Professional Resume

Learning Outcomes

Through development of a professional resume and creating a five-year plan for professional development students will be able to:

1. Describe how to envision the future of your nursing career.
2. Explain why your nursing career requires planning.
3. Develop and discuss a plan for professional development and set achievable goals.
4. Develop a professional resume.

 

Instructions

1. Read chapter 10 “Reality Shock in the Workplace” in Nursing Now! Today’s Issues, Tomorrow’s Trends and the article “Surviving Your First Year as a Nurse”. Spend some time considering where you want to be professionally five years after nursing school.  Brainstorm and make a list or journal your thoughts.
2. Use your list or journal to develop a concrete plan to reach your five-year professional goals.
3. Write your plan in outline or list format. State your goals clearly and provide timelines. Use specific information regarding continuing education. For example, one goal may be to meet with an Academic Advisor in a collage..State this rather than ‘look for colleges’. This will take some research. You may be considering a BSN or MSN through multiple programs. If so, list these and give your reasons for each. The more information you provide the more helpful this plan will be to you in the upcoming months.
4. Write a professional resume using the example from Nursing Now (p.231) with the exclusion of the ‘objective’ statement. It is currently found to be a redundant statement – of course you want a job as a nurse or you would not be applying. It makes more words on the resume and some employers are now scanning resumes for word count and excluding some based on this.
5. Submit both your five-year plan and resume. See rubric for grading criteria.