Caregiver Resume Examples & Templates
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Caregiver resume example (text version)
Ethan Allen
Lincoln, NE 68501
(555) 555-5555
example@example.com
Professional Summary
Compassionate caregiver with six years of experience working in assisted living facilities. Passionate about elder care, skilled at managing schedules and keeping clients as active as possible. Culturally sensitive with the ability to provide both physical and emotional support to clients. Willing to transport clients to appointments and events.
Work History
December 2018 – Current
Roseview Home – Lincoln, NE
Caregiver
- Assist 30 residents (ages 69 to 89) with daily living activities, including bathing and bathroom needs.
- Able to lift and turn residents up to 150 pounds to change dressings and transfer from chair to bed.
- Assist with meals and exercises, improving 35% of clients’ health.
- Entertain residents by reading stories, hosting game nights and playing songs on the guitar.
January 2017 – December 2018
Sunshine State Home – Lincoln, NE
Caregiver
- Worked with up to 25 residents with daily living activities, including bathing and bathroom needs.
- Assisted with medications, dressing changes and transferring patients from chair to bed.
- Hosted weekly sing-a-longs for residents and developed 12 activities per month to keep patients mentally alert.
December 2014 – December 2016
Vero Beach Assisted Living – Lincoln, NE
Care Coordinator
- Coordinated care for high-functioning residents with daily living activities inside their private apartments.
- Worked with senior patients and families to develop future plans and discuss care actions.
- Updated documentation and reports detailing patient activities, care actions and hospital determinations.
Skills
- Meal preparation
- Community
- Records management
- Patient care
- First aid & CPR
- Lifting 80 lbs pounds
- Friendly and outgoing
- Communication and teamwork
Education
May 2016
Southeast Community College Lincoln, NE
Associate of Science Health & Wellness
Certifications
Home Health Aide certification (HHA) – (Updated 2022)
Important resume sections
Contact details
A resume for a caregiver must include contact details so that employers know how to reach you. Include your full name, city, state and ZIP code. Add your phone number and email address. Finally, include your professional website, LinkedIn profile or any other networking profile that you want to share.
Personal statement
Grab the attention of the hiring manager with a strong personal statement — also known as a professional summary — in your caregiver resume. This section summarizes your career in three to five sentences. Include your professional accomplishments, years of experience and strongest job-relevant skills such as leadership, patience and time management.
Here’s an example of a strong professional summary for a caregiver resume:
“Compassionate caregiver with over six years of experience providing exceptional care to the elderly and disabled. Skilled in assisting with daily living activities, including medication administration, meal preparation and personal care. Passionate about improving patient well-being and independence. Proven track record of delivering high-quality care and exceeding patient expectations.”
If this is your first caregiver job, include any volunteer experience or relevant educational achievements and consider adding a resume objective instead of a professional summary.
Skills
A caregiver resume skills section should use bullet points for easy reading. Add a balance of hard skills, like administering medication and patient support, and soft skills, like empathy and observation as caregiver skills for your resume.
Consider checking out nursing home or in-home caregiver job descriptions for resume skills section inspiration. This will help you tailor your resume to your target job by including essential skills and keywords that the employer is seeking.
Some common skills for a caregiver resume include problem-solving, compassion toward patients and effective communication with family members and health care professionals. Take a look at our resume examples caregivers can use for more keyword ideas.
If this is your first job as a caregiver, include transferable skills from other roles, like communication and attention to detail.
Work history
In the work history section of your caregiver resume, add your work experience in reverse-chronological order. Start with your current or most recent job and work backward. Add the company name, workplace location and dates of employment.
Under each job, add bullet points with achievements you reached during your time there. For example, include your punctuality and attendance record, the number of patients you cared for, and any leadership or educator roles you had within the company.
If this is your first job, you can still include relevant work experience from extracurricular activities, personal projects, community service and volunteer experiences.
Education
Use bullet points to add the education section to your caregiver resume. Include the name, the degree and your graduation date. If it has been more than a decade since graduation, you do not need to add your graduation date.
The educational requirements for caregivers vary depending on the employer and position. In general, caregivers are not required to have formal education beyond a high school diploma or equivalent. However, some employers may prefer or require caregivers to have completed a certified nursing assistant (CNA) program or other health care-related training.
Additionally, some states may have specific requirements for caregivers, such as completiing a certain number of training hours or passing a competency exam. It’s important to research the specific requirements for the job and location you’re interested in to ensure you meet the necessary qualifications.
See why MyPerfectResume is a 5-star resume builder
Action words for your resume
Powerful action words add authority to your resume for caregiver.. These words add confidence to your expertise and experience. Combine them with your quantifiable achievements to create an outstanding resume.
Here’s a list of action words for a caregiver resume:
- Cared
- Monitored
- Administered
- Managed
- Organized
- Prepared
- Reduced
- Adapted
- Aided
- Facilitated
- Supplied
- Supported
Use these verbs to create a powerful resume for a caregiver. You can make a caregiver resume using our Resume Maker, which provides the tools you need to write a resume quickly and easily. Choose a template, add our expert-suggested job-specific content, personalize it and download.
Best skills for your resume
Skills show your ability to perform a job and establish your expertise. Use your target caregiver job description for a resume tailoring. Our Resume Builder allows you to save more than one resume, making personalization even easier. Some skills you might include in your caregiver resume are:
- Physical strength
- Reliability
- Compassion
- Multitasker
- Time management
- Organization
- Stamina
- Patience
- Empathy
- Positivity
- Cleanliness
- Flexibility
- Relationship building
- Problem-solving skills
We recommend exploring our sample resume for a caregiver to see real-world examples of skills that you can include on your resume.
Certifications for your resume
Including certifications on your resume demonstrates to employers that you have taken time to excel in your caregiving career. Add a separate section to your resume that includes all of your certifications.
Here are a few certifications for a caregiver resume.
- Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)
- National Caregiver Certification
- Advanced National Caregiver Certification
- CPR
- First Aide
- Basic Life Support
- Caregiver Assistant Training
- Dementia Care Certification
- Home Health Aide (HHA) Licensing
See our sample caregiver resume for an example of how to include a certifications section on your resume. We also recommend exploring our 800+ resume examples for additional inspiration.
Pair your resume with a matching cover letter
Caregiver resume FAQ
What should I put on my resume for caregiving?
A caregiver resume should have the five primary resume sections: contact information, professional summary, work experience, skills and education. See what to put on a resume for additional details about each section.
You can also include optional sections to add value to your resume, such as certifications, languages, volunteer experience, and even hobbies and interests.
What you include in your resume will depend on the specific job you’re applying for. For instance, an in-home caregiver resume should include skills relevant to in-home caregiving, such as personal care assistance, medication management, meal preparation, mobility assistance and companionship.
What are some examples of caregiver work experience?
Caregivers can work in a variety of settings, including in-home care, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, hospitals, hospice care and mental health facilities. They also often work as private contractors, providing in-home care services to clients on a freelance basis.
Here are a few examples of the responsibilities of nursing caregiver roles that potential employers may want to see on your resume:
- Administered medications as prescribed by physicians and monitored patients for adverse reactions.
- Assisted with mobility devices, such as walkers and wheelchairs, and provided transportation for patients to medical appointments.
- Collaborated with health care team members, including physicians, nurses and social workers, to ensure coordinated and effective care.
- Maintained accurate and up-to-date patient records, including vital signs, medication administration and daily activities.
Remember to carefully scan the job description to determine the qualifications and experience that the employer is seeking.
What should a caregiver resume look like?
The look of a caregiver’s resume depends on the template and format you choose. The template is the design of the document and the format is the way the content is laid out.
You can check out our professionally designed templates and choose one for your resume. The resume format will depend on your years of experience.
- Chronological resume – Use if you have over a decade of experience.
- Functional resume – Use if you’re starting your career or switching from a different industry.
- Combination resume – Use if you have between three and nine years of experience
Check out our guide on what your resume should look like for additional tips from Certified Professional Resume Writers.
How do I write a caregiver resume without any experience?
If you don’t have any professional caregiver experience, you can still create a strong caregiver resume by highlighting your transferable skills and relevant experience. Here are some tips for writing a caregiver resume with no experience:
- Highlight your transferable skills: You may have experience providing customer service, organizing events or assisting with personal care for family members. Highlight these skills on your resume and explain how they can be applied to caregiving.
- Showcase your education and training: If you have completed any relevant education or training, such as a nursing assistant certification or a first aid course, be sure to include this information on your resume.
- Emphasize your personal qualities: Caregiving requires empathy, patience and a positive attitude. Highlight your personal qualities that make you a good fit for caregiving, such as your ability to listen, your compassion for others and your willingness to learn.
Remember that the goal of your caregiver resume is to demonstrate your potential as a caregiver and your willingness to learn and grow in the role. See how to write a resume without experience for additional guidance.
What are some resume headline examples for a caregiver?
A resume headline is a brief phrase or sentence that summarizes your skills, experience and qualifications. It is typically located at the top of your resume, directly below your contact information. The purpose of a resume headline is to grab the attention of the hiring manager and quickly convey your value as a candidate.
Here are some nursing caregiver resume headline ideas:
- Dedicated Nursing Assistant With a Passion for Helping Others
- Professional and Reliable Caregiver With a Nursing Background
- Experienced Nursing Assistant With Exceptional Communication Skills
- Skilled Nursing Caregiver With a Strong Focus on Patient Safety and Comfort
- Experienced Caregiver Providing Personalized and Supportive Care
- Skilled Caregiver Offering Compassionate and Professional Assistance
Tailor your headline to the specific job you’re applying for by incorporating relevant keywords from the job description and industry-specific language.
Best practices
- Use measurable achievements to describe your caregiver abilities and experience. For example, “Monitored and documented vital signs and provided assistance with activities of daily living, resulting in a 20% decrease in hospital readmissions.”
- Use action words to make an impact on your caregiver resume, such as “administered,” “improved” and “provided.”
- Tailor your resume to your target caregiver job.
- Use keywords from the job description throughout your caregiver resume.
- Format your caregiver resume so that it is easy to read by ATS software and human eyes.
- Lie about your caregiver experience and skills.
- Boast that you’re the “best caregiver ever.” Instead, provide concrete examples of your ability to provide effective care, improve patient outcomes and contribute to the overall success of a health care team.
- Include irrelevant personal information such as your ethnicity and age.
- Add skills and experience not pertaining to being a caregiver.
- Forget to proofread. A caregiver resume with errors is unprofessional. Use our ATS resume checker to ensure that your resume is error-free and optimized.
Interview tips
Learn about the employer before your interview.
Before the job interview, take time to learn about your potential employer. Whether you are applying for a role at a nursing home, long-term care facility or elsewhere, take time to learn about the organization’s history, values and mission.
Also, search for current and previous employees willing to talk about the good and the bad. If you’re going to work directly with a family, ask for references and corroborate the information during the interview.
Practice at home.
Practice a few of the most common interview questions before your caregiver job interview. Here are a few examples of interview questions:
- Give me an example of how you juggle multiple deadlines.
- What is the biggest mistake you have made?
- What do you do in your free time?
Perform a mock interview with the help of a friend. They can ask the behavioral interview questions and provide feedback on your answers, tone and body language. Continue your practice and once the actual interview comes, you’ll be ready to excel.
Remember to prepare for job-specific questions as well, including:
- How do you prioritize your tasks when caring for multiple patients?
- Can you describe your approach to providing emotional support to patients and their families?
- How do you handle difficult or challenging patients or situations?
- Can you discuss your experience with medication administration and documenting patient records?
- How do you ensure patient safety and prevent falls or accidents?
- How do you handle emergencies or unexpected situations that may arise during your shift?
Be proactive and ask questions.
At the end of the interview, you will be asked “any questions?” Be prepared to answer. Prepare at least three questions to know more about the position and workplace. Being prepared will also leave a good impression in your interviewer and you will feel more confident.
Pick from the list or be inspired by it to create your own:
- What are the expectations for this position?
- What are your biggest challenges?
- How do you support the staff?
- What type of supervision do you provide?
- Do you provide continuing education or other training?
- How many patients will I be responsible for caring for at once?
- What is the patient-to-caregiver ratio for this facility?
- How are caregivers evaluated and given feedback on their performance?
Round up your references.
Caregivers rely on great references from their previous employers to move their careers forward. Reach out to past employers, managers or families you cared for, and formally ask them to become a reference.
Let them know where you are in the interviewing process and when they can expect to be reached. Confirm with your references the phone and email where they can be reached. Also, request at least two letters of recommendation that can vouch for your work ethic and skills.
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How we reviewed this article
Since 2013, we have helped more than 15 million job seekers. We want to make your career journey accessible and manageable through our services and Career Center’s how-to guides and tips. In our commitment to bring you a transparent process, we present our Editorial Process.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Home Health and Personal Care Aides
- O*Net OnLine. Article. Personal Care Aides
- U.S. Department of Labor. Blog. Riles, Dustin & Rolen, Emily. Making a Career of Caring for Others
- Jevs Care at Home. Article. Career Paths for Caregivers
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Caregiver Resume Example
Nilda Melissa is a Certified Professional Resume Writer who has written for The Washington Post and Latina Style Magazine. She has a master's in Journalism from Columbia University and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
More Articles by Nilda Melissa Diaz, CPRW