Tag Archives: quality

How to List Your Nursing Credentials

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Your nursing credentials sum up your education, active licensure, certifications, and greatest professional achievements. Whether you’re filling out a job application or signing a legal document, you’ll need to pay careful attention to how you write them. Here are some tips to help you list your nursing credentials correctly.

Listing Your Nursing Credentials

As a nursing professional, your credentials should appear in the following order:

  1. Highest earned degree (including doctoral degrees, master’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and associate degrees)
  2. Licensure (including RN and LPN)
  3. State designations or requirements (including APRN, NP, and CNS)
  4. National certifications (including RN-BC and FNP-BC)
  5. Achievements and awards (such as FAAN)
  6. Other recognitions or certifications

Your highest earned degree comes first in your list of credentials for multiple reasons: Your degree doesn’t require renewal, and it is the least likely of all your credentials to change. Of course, you may continue your education in the future — replacing what you originally listed with the most recent, highest earned degree. Because licensure is necessary to practice nursing and may or may not be renewed, it is always listed second in your line of credentials.

State designations and national certifications follow licensure because these, too, are required for practice and will expire without continued education. Finally, achievements, awards, and other recognitions are left last on your line of credentials. These additional honors aren’t required to practice nursing, but they are still significant to your professional experience and can help you stand out as a competitive nursing candidate.

Once you have finished listing your credentials complete your resume with your experience listed from your most recent position. There is typically no reason to list any employment that surpasses the last 10 years.

Nursing Credentials Q&A

Below are some of the most common questions that nursing professionals have about their credentials:

  • What should I do if I’m unsure how to list my specific degree or state licensure? Consult your state board of nursing for accurate listing information.
  • Am I required to list certain credentials? You should always list the credentials necessary for your profession in your state when signing legal documents.
  • What if I have more than one degree? List your education in order from the highest to lowest level or simply list your highest earned degree.
  • What if I have multiple nursing credentials? While you aren’t required to list multiple nursing credentials in any specific order, it may be useful to list them from most recently acquired to first acquired or in order of relevance to a specific job if you are applying for one.

Nursing Tips, Tricks, and Preparation

Are you a recent nursing graduate applying for jobs or an experienced nursing professional that’s ready to hop back on the job market? If so, you’ll not only need to get your credentials in order, but also have an interview-ready resume and virtually unlimited access to relevant job postings. That’s where HealthCare Support comes in. Our team of healthcare recruiters will help you find jobs, prepare for interviews, and settle into your new position. To learn more, contact HealthCare Support today at 407-478-0332.

Attracting Quality Talent with Job Postings

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Attracting quality talent has its challenges (or let’s face it, you wouldn’t be reading this!) You could just seek the help of a local staffing firm (or better yet, ours!), or you might decide to take on the challenge of finding your dream hire alone. If you do, you’ll want to know the tips and tricks used by recruiters to help you get the process going.

Job boards are arguably the best tool a staffing agency has. But signing up and paying the monthly fee alone won’t make the magic happen. You’ll need to understand how to narrow your searches using string searching such as Boolean and be able to write the ultimate job description. Since posting jobs are typically the most effective use of job boards, let’s learn how to guarantee you’ll receive lots of qualified candidates!

Keep it Simple!

Job titles should not be more than a couple words long. They should be short and descriptive. Try to avoid internal job names if they vary from the industry’s terminology. For example, if the industry uses the title Call Center Manager – Chief Chatter might not attract the right talent!

Be Specific.

The core of any job post is the responsibilities section.  This section should tell an interested candidate exactly what they’d be doing in your opening. Keep the responsibilities concise and specific. Instead of saying the individual hired would be responsible for answering phone calls, routing calls, taking messages and returning voicemails it’d be better to say they would be responsible for managing a multi-line phone system which receives an average of 100-200 phone calls per day. We’ve quantified the latter description to make sure your applicants are comfortable with that type of call frequency and given them an idea of the pace of work.

Qualify, qualify, qualify…

When listing the qualifications for the position try to list them in order of importance. You may not find candidates that meet all of the bullet points on your list, but they might fill the top 3 and be just what you need. Limit this list to 5 items as too many qualifications can discourage even the most confident candidate.

How About the Perks?

Let’s give them something to get excited about! With the lowest unemployment rate in the last 50 years you’re in serious competition. You need to motivate them to apply by putting your best foot forward. This is where you can list things like the pay structure (where it’s base plus commission or bonuses), opportunities for career development, company culture, health programs and benefits, vacation time, company vehicles, etc., etc.

If you check all of these boxes you’re off to a good start. Remember to keep your post concise. It’s a job seekers market and most applicants today are applying from mobile devices. The goal is to capture their attention, help them envision their role with you and prompt them to apply. Don’t drop the ball in the last second of the game and remember to respond quickly to quality candidates or you’ll miss out.