How often have you revamped, reconstructed, or just tossed your dental hygiene resume format because it either doesn’t look right, or it simply wasn’t generating the results you wanted?
While it’s true that finding effective formats can be difficult, it’s not impossible.
The reality is that there are multiple ways to build a great resume, but they are not all conducive for building your dental hygiene resume.
The TOP THREE Performing Resume Formats
When constructing your professional resume, it is important to note that there are three varying formats that are the most effective to get your name and experience noticed by the right people.
But only one will help your dental hygiene resume format stand out.
They are as follows:
Reverse chronological, functional, or a hybrid version of the two.
Reverse chronological is the most commonly used resume format. Typically, this resume format displays your work history near the top in reverse chronological order (current job to oldest).
Featured near the top, this resume format lists your work history on one side. Beside it, often using bullet points, you’ll want to include a summary your responsibilities. Great resumes also include skills and experiences beneath each job listed.
This resume format works well for those who have diverse career paths/job experiences.
However, in clinical dental hygiene, and for the purpose of your dental hygiene resume format, there is very little diversity from one job to the next. As compared to other career fields.
Thus, it can be redundant to list the same skills and experiences beneath each clinical hygiene job.
That’s why I recommend hygienists use the functional style of resume.
Instead of listing the same skills over and over for each job, the functional style lists them in their own section.
Create an “Experience and Skills” section near the top of the resume.
To further set your resume apart, rather than simply listing what you’ve done, describe in detail how you accomplished each duty.
For example:
- Bad: “Patient Education”
- Good: “Unique ability to communicate, education, and influence patients toward better oral health”
or
- Bad: “Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Softdent”
- Good: “Working knowledge of Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Softdent”
While I encourage those building an effective dental hygienist resume format to use the functional style, I’ve also seen success for those who have combined both the functional and reverse chronological formats.
The most common way to do this hybrid is to create an Experience and Skills section, but also include an abbreviate summary or list beneath each job you have held.
Best of both worlds, if you will.
This hybrid can work well if you have had jobs outside of dental hygiene (which are relevant.)
In addition to clinical dental hygiene experience, of course.
So, if you’re following this post, your dental hygiene resume format should be shaping up nicely.
Other Resume Sections
I’ve described two very important sections above – the Work History and Experience and Skills sections. Other sections you’ll need to include are “About Me” and “Education.”
For many clinical resumes, that’s all you really need.
However, if you have too much blank space, you could add sections for certifications, community service, references, and membership involvement.
Thank you for reading, and I hope this has helped you to format your own attention grabbing resume.
Next week I will share the most effective length for a clinical dental hygiene resume.
Until then, let me know if you have any questions.
