What Are the Essential Skills to Include on a Nursing CV for 2024?

Securing a nursing position requires a CV that strategically highlights a blend of technical (hard) skills and personal (soft) skills. To stand out, your CV must immediately demonstrate your qualifications, with the most relevant skills for the specific role—such as pediatric care or mental health nursing—featured prominently. Based on our assessment of hiring trends, a well-optimized nursing CV that balances clinical expertise with attributes like empathy and adaptability significantly increases interview callback rates.

What Are the Key Hard Skills for a Nursing CV?

Hard skills are the technical, teachable abilities you acquire through formal education, training, and clinical practice. Employers skim CVs for these specific keywords to quickly identify qualified candidates. It's crucial to tailor this list to the job description. For instance, a role in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will prioritize skills like ventilator management and hemodynamic monitoring, while a community health position might emphasize patient education and chronic disease management.

Common essential hard skills include:

• Recording of Vital Signs: The fundamental ability to accurately assess and document temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation.
• Administration of Intravenous (IV) Medication: Proficiency in IV insertion, managing infusion pumps, and administering fluids and drugs directly into the bloodstream.
• Wound Care: Expertise in wound assessment, dressing changes, and the removal of sutures or staples.
• Patient Assessment: Conducting comprehensive head-to-toe assessments to identify changes in a patient's condition.

For specialized roles, you should include niche competencies. The table below outlines examples for different nursing specialties:

Which Soft Skills Are Most Valued by Nursing Employers?

While technical proficiency is a baseline requirement, soft skills often determine a nurse's long-term success and fit within a healthcare team. These are the interpersonal and cognitive attributes that enable you to navigate complex situations. According to a survey by the National League for Nursing, attributes like communication and critical thinking are consistently ranked as highly important by nurse managers.

Key soft skills to feature on your CV are:

• Communication: This is paramount. Nurses act as the communication bridge between patients, families, and physicians. It involves clearly explaining complex information, active listening, and precise written documentation in patient charts.
• Adaptability: Healthcare environments are dynamic. This skill reflects your ability to reprioritize tasks swiftly during emergencies or unexpected changes in patient status.
• Empathy: The capacity to understand and share the feelings of patients and their families builds trust and improves patient outcomes. It goes beyond sympathy to create a genuine connection.
• Clinical Judgment: This critical skill involves observing, analyzing, and responding to patient data to make sound decisions. It’s the synthesis of knowledge and experience.

How Can You Effectively Present Skills on Your Nursing CV?

Simply listing skills is not enough. How you present them determines their impact on a hiring manager. Follow these steps to structure your CV for maximum effect:

1. Create a Dedicated "Core Competencies" Section. Use a bulleted list at the top of your CV, just below your professional summary, to highlight 6-8 of your most relevant hard and soft skills. This allows for easy scanning and immediately showcases your suitability.

2. Contextualize Skills in Your Work Experience. For each position listed in your employment history, include bullet points that demonstrate how you applied specific skills. Instead of just stating "communication," write "Utilized therapeutic communication techniques to de-escalate anxious patients in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU)." This provides proof of your abilities.

3. Incorporate Skills into Your Professional Summary. Your opening statement should be a powerful 3-4 line pitch. Integrate key soft skills here to set the tone. For example: "Compassionate and adaptable Registered Nurse with 5 years of experience in fast-paced emergency departments, dedicated to delivering high-quality, patient-centered care."

4. Reinforce Skills in Your Cover Letter. Your cover letter is the ideal place to tell a brief story that illustrates a key skill, such as how your critical thinking during a specific event led to a positive patient outcome.

To optimize your nursing CV, focus on tailoring your skills to the specific job, providing context for your achievements, and creating a clean, easy-to-read document that allows your core competencies to shine. A targeted CV is your most powerful tool for landing your next nursing interview.