Charge Nurse Resume Examples and Guide

As a charge nurse, you will be responsible for managing a specific department of the healthcare facility on top of caring for your patients. You need to be a registered nurse with strong management skills to ensure that the nurses within a unit of a facility are on top of their game. 

A charge nurse is often confused with a nurse manager due to both being registered nurses with strong supervision knowledge. The key difference between a charge nurse and a nurse manager is within the area of leadership. A charge nurse will be focused on a specific nursing unit for a particular shift while a nurse manager will be overseeing the overall nursing staff of the facility. 

When you start applying for the role of a charge nurse, you will want to learn the techniques in creating a professional charge nurse resume. Your charge nurse resume provides the rundown of your past education, management skills, and leadership experience which will increase your chances of landing an interview.

🖋 Step 1: Write an attention-grabbing charge nurse resume headline. 

A headline contains a short, one-line description of you and your achievements. While it is only a brief introduction to you, you will want to make it compelling enough since it is one of the very first things an employer sees when they open your charge nurse resume file. 

🖋 Step 2: Craft a professional charge nurse resume summary statement.

A summary is a short version of your resume. It should include your most memorable achievements that will be later on featured in your charge nurse resume. 

🖋 Step 3: Include key skills in your charge nurse resume. 

The skills section provides the employer with the specifics of the scope of your knowledge. When you list your charge nurse resume skills, keep in mind to include both technical skills and soft skills.  

🖋 Step 4: Customize the charge nurse resume to the role. 

Employers will want to look for the most fitting candidates when they review all of the charge nurse resumes submitted. Make sure to incorporate relevant experience that will best fit the charge nurse job description into your resume. 

For example, an ER charge nurse resume and an ICU charge nurse resume should have slightly different focuses: an ER charge nurse should be calm and flexible in difficult situations while an ICU charge nurse should be organized and precise. Make sure to carefully review the role specifics and include them in your charge nurse resume to show you are the right fit.  

🖋 Step 5: Proofread your charge nurse resume. 

Similar to how charge nurses will need to review the staff and patient assignments, you will need to double-check your charge nurse resume for any mistakes overlooked.

To create a captivating charge nurse resume for the hiring manager, you will want to learn more about resume formatting. Based on your experience level and your situation, you will be able to determine which resume format is best for you. 

The three types of charge nurse resume formats:

• Chronological resume format:
  • List the latest job to the least recent ones. 
  • Suitable for those with extensive relevant work experience. 

• Functional resume format:
  • Concentrate on skills and achievements.
  • Suitable for those with career gaps.

• Combination resume format:
  • Focus on skills, achievements, and experience (listed newest to oldest). 
  • Suitable for those who have broad skillsets and work experience and are changing careers. 

A clever way to craft a strong charge nurse resume is to build your own template from scratch. A resume template allows you to effortlessly add different elements, make edits, and form a design where it will grab the employer’s attention. There are two simple platforms to use when creating your charge nurse resume template: Microsoft Office and Online Resume Builder.

➡️ Microsoft Office

• Choose from already-made templates by checking through assorted templates to choose one that suits you best.
• Add content - be sure to start collecting details and information for the content of your resume, including: contact information, related job experience, and skills for your charge nurse resume. 
  
• Make it ATS-friendly by:
  - Including headings (such as Work Experience, Education, Skills) makes your charge nurse resume readable by ATS.
  - Using bullet points and bolding to allow both ATS and the hiring manager to easily review the content of your charge nurse resume.  
  - Keeping content legible with simple fonts. Contents on your charge nurse resume should have a font size between ten to sixteen while titles and headings can be slightly larger. 

➡️ Online Resume Builder

• Find your ideal resume template by looking through the various types of templates.
• Select one to customize and make your own charge nurse resume template.
• Check out Cake for user-friendly resume templates and examples of charge nurse resumes.

✅ Do’s

1. Include only relevant information in your charge nurse resume.

Show that you fully qualify for that particular job by making adjustments to the template you use and include only charge nurse related skills and experience on your resume.

2. Add quantifiable and measurable achievements to the descriptions in the work experience section in your charge nurse resume.

Sway the hiring manager into inviting you for an interview by including in-depth information about your accomplishments with numbers. For example, in your charge nurse resume, add numerical evidence.

3. Optimize your charge nurse resume for the ATS.

Another way to increase the chances of passing ATS scanning is to include keywords from the job description in your charge nurse resume.  

4. Choose a suitable charge nurse resume format. 

While the format might not be as important as the content in your resume, it affects how the employer sees you. Remember to go over the different charge nurse resume formats and choose the one best fits your need. 

5. Use action verbs in your charge nurse resume descriptions. 

Using action verbs from examples you see online in your charge nurse resume provides a professional portrayal of what you have accomplished.   

❌ Don’ts

1. Don't confuse a charge nurse resume with a CV.

A resume should be specifically made to include only the role-related information while a CV will contain all of your past experience. 

2. Don't write a generic charge nurse resume objective. 

A resume objective is often misunderstood as a resume summary. While they seem very similar, the biggest difference is that the resume objective states your career goal as a charge nurse and a resume summary offers an overview of your career as a charge nurse.

3. Don't disclose confidential materials about previous employers. 

Just like patient information, information regarding your past employers should be kept confidential as well. Don’t mention it in your resume for a charge nurse job. 

4. Don't include unnecessary personal information that might lead to hiring bias.

Leave out any personal information that is not required for your charge nurse resume, including: 

• Gender
• Sexual Orientation
• Race
• Religion/Faith
  

5. Don't submit your charge nurse resume as a word document. 

Send out your charge nurse resume as a PDF file to make sure the layout you carefully design doesn’t get messed up.