Caregiver Resume Example

A well-crafted resume can be your gateway to a fulfilling career as a caregiver. When it comes to presenting your qualifications on paper, translating your skills and experience into a concise, impactful caregiving resume is key to landing the right position. We’ll show you how.

1. List your licenses and certifications

First, be aware of the types of licenses and resume certifications you need as a professional caregiver. If you don’t have these qualifications yet, make it a career goal to earn them to boost your ability to get hired and land a higher salary.

In some states, being licensed or certified is required before you can be hired, so research the caregiver training requirements for your state before sending in your resume and matching caregiver cover letter.

Here are the licenses or certifications you may need to land a job as a personal care assistant. If you have these certifications, display them prominently at the top of your resume:

• Companion/homemaker
• Personal care
• Home services
• Nursing assistant certification
• Special business license

2. Mention your hard and soft caregiver skills

In addition to licenses and certifications, you should include hard and soft skills on your caregiver resume.

Caregivers provide essential services for our aging population. Caregivers are integral to providing necessary care for at-home care, assisted living, and in nursing homes, so list related hard skills that show your experience of providing care to patients.

For example, caregivers assist medical professionals, ensuring patients follow their prescribed therapy and take medications as directed. Employers are more likely to interview you if your resume includes examples of these traits.

Here are more hard skills for caregivers:

• Feeding, dressing, exercising, and bathing clients
• Monitoring clients’ breathing rate, temperature, glucose levels, and blood pressure
• Creating safe living arrangements by safety-proofing homes
• Providing personal hygiene care
• Language skills
• Physical strength and stamina

Besides helping clients with their daily needs, caregivers provide emotional support for the often neglected older population, so don’t forget to list your soft skills.

Employers want to know you’re calm and attentive when providing care or facing a difficult day with a client, so include patience and attention to detail as skills on your resume.

These are other caregiver soft skills:

• Organizational skills
• Communication skills
• Multitasking skills
• People skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Honesty
• Time management skills
• Reliability
• Cleanliness
• Observation

3. Include a resume introduction

A resume introduction should give hiring managers a reason to continue reading your resume. The candidate in the sample above has written a good introduction because they:

• describe their years of relevant experience
• explain their caregiving-specific strengths and how they can support other staff members
• mention their soft skills, including the ability to work with a diverse population

Essentially, the applicant efficiently lays out their resume highlights to save the hiring manager time. Their introduction quickly convinces the hiring manager that they’re a strong applicant, and makes it likely the hiring manager will continue reading the resume.

4. Showcase your professional experience

Your work experience section should prove and expand on the claims you make in your resume introduction.

First, list your job duties and your proudest resume achievements as a caregiver in a bulleted list. Below, we’ve chosen the three strongest bullet points from the caregiver resume sample above for you to consider. In addition, we bolded the strongest parts of each bullet point:

Implemented group activities such as movie nights, story-telling, and games that improved resident and staff engagement by 47%

This bullet point proves the candidate is innovative and cares about the quality of life of their clients. They take the initiative to ensure their patients are happy.

Trained 12 new staff throughout employment and during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing mentorship and guidance, while maintaining a 92% employee retention rate

As shown above, the caregiver’s extensive experience shows they’re a mentor and leader to new staff even during the uncertainty of a pandemic. Their high retention rate means that they can ensure their staff is happy at work.

If this candidate can assist this many residents, then they’re strong multitaskers and have exceptional organizational skills.

Assisted 35+ residents aged 68–97 with daily needs including personal hygiene, dressing, turning positions, and transferring from chairs to beds

Here, the candidate shows the scope of their work, and what they can handle. They also use hard numbers to provide context to their achievements and show employers what they’d accomplish if hired. Hard numbers in this example include the number and age of the residents.

5. Include action verbs for your caregiver resume

Create a punchy resume by starting each bullet point with a strong action verb.

Including powerful action verbs at the beginning of your bullet point provides context for your previous tasks and makes more of an impact on employers because they show you’re a proactive employee.

So use direct action verbs like “monitored,” “delegated,” and “handled” rather than passive statements such as “tasked with” or “responsible for.”

Here are some common action verbs for a personal caregiver assistant resume:

Finally, research the company you’re applying to and choose the best power words before writing your caregiver resume. Power words are persuasive words that quickly communicate your skills and qualifications to employers.

Addressing the specific needs of each employer is vital, so if you notice any keywords being used in the job advertisement, include them in your caregiver resume. Using relevant resume keywords highlights that you understand and fully meet the qualifications of the role you’re applying to.