As one of the professional resume, cover letter, and personal statement writers on the staff of The Doctor Job, I have seen thousands of different physician resumes: The short, the long, the thorough, the sparse. While every physician’s resume is sure to look a little different, there are some common guidelines each doctor should follow when constructing and editing their resume.
- Keep it concise. Unlike its European counterpart (a CV), a resume should not be a lengthy document. The ideal physician resume is one page. The somewhat less than ideal (but still acceptable under certain circumstances) resume is two pages. Period. There are no circumstances that accommodate for the twenty-page resume. An easy way to edit down your document is to remove any personal interest sections or references, as these are no longer appropriate on a professional resume.
- Highlighting versus elaborating. Let’s say you are a physician with an extensive research background in your respective field. Naturally you’d like to explain each study; after all, you invested a significant amount of time researching. Fight this instinct. A resume is designed to highlight professional experience, not to explain it in detail. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential employer. You’re tired, you’re busy, and you have a stack of physicians’ resumes to flip through. Would you rather look at a simple, neat list of research studies or chunks of paragraphs describing the laboratory setting? Highlighting. It’s a beautiful word. Wow them with snapshots of your experience; do not overwhelm them with a narrated slide show.
- Reverse chronological order. In each section, begin with your most recent experience and move backwards. Not only will this aid your potential employer in creating a mental timeline of your professional history, it tends to show you in the best light. Typically the most relevant experience you have is also the most recent. For example, if you had a section on your resume for Education and Training, your fellowship (most relevant) would be listed before your residency (still relevant) which would be listed before your medical school (less relevant) which would be listed before your undergraduate school (barely relevant), according to reverse chronological order.
- If you’re a foreign medical graduate, potential employers like to see your citizenship/visa status. And it actually works toward your advantage to be upfront about this regardless of your status. If you are a U.S. citizen, you can include this information if you went to a foreign medical school – otherwise, if you did your undergrad, medical school, and residency in the US, it will be assumed. Likewise, including your visa status shows a potential employer that you are upfront and honest, ready to make the visa process as smooth as possible for them.
These are just a few tips, but they will help you make sure that your resume is cleaner, easier to read, and more likely to get you interviews. For further assistance, don’t hesitate to contact the experts at The Doctor Job!
Silly question, but on a resume or cover letter, how do you write the MD following the name? Is it:
M. D.
M.D.
or MD?
I am in the USA
Thank you
The reason I was asking is that I’ve seen it both ways, “MD” and “M.D.” I have always used “M.D.”
I had just finished printing out all of my papers and labels with “M.D.” when I started wondering about it.
I would hate to have to redo everything, but wanted to know before I sent it off. For all I know I could be waiting forever for a response that will never come because of a silly thing like that.
Thanks again.
While MD is more the norm, they’re all appropriate ways of doing it. I would not worry about it in any way – it will never affect your job search negatively.
For JT and Adam this is a dead issue, but the punctuation marks are important. And it’s the smallest of details that separate quality from average.
The degree of “Doctor of Medicine” is abbreviated as “M.D.” and always follows the surname with a comma inbetween. If there are suffixes like “Jr.” there are additional commas. For example, John Jones, Jr., M.D. is correct with the two commas, and John Jones III, M.D. is correct with only the one comma.
Same rules apply for Doctors of Osteopathy or D.O.s, Doctors of Dental Surgery or D.D.S. and Doctors of Chiropractic Medicine or D.C. Once into the Doctor of Philosphy realm, the rules for the degrees gets more complicated.
If degrees are to be listed after the surname, only the terminal degree is listed. As a rule, Bachelor degrees are never listed, but most professionals with Masters level training will list this. If a doctorate level individual goes for additional training — say for an M.B.A. or M.P.H. as so many do — this is listed AFTER the doctorate. For example, Missy Mouse, M.D., M.P.H.
More information can be found at the Odds and Ends section of my website — Ask Mom 4 Help, Helping Medical Students Become Residents, Residents Become Fellows and Beyond. As a former Program “Mom” and teacher, I apologize for being so thorough.
Suzanne, thanks for the comment. I agree with you in principle, but in reality, no practice group is going to turn away a physician who uses “MD” instead of “M.D.” on his or her resume. The medical hiring community is much more understanding of detail variations like this than other industries such as law. One main reason for this flexibility is the high number of foreign physicians who have English as a second language and have not yet learned (and may never learn, unfortunately) the more advanced rules of grammar and punctuation.