Occupational Therapist Resume Example & Writing Guide
Use this Occupational Therapist resume example and guide to improve your career and write a powerful resume that will separate you from the competition.
Occupational therapists are highly skilled professionals who help people across all ages and abilities find meaningful ways to work and play. They use their clinical expertise to assess clients’ abilities and needs, and then create individualized plans to help them reach their fullest potential.
If you’re interested in pursuing a career as an occupational therapist, you’ll need to build a resume that highlights your unique skillset and experience. Here are some tips to follow plus an example resume to look at when writing yours.
How to Write an Occupational Therapist Resume
Here’s how to write an occupational therapist resume of your own.
Write Compelling Bullet Points
Bullet points are the most effective way to showcase your experience and qualifications. But rather than simply listing your responsibilities, you can make your resume much more interesting by using bullet points to describe the results of your work.
For example, rather than saying you “provided occupational therapy services to patients with disabilities,” you could say that you “provided occupational therapy services to patients with disabilities, resulting in improved motor skills and increased independence in daily living activities.”
The second bullet point is much more specific and provides more detail about what exactly you did and the results of your work.
Related: What Is an Occupational Therapist? How to Become One
Identify and Include Relevant Keywords
When you apply for a job, your resume is typically scanned by an applicant tracking system (ATS) for certain keywords. These programs look for specific terms related to the job opening in order to determine whether your skills and experience are a match. If your resume doesn’t have enough of the right keywords, your application might not make it past the initial screening stage.
The best way to make sure you have the right keywords on your resume is to read through a few job postings and take note of the terms that appear most frequently. Then, you can try to include some of those same words in your resume.
Here are some common occupational therapy keywords:
- Occupational Therapy
- Mental Health
- Rehabilitation
- Healthcare
- Inpatient Care
- Psychotherapy
- Clinical Research
- Mental Health Counseling
- Healthcare Management
- Healthcare Information Technology (HIT)
- Working with Adolescents
- Clinical Supervision
- Pediatrics
- Group Therapy
- Program Development
- Hand Therapy
- Mental Health Issues
- Clinical Education
- Stroke Rehabilitation
- Community Outreach
- Inpatient Rehabilitation
- Physical Therapy
- Neurology
- Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
- Early Intervention
- Hand Rehabilitation
- Spinal Cord Injury
- Adaptive Equipment
- Pediatrics Rehabilitation
- Brain Injury
Showcase Your Technical Skills
As an occupational therapist, you rely on a variety of technology to help you provide care to your patients. Programs like Microsoft Office Suite, Google Suite, and social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter are commonly used by occupational therapists. Additionally, occupational therapists often use specific software programs and systems to track patients’ progress and to manage their caseloads. So it’s important to list any relevant technical skills you have on your resume.
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