How to Write a Psychology Resume to Grab an Employer’s Attention

Many people ask if you must have a professionally written psychology resume? The answer is very simple.

Yes.

You really do want a professionally written resume because it is your professional branding document. It represents the one thing that can help you land that first psychology job interview.

We understand, it takes a lot to impress a demanding hiring managers. The goal is to create an effective resume that grabs an employer’s attention and gets them to call you for the psychology job interview.

Here’s what makes  an outstanding professional resume stand out from the rest.

Your Psychology Resume Needs to Be Easy to Skim

Your document should take advantage of a professional modern resume template and utilize white space effectively. Everything is well organized: Spacing is appropriate, company names in bold, titles italicized and project details arranged using bullet points. And always, no typos to be found. Employers prefer that the font was nothing fancy. (That means whether on a screen or printed.)

Your Resume Should Tell Your Job Success Story

A document tells a story about the candidate’s professional path. There are no info gaps. From top to bottom, there is a clear”before and afterwards.” In only a couple of seconds, employers manage to observe that a exact pattern of the candidate’s professional development. To put it differently, the chronological list of professional history in sequence of date, with the most recent position at the top which shows a clear progression of senior roles and more responsibilities.

It Focuses on Your Accomplishments

Hiring managers are not interested in reading what you clipped and pasted from the original job description list. What employers really want to know is whether you are an above average candidate who is capable of producing quantifiable results. It’s always preferred to highlight your responsibilities by describing your most noteworthy wins.

Your Resume is Factual

When a hiring firm reviews a resume there should never be discrepancies that raise a yellow flag in their mind. Everything looks as credible and the statistics are not a tall tale. Better still, the resume has hyperlinks to the person’s LinkedIn profile and professional website, which includes a portfolio of their career. This makes it simpler for employers to check the work history, which in turn make the candidate seem like an honest individual. Always tell the truth on your psychology resume.

While large accomplishments and recognizable company names will provide you an advantage, make no mistake: Employers will likely complete a background check and should they find out that you lied about something, it is game over.

Skip the Clichés

Adding overused phrases like “team player” or “patient-focused” will make a hiring executive skip right over what follows. So, you should skip the common adjectives and overused phrases and choose action verbs instead.

Get Your Psychology Resume in the Right Hands

Not everybody will have a relationship with someone at their dream clinic, hosptal or school, but knowing somebody who can refer you is the best means to get an hiring manager’s attention.

The simple fact that when your professional psychology resume comes through a recommendation from a respected healthcare colleague, it makes that person need to find out more about your background.

Broadcasting your resume all across the Web will not get you a job. That may seem hard to hear, but here is the truth: you need to always go out of the way to get a warm introduction if possible. If you do not have a relationship at the employer, do your research and discover someone who knows someone with a connection. Then, ask your potential referral for a coffee meeting.

Once you’ve created a new relationship, let them know about the psychology job opening you are considering and ask if they could recommend you. If it’s possible to make this occur, your resume will likely get read.