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I am here today to talk to you a little bit about prepping a resume for a dental assistant position!

So I am really, really excited because this is my first time going on YouTube live. So I'm super excited to be here with you guys today and you know these videos let me at first before we jump into the topic let me talk a little bit about these videos and the purpose of these videos.

These videos are going to be about topics relating to the dental industry and about how you can break into the dental industry or help support your career throughout the dental industry.

So we're going to be covering some different topics here and there like I said, today's topic is going to be about prepping your resume for a dental assistant position.

So let's just jump right into that!

3 Parts of a Resume

And we'll talk a little bit about that so when it comes to a resume, let's first talk about the different parts of a resume.

So the three main parts of a resume are going to be your professional summary, your work history, and your education.

Professional Summary

So your professional summary is normally the first part of your self of your resume and the summary is normally about three to five sentences long and it talks about you know your knowledge skills and abilities in in your industry.

So it's sort of supposed to be like your personal advertising, your elevator pitch, a very broad overview of the knowledge skills and abilities that you bring to the table.

Work History

Then the next part is your work history. That's pretty straightforward, pretty standard.

You list your job titles, the companies that you work for and your date of employment and normally where the company or the office is located as well. Normally just sitting in state and then you list some job duties that you did0 throughout that job.

Just make sure that your resume is clean, concise, and readable.

My recommendation is that you utilize between three and six bullets or three to six sentences for each job entry that you have in your work history.

You know I know that we always coab of enough beyond in our jobs than that you know listing out every single job duty would it takes a lot of room but even though we definitely don't just stick to our job descriptions. We definitely go above and beyond in our job but if you keep your job entry so about like I said about three to six bullets, it'll help condense down your resume to the most important parts that a potential employer wants to know about you.

Education

The last part is the education portion of the resume and that's normally your highest degree that you've obtained, sometimes at the high school diploma or GED, sometimes that's a bachelor's or master's. But normally you just list your degree and the school and if you've got your degrees in the last ten years and can go ahead and list the date that you received that degree and if it's a post-secondary degree like an associates or bachelors, you may list your major and minor, if you have them.

Optional Sections of Your Resume

So those are the main parts of your resume and there are also some optional portions that you can include in your resume as well. For example, the skills portion.

I highly recommend adding the skills portion to a dental assistant resume. I always recommend adding a skills portion to any resume that has a technical aspect and for a dental assistant. There's definitely a technical portion to the to the job, but there's also kind of a customer service portion as well.

So I recommend a skills portion in your resume. A skill field and depending on how your resume is formatted, I recommend about 9 to 16 different skills that you can list.

So we're a dental assistant, it would be good to list the different systems that you have experience with, like Dentrix or Eaglesoft or something like that Microsoft Office, Google Suite those sorts of things.

Your skills in preparing instruments sterilizing instruments that kind of thing and then also maybe some skills on the customer service side.

Customer service skills, communication skills, and time management.

And then some other additional parts of your resume that you can add if they apply to you you can add a section for any volunteer work you've done.

You can add a section for any awards and honors that you've received or awards and accolades like if you have forgotten you know employee of the year.

You can also list an additional information section if you want to if there's something else that you want to list that you want employers to know about you but it doesn't really necessarily fit in any other section on your resume you can do an additional portion as well.

That's a little bit about a resume and all the different parts of a resume

Prep your resume

How do you prep your resume for a dental assistant position?

My favorite method and my highly recommended method is to read the job posting and to tailor resume to every job posting that you apply for.

I know it's a lot of information and it's a lot of work to do that for every single job posting that you apply for, but I really think that if you spend the five to ten minutes tailoring your resume for each posting that you apply for, it's really going to help you get more results and more callbacks and invitations to interview.

When you're reading those job postings make sure you make a list of the key words and phrases that you see listed over and over again and repeated over and over again and utilize those words and phrases throughout your resume.

For example, some job postings may say they want someone that has a lot of customer service experience. Other job postings may say they want someone with a good chair-side manner. Really, those two are the same thing, but if you utilize those keywords and phrases strategically and if you implement those words and phrases throughout your resume, it really kind of helps show that you can use the employer's language and it really ends up being a very good advertisement for your knowledge, skills, and abilities to potential employers.


Chris Lewandowski

Published March 25, 2020

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