Medical Assistant Resume: Examples, Template & Resume Tips
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In order to get a job position in medicine, it is important to show that you are responsible and reliable.
One of the first steps to getting the job of a medical assistant is to write a good resume, which will outline your greatest strengths and show you in your best light. Here, we will help you understand how to make a good resume.
You will get useful pieces of advice and read about the best practices which will enable you to write a resume that will make your desired employer want to hire you right away.
First, let us take a look at two examples of good resumes. You will get the basic idea of what yours should look like. Also, you may try our resume builder that will help you focus on the contents instead of its form.
Later, we will break down the parts of the resume for you and explain in more detail how to write each section.
Medical Assistant Resume Example
Medical Assistant Resume Sample
PERSONAL INFO SECTION
This is the section where you should write your personal information.
Though this may seem to be the simplest part, it surely deserves some attention.
You should be careful about what you will write and what you will omit here.
What Should You Include?
You should write some basic information about yourself. These are your name, address, email, and phone number.
Remember, when writing your name, you should include your first and last name and, if you wish, your middle name.
Make sure never to write any nickname your friends or family might have given you. For example,
The same goes for your email address. You should have an email address with your full name, excluding any nicknames. To show you an example,
If you already have a job while you are applying for a new one, do not write your work email. It may seem convenient at the time, but it would be very problematic if your current boss finds out about that.
Also, if you get your target job, you will still need to use your email, and it would not be professional to use am address affiliated with another company.
Before printing or sending your resume, double check if you have written your email address correctly.
You do not want to lose a good opportunity due to a spelling mistake.
What Should You Omit?
There are certain pieces of information that you should not include in your resume.
Some of these pieces of information may be used, consciously or unconsciously, for discrimination.
Now there are laws against it, but omitting the following will certainly be good.
These are nationality, gender, date, and place of birth, marital status, number of children, religion.
Moreover, the hiring managers are interested in your skills and qualifications, and the resume should include only the data which serves the purpose.
Anything more than that will stand in the way and obscure what they really want to see. So be careful and stick only to what is significant for the position you are applying for.
Optional Items
Photos are optional, although they are typically not added to resumes in the USA.
Having a LinkedIn profile is highly encouraged as your potential employer will have a better perspective on your professional career. If you have a profile on this network, feel free to add it to your resume.
However, any other social media links are not necessary.
And not only that, it would be quite unprofessional to include them.
Since you are applying for a position in health care, there are not any social media sites that would connect you in a professional way with other areas of medicine (apart from the abovementioned LinkedIn).
SUMMARY SECTION
This is a very important part of your resume. You should present yourself and your medical background/knowledge/experience, all in only a couple of sentences.
The summary should give the hiring manager the basic idea about you and make him want to keep reading your resume.
This is the part that should catch their attention and show you as a medical professional who is perfect for the job position.
Here, you should include some of your strongest points and biggest achievement(s). Note that you should not include every single thing you have done so far.
There will be a place for that.
For now, choose the skills and accomplishments that will give the hiring manager a picture of a true professional.
If you have worked as an administrative medical assistant, you may want to mention that you have led a database of 5,000 patients and that you successfully scheduled appointments for 4 doctors who worked in your former clinic. You may want to emphasize skills such as good organization, reliability, being detail-oriented, perception.
If you have experience working as a clinical medical assistant, your summary will include that you are skilled in removing stitches, drawing blood, or doing some basic laboratory tests. The skills worth mentioning here are precision, fast learning, patience, keen eye.
If you have worked or studied to be a specialized medical assistant, such as ophthalmic or podiatric, the summary is an appropriate place to mention the skills and knowledge you have gained.
In that way, you will ensure that the hiring manager continues reading through your resume and possibly finding you to be a suitable candidate for the position.
It is a good practice to write your summary last after you have finished all the other sections.
By doing this, you will first have an overview of your whole resume. Looking at it, you will be able to choose the most relevant details that match the job description.
Here are a few useful pieces of advice:
- Start with your professional title. You may add years of work experience.
- Choose 3-4 most impressive points from your resume and include them in the summary. The hiring manager will have a quick peek into your qualifications for the job. But do not forget to match them with the job requirements.
- Use as many keywords found in the job description as you can. Do not overcrowd your summary, but this strategy will make your resume relevant.
- Try to quantify your achievements, as numbers are easily spotted and better remembered.
- Avoid writing what you want in the summary. Focus on how you can contribute to the company with your abilities and skills.
- Focus on accomplishment rather than on skills. For instance, it is much better to write that you have successfully instructed several hundred patients on how to insert, remove, and care for contact lenses than you say that you are patient and have good communication skills.
- Keep it up to 5 sentences long. It should not be longer than that. All the additional information will be included in the rest of the resume.
EXPERIENCE SECTION
This is where you show your past experiences and what you have gained from them.
The hiring manager wants to see here what skills you have acquired and how you deal with your obligations and duties.
Every job that you list should include several pieces of information. These are:
- the company you worked for,
- the time period of your employment there, and
- 4-5 duties/accomplishments from that position.
Remember that you want to show your potential employer that you are the best person for this job.
Take a look at the job description and highlight the duties and skills which go best with the requirements for the job.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that you should omit anything that is not directly related to your desired job. Do not leave blank space in your resume.
This means that you should put the most important achievements first so that these catch the reader’s attention.
The way you describe your past positions is very important. You should highlight your achievements and not just your duties.
An example of a practice to avoid is:
It is much better to write:
Quantification is always a good choice as numbers stick to mind easily and you will more likely be remembered among a number of candidates.
If you do not have much work experience, but you have had internships or volunteer work, you may well add it to the experience list. Write it the same way you would write a formal work experience.
As you can see, the description of your previous positions is the crucial point here.
We will offer some guidelines which will help you tailor these for the best results possible.
- The experience that is directly related to the desired job is significant.
- Soft skills and dealing with patients is highly valued by the potential employer.
- Focusing your experience on the contact with patients is your key to success.
- Generally, large clinics need people with a specific set of skills, while small clinics prefer those who have more diverse capabilities. It would be quite useful to make your resume fit this distinction.
EDUCATION SECTION
You will write this section in the same way as you wrote the experience section. Let us revise and adapt these pieces of advice.
- Use the reverse-chronological order, that is, write the latest medical training or course you have attended first, and then go back in time.
- The pieces of information you should write here are the time period when you attended the course, the institution where you went, and the medical achievements you have. You should include your GPA, though you may want to omit it if it is not very good. Feel free to add any accomplishments which are related to your desired position and which will showcase your capabilities needed for the job. Of course, do not forget to match those with the job description as well as you can.
- List every certificate that is connected with the job. The more of these, the better chance you have to be called to the interview.
- Point out the areas of study in which you excelled.
- Add any medical associations you became a member of.
- Add any extracurricular activities that you participated in.
- Include any honors or awards that you received.
SKILLS SECTION
This section is meant to show all your skills and capabilities.
You should make a mix of hard skills – those which are learned at schools and courses and gradable, and soft skills – those which are learned throughout life, the skills of communicating and dealing with people.
You may divide them into two subsections or write them together.
Now we will take a look at some skills which are useful for a medical assistant.
- Time management. As most medical assistants have to schedule appointments, this skill is very important, especially if you are applying for a position of a medical practice business assistant.
- Teamwork. You will collaborate with one or more doctors and nurses. Therefore, it is crucial that you work well in a team.
- Computer literacy. Your future job will probably consist of using a hospital database software. Having computer skills, such as working knowledge of EHR software (or any similar to this), fast typing speed, or data entry, will be suitable to mention here.
- Telephone skills. If your desired job consists of talking on the phone, add that you are experienced or skilled in answering the phone and making follow-up calls.
- This job may require you to have several things in your mind at a time. Being good at dealing with multiple issues is a desirable skill.
- Communication skills. Being in constant contact with patients and other medical staff, you will certainly need to have excellent communication skills. These include patience, active listening, friendliness, confidence, empathy, respect, responsiveness, understanding non-verbal cues.
- Patient care. As a medical assistant, you will take care of patients, prepare them for examinations, perform preliminary physical tests such as taking the blood pressure, weight, or temperature, maybe even draw blood. All of these require you to be professional with how you approach and deal with the patient and therefore render this skill as extremely significant.
- Knowledge of medical terminology. It may seem obvious, but it will not be too much to mention that you have a great knowledge of the medical terminology, especially the one specific to the speciality of the clinic. If you want to work in a gynaecological clinic, you should know the terminology related to gynaecology. If you want to work in a laboratory, you should know the terms used there.
You do not have to list all these skills in your resume. It may seem suspicious if you do.
Instead, focus on those which are your strongest points and for which you have a backup, that is an example/situation where you displayed the knowledge or skill.
This may be useful for you at the interview later.
Also, look at the job description and tailor the skills section so that it matches what the job posting requires for a candidate. Use keywords for a better match.
Here is an excerpt from a job posting:
Duties will include electronic chart preparation, assisting with patient care, rooming, taking vitals, screening/charting of medical history, procedures, scheduling diagnostic testing, obtaining authorization, instrument sterilization and patient follow-up.
A good skills section would read like this:
- Data entry: familiar with the EHR software and the use of databases.
- Time management: experienced with scheduling and rescheduling diagnostic testing for a number of doctors.
- Teamwork: collaborative and responsive, a good leader; also follow instructions well.
- Medical knowledge: theoretical and practical knowledge of patient care, taking vitals, and instrument sterilization.
FINAL WORD
In this text, we were aimed at helping you to write a resume for the position of a medical assistant which will catch the eye of the hiring manager instantly.
If you follow our pieces of advice, we hope that you will get the chance to move on to the interview and get the job.
For an easier process of writing, use our resume builder and focus on the information itself instead of the form of your resume.
In the first part of the text, you could take a look at two examples of medical assistant resumes. You could see what they look like and, we are sure you noticed that it is not very difficult.
You could read important pieces of advice on how to write each section of the resume and saw some examples of good and bad practices.
We hope that we managed to answer your doubts about this topic and we wish you the best of luck in obtaining your dream job!
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