Daycare Resume: Example & Template

Childcare workers are responsible for tending to children’s needs and fostering their early development, so a typical daycare job description includes tasks like changing diapers, preparing meals and feeding children, assisting with hygiene, and fostering the development of social and emotional skills.

And while working with children can be really rewarding, it’s also tough and not everyone is cut out for it.

For that reason, employers will want to see some key childcare resume skills, and they’ll be curious about your previous experience working with children.

But even if you lack formal childcare experience, you can still make a great entry-level childcare resume by following our tips.

1. Highlight your daycare skills

Boost your chances of securing a daycare position by showing off the skills you’ve developed through your childcare experience.

Hiring managers will be looking for the right mix of hard and soft skills on your daycare resume that show your ability to create a nurturing and safe environment for young children.

It’s important to list your hard skills, but working with young children requires lots of soft skills, like patience, active listening, and creative problem-solving, so be sure to include them on your daycare resume too.

Use these daycare skills for your resume:

Hard skills:

• Training in child safety regulations
• Knowledge of food safety and nutritional needs
• Educational software
• Microsoft Office (Word and Outlook)
• Knowledge of curriculum and teaching strategies
• Health and safety policies
• First aid and CPR for infants and children

Soft skills:

• Conflict management
• Cultural Sensitivity
• Active listening
• Emotional awareness
• Calm and gentle demeanor
• Positivity
• A good sense of humor
• Compassion

2. Open with a strong daycare resume summary

A resume summary lets you introduce yourself to the hiring manager and quickly show your most relevant career experience, skills, and achievements.

A strong resume summary allows busy hiring managers to quickly see if the qualifications you’ve listed match up with the job description.

So if you’re in the childcare industry, it’s important that your resume summary shows you have the necessary skills and experience to be trusted to look after children.

If you have a lot of childcare experience, your resume summary might look something like this:

Energetic daycare professional with 5+ years of experience caring for and creating safe environments for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Developed and implemented sanitizing procedures which contributed to a 75% increase in attendance rates. Seeking to use my passion for childcare and early childhood development to fill the position at your daycare facility.

But even if you don’t have any formal childcare experience, you can still use the resume summary to your advantage.

Try highlighting other ways you’ve gotten experience working around kids, whether through volunteering with a youth organization or even babysitting, like this:

Recent college graduate with 8 months of experience providing daily child care for 2 boys aged 8 and 3. Prepared 2 nutritious meals each day and managed a full schedule of extracurricular activities. CPR certified and skilled in conflict management.

3. Achieve the ideal daycare resume length

The ideal length for a resume is one page, especially if you’re a student or have less than 10 years of relevant work experience.

If you do have over 10 years of experience or you’re applying for a management position within the childcare industry, a 2-page resume could be appropriate.

Hiring managers infamously spend only 6 seconds on average scanning a resume before deciding to keep looking at it or toss it, so it’s important that you only include information that is relevant to the job description. You should also keep it concise.

For example, listing your volunteer experience as a counselor at a youth music camp is a great idea, but listing your first summer job scooping ice cream isn’t relevant and can be left off your resume.