Caregiver Resume Sample

To be a caregiver you need to have a genuine desire to help those in need. However, having a good heart and being dedicated to the tender loving care of the disabled and elderly is not enough in the eyes of a hiring manager.

You need to use your resume to prove that you have the proper skills, training, and certifications to work in an assisted living community or nursing home. These four tips will help you accomplish that task.

1. Grab the hiring manager’s attention with a caregiver resume objective

The career objective (also known as a resume objective) is arguably the most important section of your resume. It is designed to be the hook that allows you to reel the hiring manager in with the rest of your resume.

More specifically, it is a three sentence opening statement demonstrating that your experience, skills, characteristics, and certifications make you the right person for the job.

For a caregiver career objective, the following is a good guide on how to structure your three sentences:

1. A simple statement that highlights the extent of your experience working in assisted living environments
2. A powerful statement that emphasizes how you will use your personal characteristics to excel in the role you’re applying for
3. A concluding sentence which showcases your relevant caregiving certifications or training

Here’s how the candidate from our sample does it:

Caregiver with 5+ years of experience providing heartfelt care and assistance to elderly patients in assisted living communities. Looking to deliver compassionate, service oriented care and companionship to the elderly in your community. Possess Geriatric Nursing Assistant certification and have sincere concern for the physical and mental well-being of geriatric patients.

As a caregiver, it is also a unique opportunity to showcase your personal characteristics that are difficult to express through your professional experience and skills. Most notably, your genuine desire to care for and help others — something hiring managers in assisted living communities are looking for.

We did this in our example by adding a few choice adjectives such as heartfelt and compassionate. We also added a little extra bonus to our last sentence: have sincere concern for the physical and mental well-being of geriatric patients.

The adjectives you use in your career objective (and throughout your resume) are extremely important because they can give the hiring manager a strong impression of your passion for the job. This is especially useful for someone applying for work as a caregiver.

Here are some adjectives that you can use to help demonstrate your caring attitude:

Since the particular needs of any individual differ, the responsibilities of a caregiver can be as numerous as the residents or patients they look after.

2. Use your professional experience section to show your versatility

Your professional experience is a good place to emphasize your versatility in performing a wide variety of different tasks. You can do this by listing duties performed in various categories important in caregiving.

In particular, hiring managers look for caregivers who show evidence of abilities in the following categories, so try to hit as many as you can:

• Assisting and Caring
  • Provided dedicated day-to-day care for 20+ residents and assisted 11 residents with activities of daily living (ADL)
• Documenting Information
  • Observe, measure, and record patient data, including intake and outtake, weight, and vital signs in 60+ bed nursing home…
• Communication
  • …reported any changes to Resident Nurse (RN)
  • …reported any concerns to the assisted living administrator
• Monitoring and Obtaining Information
  • Monitored resident’s vital signs and behavior…
• Physical Fitness
  • Assist with the discharge, admission and transfer of immobile patients in excess of 200 lbs….
  • …regularly reposition 5 not ambulatory patients to relieve discomfort
• Food Handling
  • Performed individual meal preparation for 7 residents with specific dietary needs or restrictions, ensuring resident health and satisfaction
• Interpersonal Relationships
  • Cultivated amiable relationships with over 80% of patients, resulting in strong overall patient happiness and emotional well-being
• Promoting Resident/Patient Happiness
  • Orchestrated the implementation of 5+ weekly activities for 30+ residents, including karaoke night, board game Saturdays, and dance night, promoting the mental and physical well-being of residents

In this way you can prove to the hiring manager that you are capable of dealing with any type of challenge that may be thrown at you.

For details on how to craft strong bullet points like those in our example, check out the bullet point tips in our how to write a resume guide.

3. Tailor your caregiver resume skills section

Depending on the type of environment you will be working in, whether it be in-home, in assisted living, or in a nursing home, the skill set you need to put on display will be different.

Additionally, the type of residents or patients you will be working with also has an effect on the skills desired by hiring managers. Simply put, you need to think about what skills the specific type of role you’re applying for requires.

For example, if you’re working as an in-home caregiver or home care aide, skills related to food preparation, house maintenance, and companionship become more important. On the other hand, if you’re working with people with specific types of ailments such those on dialysis, you will need to demonstrate skills related to assisting with those treatments.

You also need to think about how important your skills are to the job, relative to your professional experience and certifications. For instance, if you work with residents with dementia or Alzheimer’s, you might have multiple skills related to memory care that will be very important to the hiring manager.

If you still feel lost when it comes to writing your skills, get a helping hand from our guide on skills to put on a resume.

4. Make sure you have the proper certifications and training

Similar to your skills, the certifications and training required for various types of caregiver work will differ.

Pay attention to the specific requirements of the role you are applying for, and make sure you include the necessary certifications on your resume. Certain jobs may not require any training or certifications at all, whereas others may need specific types of training such as being a certified dialysis technician, or certified nursing assistant.

If you don’t have the necessary qualifications for the role you want, don’t be discouraged. In many cases all it takes is a short training course to get you the fancy papers the hiring manager is looking for.

Also, don’t forget to double check the specific requirements of your state. It would be a pity if you continually failed to land jobs in New Jersey, simply because you forgot to emphasize you have the necessary 75 hours required training on your resume.

Our intuitive resume builder can help you build the resume that will land you your dream job. Give it a try today!