As a physical therapist, your job is to help patients with issues related to functional activities such as immobility, muscle pain, pinched nerves and so on.
No matter how good you are at your job, you cannot impress a recruiter if you fail to highlight your skills and professional achievements effectively on your resume.
The given tips will help you to create an impressive physical therapy resume to impress the recruiter and land a gig of your dreams.
Optimize the resume title
Profile title on a resume plays a major role in determining the overall impression your resume will make. Let’s say you wrote the title/header as “curriculum vitae” or “resume”. Though it’s true that is what you are writing, merely writing such pointers is not helpful.
No insightful information about your profile can be drawn from such a title, all it says is that you have written a resume/CV.
So, change it as per your job title, you may modify the title as per the key functions of your job or as per the description mentioned in the job description. For instance, if the job post makes it apparent that you should have expertise in “patient rehabilitation”, then you may include it in your resume.
Here are some examples of profile titles that you can include in your resume if the requirements are as such:
Certified Physical Therapist
Patient Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Care Professional
Showcasing achievements
The most important aspect of your physical therapy resume will be – showcasing your achievements. Here is how you tackle it:
Make subheadings
Recruiters receive loads of applications, so it is important to note that they will not get much time to spend on your resume. Under such circumstances, your skills and attributes should be distinctly visible.
Hence, just merely writing statements to display your accomplishments will not cut it. When it comes to showcasing your skills, you need to make sure that your resume is visually appealing and readable at a glance.
To achieve this, try to include your job-functions under relevant subheadings. For example, “therapy & patient care”, “patient rehabilitation & prosthetic care”, etc.
Bold important achievements
Why does bolding information matter in a resume? What you need to understand is you should be directing the recruiter towards the information you want him/her to read. Let’s say during your tenure as a physical therapist, you improved the patient satisfaction rate by 60% with your expertise.
You can write this point as demonstrated below:
“Rendered stellar physical care services for rehabilitating patients, improving the satisfaction rate by 60%”
This method directs the recruiter towards your accomplishments and skills. Further, it is also helpful in improving the overall readability of your resume.
Write a professional summary
Your resume is full of attributes that define you as a professional while equally emphasizing your achievements. However, a professional summary is an overview of your resume that is highly critical because it is the most likely the first thing that the recruiter reads.
In a paragraph form in 3-4 lines, you need to showcase the most essential pointers in the summary that can help you charm the recruiter. Check the example below to learn how you can write a professional summary:
“4+ years experienced certified physical therapist with a prolific track-record of rehabilitating patients with extreme care. Specializing in wound care and immobility in muscles to help patients with its functionality. Skilled at aquatic therapy and deploying diagnostic measures to identify the core-issue and provide appropriate care.”
Correctly format your resume
You can include top-notch information. But having an ill-formatted resume will not do justice to it. So, you need to correctly format your resume.
- Correctly write your work profiles with the company name, job title, dates, etc. along with a few key achievements. Further, make sure the chronology of your profiles is correct. You should use a chronological format and list all your profiles in a reverse chronological order to emphasize more on your recent achievements.
- Except for the summary that is to be written in a paragraph form, no points in your resume should exceed one-line. Catering to the readability factor, you need to make sure that you highlight everything correctly and long paragraphs just act as an obstacle when you are trying to achieve that.
Use the job description
It is clear that you are writing a resume and spending time on perfecting it because you wish to improve your chances of getting shortlisted. However, it is important to note that what works for one job post may not be ideal for another. So, using one resume everywhere may actually hurt your chances of getting shortlisted.
How do you avoid this?
Apart from your final resume, create a master resume that has all the information, achievements, skills, etc. Use the job description to highlight pointers in the master resume that are relevant to the job profile.
For instance, the job post states that they are looking for physical therapists who specialize in wound care. You can take this keyword and highlight information in your resume along the lines of wound care.
Key Takeaways
Here are a few takeaways:
- Optimize your resume header as per your job post and key expertise.
- Showcase your achievements and skills to improve their readability.
- Write a professional summary serving as a snapshot of your profile.
- Ensure proper formatting to convey relevant information correctly.
- Leverage the job description to bring your resume in-line with the target profile.
