Caregiver Resume Fails: 15 Things to Never Include in Your Resume
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Caregiving professionals are ought to inspire more trust than the average employee, as every client will be emotionally involved in the entire collaboration. More often than not, you’ll have to take great care of persons or things that your clients care about the most.

In the majority of cases, a caregiver helps old people manage their daily chores like managing medications, helping elders walk, wash, dress, and so on. That’s exactly why your caregiver resume will be carefully analyzed by your potential clients.

To improve your chances of landing your desired job, you should keep these 15 things out of your caregiver resume:

Any Explanation of Negative Experiences

If you had any negative job experiences in the past, describing them in your caregiver resume is a huge mistake. To tell you the truth, most of your clients are looking for responsible and professional employees on which they can base their trust. You’d better retain yourself from describing what makes you a bad choice for the job.

Unknown Availability

Reliability is a great quality that every serious caregiver must display. However, if through your CV you’re stating that you don’t know for sure if your availability will be constant. Most caregiving jobs require you to wake up early in the weekends, stay up late at night, and be present every time you’re required. Do not offer vague information about your availability!

Buzzwords

Buzzwords are the type of words that may just annoy your employer more than it pleases him. You may use buzzwords without even being aware of it, and this might hurt your chances of getting summoned for an interview. Words like “results-oriented”, “go-getter”, or “proactive” should better be avoided, as they’re very general and often annoying.

Your Address

You shouldn’t display your current address because honestly, most employers don’t expect to read that. In fact, by stating that you’re not a local, you might hurt your chances of landing that job.

A Big List of Job Experiences

If you’ve worked a lot of jobs in the past, there’s absolutely no point in listing them all on your resume. You must pay attention and add only the past job experiences that are relevant to your caregiving position.

So if you’ve worked with children or animals, yes, you can add it because it proves that you are a caring and probably a patient person. Every job experience you add must be relevant to the specific job position you’re applying for, or else they won’t have much effect.

Irrelevant Skills

Just like with experience, you shouldn’t start listing the skills that are totally irrelevant to caregiving. If you’re great at math or if you play basketball well, that’s good for you. The employer doesn’t want to see that. Therefore, keep this information out of your CV.

Too Much Text

Your resume should be catchy and it should keep the reader hooked. Now – if you add to much text, you’re likely to bore the reader and prompt him to move forward to the next resume. I’d recommend you to have a resume full of white spaces and with margins of less than 0.8 inches.

Lies or Exaggerated Statements

Never lie on your resume because if you get caught, there will be a lot of harsh consequences. Besides the fact that you’ll get fired, you may also end up with legal accusations that’ll make your life a living hell.  

Private Information

Keep your private information private. For your future employers to perceive you as a professional entity, you should only provide information that is truly relevant to the job position. Avoid writing about your sexual inclinations, political perspectives, or your religious affinity. Keep these for yourself as your employers often couldn’t care less.

Bad Grammar and Spelling

Professional resumes do not contain any grammar or spelling mistakes. If these are present, you’ll damage your reputation and you’ll decrease your odds of landing the desired caregiving job.

To develop an impeccable resume and ensure it is written perfectly, I’d advise you leverage proofreading services such as Essay on Time or Grammarly. You’re investing a few bucks,  but in the long run, this investment will prove to be priceless.

Hard to Read and Digest

If your text is hard to read and digest, many employers will just skip to the next resume and cut you off the list. This is simple to understand. If your readers have a hard time understanding what you want to say, you won’t be considered a good person to talk to, and especially not a good person to deal with a caregiving job.

Your Hobbies

Your hobbies belong to the “private information” category that you should retain yourself from displaying. Believe it or not, your employers would rather understand your motives for applying rather than hearing about your passion for music.

References or “References Upon Request”

References or “references upon request” should not be included in your caregiving resume. You might believe that references will make you a great candidate, but that’s not the information you want to present on your resume. If you’re called for an interview, that’s when you should probably state that other people can vouch for you, but not in your CV.

An Unprofessional Email Address

An unprofessional email address speaks a lot. How come you didn’t have the time or will to change it to a professional one? How do you think it makes you look? I’m telling you – unprofessional. If you’re still using your old, personal email for work, you’d better create a professional email right away.

The Names of Your Ex Clients

Your ex-clients are irrelevant to your new clients unless they specifically want to find out more information about you through other sources. Unless you’re promoted to give names, you should probably omit these details.

Takeaways

As I’ve mentioned above, caregiving is a special type of job that becomes available the moment your clients begin to trust you. Displaying an amazing CV that doesn’t have any sorts of mistakes is your best bet for making a good first impression and get called for an interview. Good luck!


Steven Wesley is a creative writer and education blogger. He is interested in psychology, journalism as well as educational, technological, and political issues. Besides, Steven believes in the mighty power of the pen to change the modern world. Meet him on Twitter and Facebook!

Written by Guest Author
The Caregiver Space accepts contributions from experts for The Caregiver's Toolbox and provides a platform for all caregivers in Caregiver Stories. Please read our author guidelines for more information and use our contact form to submit guest articles.

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1 Comment

  1. I listed family caregiver on resume and ran into a bit of a dilemma during the background check portion of the pre-boarding process. The issue was that my work as caregiver did not generate a W-2. Under these circumstances it was more appropriate to list this work under ‘Volunteer’, which is sad because it, then, does not count as employment – regardless of the fact that it was nearly a 24 hour/day responsibility for 2+ years.

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