Dental Hygienist
Resume Example

Here’s how to write a dental resume that will get you more interviews, faster.

Follow these dental hygienist resume writing tips to ensure that you have a strong resume. We’ll make this as painless as possible.

1. Learn Key Action Verbs for a Dental Hygienist

Adhere	Examine	Sterilize
Administered	Monitor	Stock
Assess	Prepare	Supervise
Clean	Polish	Teach
Evaluate	Report	Update

Interested in discovering every action verb in the universe?

2. Start with a Qualifications Summary

The Qualifications Summary is the best way to start a medical resume.  Why? It puts the following important information front and center, at the top of your resume:

• Your technical skills and abilities
• Your major professional achievements
• Your licensing and certifications
• Your years of experience and academic degree

Those four bullet points represent 90% of what a hiring manager is looking for on a resume. If they see that information at the top of your resume, it saves them time, and lets them know that you’re an ideal candidate.

Here are a couple excerpts from the resume example’s Qualifications Summary, with regards to licensing and certifications:

• Basic Life Support, Nitrous Oxide Monitoring, and Infiltration Anesthesia Certification
• Southeastern Regional and National Dental Hygiene Certification – Lic. #2342 Issued 4/11/14

It’s critical that this information is clearly presented. We encourage you to read our in depth look at how to write a qualifications summary.

3. Write a clean and concise Professional Experience section

Follow these basic rules when writing the Professional Experience section:

How can you specifically quantify a dental resume? Here are two excerpts from the resume sample to give you some ideas (pay attention to the bolding):

• Full-time Hygienist treating 11 patients daily, skilled in patient assessment…
• Trained two new dental assistants in monitoring, ordering…

As you can see, the candidate quantified how many new employees he trained and how many patients he treated daily. Quantifying this information on your resume gives the hiring manager a clearer picture of your previous experience, makes your resume more impressive, and makes it likelier you’ll get called in for an interview.

This is called making your resume achievement oriented, and it’s proven to help create more interview opportunities.

Finally, we’ll cover the Technical Skills section

4. Hit Primary Keywords in Your Technical Skills Section

The Technical Skills section is where you should put all remaining keywords that you did not use in the rest of your resume, but should be included. You can even repeat keywords here, if they are important (such as Local Anesthesia Certified).

Hiring managers can be lazy or inattentive, so repeating keywords can help you convey important information that they may have missed the first time looking over the resume.

We wish you the best on your job hunt, and hope that your days of terrifying little children with sharp dental instruments will be long and glorious.