professional resume writers for more ideas.
Have Your Travel Nurse Resume Crafted by an Expert
While some job seekers try to write their own job search tools, finding the right balance between juggling their job search efforts may be jarring. Fret not, as this can be resolved by seeking expert help!
Browse through our best resume writing services and see how our team can help you get hired faster and land your dream job! Check out our resume examples to see a glimpse of how we help clients ramp up their job search.
If you don’t want to start writing from scratch, why not have your tool checked by an expert? We also offer a free resume review so that you’ll get feedback from one of our career coaches! Just follow our easy steps or talk to us to get started.
