Personal Support Worker Resume Example & Writing Guide
Use this Personal Support Worker resume example and guide to improve your career and write a powerful resume that will separate you from the competition.
Personal support workers provide assistance to people with disabilities or special needs. They help with daily living activities like bathing, dressing, and preparing meals. They also provide support with activities like shopping, cleaning, and running errands.
Personal support workers often work under the direction of a registered nurse or therapist to provide care that’s tailored to each person’s unique needs. Because they interact with clients on such a personal level, personal support workers need excellent interpersonal skills. They need to be friendly, compassionate, and patient. They need to be detail-oriented and organized. They also need to be resilient, able to solve problems on their feet, and ready to roll with the punches when things don’t go as planned.
Here are some resume tips to follow plus an example for reference when writing your own personal support worker resume.
How to Write a Personal Support Worker Resume
Here’s how to write a personal support worker resume of your own.
Write Compelling Bullet Points
The best way to make your resume stand out is to use specific examples and numbers. So rather than saying you “provided support for elderly patients,” you could say you “provided daily care for 10 elderly patients, bathing, dressing, and feeding each one according to their individual needs.”
The second bullet point is much stronger because it provides specific details about what you did and the results of your work. It also includes a number to help quantify the level of responsibility involved.
Related What Is a Personal Support Worker? How to Become One
Identify and Include Relevant Keywords
When you apply for a personal support worker (PSW) role, your resume is likely to go through an applicant tracking system (ATS). This program will scan your resume for certain keywords related to the job opening. If you don’t have enough of the right terms, your application might not make it to the next stage.
To increase your chances of getting an interview, use this list of common personal support worker keywords to help you optimize your resume:
- Personal Care
- Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
- Healthcare
- Home Care
- Elder Care
- Nursing
- Personal Support Workers
- Customer Service
- Basic Life Support (BLS)
- Social Services
- First Aid
- Hospitals
- Wellness
- Time Management
- Teamwork
- Communication
- Microsoft Access
- Patient Safety
- Medication Administration
- Customer Satisfaction
- Healthcare Management
- Psychosocial
- Medical Terminology
- Community Outreach
- Public Speaking
- Organizational Skills
- Medical Records
- Working with Different Age Groups
- Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) Certification
- Autism
Showcase Your Technical Skills
As a personal support worker, you need to be proficient in a variety of software programs and systems in order to do your job effectively. This might include familiarity with electronic health records (EHR) software, scheduling and billing software, and patient portals. Additionally, many personal support workers are now using social media platforms to communicate with patients and their families.
Some of the programs and systems that personal support workers are typically expected to be proficient in include: electronic health records (EHR) software, scheduling and billing software, patient portals, and social media platforms.
Related: How Much Does a Personal Support Worker Make?
Remember The Basics
As you draft your resume, you’ll want to keep a few basic guidelines in mind.
Create Easy-to Scan Sections
There are a few things you can do to your resume to make it look more professional. First, use left-aligned text and a standard font type and size. You should also use bullets instead of paragraphs to list your experiences, and keep your bullets to no more than two lines each. Additionally, try to use bolding and italics to emphasize important points, but avoid using all-caps or too much formatting variation. Finally, leave some white space on the page to make the document less overwhelming.
Be Concise
When writing your resume, it is important to keep in mind that the less is more approach is often the most successful. A resume should be one page long if you are a new graduate or have less than five to eight years of professional experience. If you have more experience than that, a two-page resume is more appropriate. When trimming down your resume, focus on removing irrelevant information and making the content concise and easy to read.
Check Your Work
Proofreading your resume is important in order to make sure it looks professional and error-free. Spell checking is a must, as are punctuation and grammar checks. It is also helpful to have someone else proofread your resume for you, as they may catch mistakes that you have missed. Beware of easily confused words, and make sure that your tense is consistent throughout the resume.
Use a Summary
A resume summary statement is an essential piece of your job application. It provides context for your experience and allows potential employers to understand how your skills might be transferable to their organization. When writing your summary, be sure to play up your soft skills, mention your most highly transferable experiences, and explain your intentions. Keep it short and simple, and make sure it’s easy to read.
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