Travel Therapy: What do Hiring Managers and Recruiters look for in a Resume

Research online and you’ll find different answers to the question, “how much time do hiring managers and recruiters spend reviewing new resumes?” The optimistic sources will say that hiring managers and/or recruiters take about four to five minutes. The more pessimistic ones will say between ten to fifteen seconds.

In fact, according to this study, the average time recruiters spend on a new resume is six seconds. Ignore this study at your peril.

It might seem unfair to you that you have worked so hard on your resume, painstakingly writing down every bit of information you feel is pertinent to showcase what you can offer, only for your resume to be judged rather hastily. It’s not that recruiters or hiring managers don’t care because most of them do. It’s just that as the stack of resumes piles up and time runs out, they will look for more effective and efficient ways to find the right candidate for the job. In other words, they go on autopilot when the need is there.

When you work on your resume, really consider what hiring managers typically look for.

For travel therapists, this is a question of qualifications and whether you’re a good fit for the facility. Everything else is fluff and will most likely be disregarded.

Ask yourself these questions when you’re typing your resume:

What’s your travel therapy work experience like?

How do you rate as an employee?

What milestones have you achieved in your travel therapy career so far?

Do you meet their specific needs?

An excellent resume will be able to answer this with as little fanfare as possible. Fight the urge to write down your life’s story. Instead, just give enough information to compel them into calling you. During your interview is when you fill in the gaps that you’ve left out on paper.

Keep everything on your resume relevant. Every word, comma and period has to have a purpose for being on your resume.

For instance, your training as a therapist is important. You don’t need to mention that you worked at the local coffee shop to pay for your tuition while you were in school. It’s an admirable trait that you worked for your education but it’s irrelevant. Write down where you went to therapy school but you can skip that part about taking French lessons. It’s great that you took up French but, again, it’s not relevant to your job search unless of course you’re applying for a job in France.

Formatting is also important. The human eye likes to see a lot of white space when it’s reading something. So make sure that you format your resume in an easy-to-digest manner. When listing down your travel therapy assignments, make sure that you use bullet points to highlight your milestones. Bullet points are easier on the eyes than blocks of text.

Speaking of which, think of your travel therapy assignments not in terms of the duties and responsibilities that you had to do, but rather in terms of milestones that you had achieved while you were at those assignments. Show how much you’ve grown as a professional and as an employee.

Finally, think in terms of keywords. When recruiters and their clients skim through a resume, their eyes home in on specific words. Make sure that you have those keywords in your resume to catch the recruiter or hiring manager’s attention.

Remember that the goal of a great resume is to land you an interview. It’s in the interview that you will have the opportunity to really sell yourself. Make your resume stand out by being concise and to-the-point.