How to Make Your CNA Job Description Pop on a Resume

Follow these tips to create a certified nurse assistant description on your resume that effectively describes your experience and win over potential employers.

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CNA Job Description for Resume

If you’re planning to list a previous certified nurse assistant (CNA) job on your resume, you should first know how to describe being a CNA. Whether you’re applying for another job as a certified nursing assistant, moving on to another healthcare job like a registered nurse, or siming for a career change, how you describe previous jobs goes a long way towards how effective your resume will be. Here’s what you need to do so you can write an effective description of your years of CNA experience.

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What Is a CNA Job Description?

A CNA job description will be listed under a CNA job in your resume’s work history section, and describes what you did during that experience. It showcases that you understand medical terminology and that you’re good at providing nursing care for individuals. Additionally, it should showcase your interpersonal skills, as your patients’ well-being often rests on you being able to talk to them and understand what they need. In a professional resume, this description showcases all of your skills.

The Format of a CNA Job Description

What should a CNA job description look like? This is typically how you should list the description of a certified nursing assistant job on your resume:

Include the description underneath each job you’ve held
Add up to five bullet points per job
List fewer bullet points for older jobs

In practice, this means your most recent job should have five bullet points, while older jobs will typically between two to four. Generally, a job description will be more prominent in the chronological resume format, which focuses on work experience. If you’re planning to move to another nursing staff job after being a CNA, you’re probably going to use this format to highlight previous nursing experience. That’s where a job description can really come into play, as it shows exactly how your past job experience relates to your abilities.

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Key Achievements, Job Terms, and Action Words To Use

Describing your job can seem difficult. After all, you’re not usually thinking about your daily tasks while you’re doing them, so thinking about them retroactively can be complicated. When you go through the experience section, however, you need terms to make hiring managers take notice. If you’re struggling to explain your work experience, here are terms you’ll often see on a certified nursing assistant resume. The first section is action words, which allow you to talk about actual actions you took. Here are a few to use in your resume and cover letter:

Assist patients
Charting patient vital signs
Monitor patient conditions
Provide emotional support
Handle medical equipment
Read and record medical records
Bolster patient comfort

There are also some general CNA skills that you may want to reference. These are elements of nursing care that recruiters are most commonly looking for when you’re applying for a similar role. Here are a few to consider:

Patient care
Patient’s vital signs
Blood pressure
Activities of daily living
Ambulation
Bedpans
Care plans
Family members
First aid
Linens
Personal hygiene
Bedsores
HIPAAYour best path to a great CNA description is typically to use resume templates to build the resume and everything surrounding it. The ResumeHelp resume builder allows you to fill in pre-written elements of your experience and job requirements so that it’s easier for you to talk about what you did in the past.

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FAQ: CNA Job Descriptions for a Resume

Q: Are there multiple types of CNA job descriptions to know?

Yes. A CNA is a job type, not necessarily a specific job. As a CNA, you can do a variety of different jobs that all require the same qualifications. Here are a few different jobs that you might be able to work as a CNA:

Nursing home job
Private duty
Hospital CNA
Long-term care facility
Mental health care
Med tech
Clinical CNA
Surgical oncology

Oftentimes, the best way to write your own CNA job description is to look at resume samples for whichever job you specifically worked. You can find CNA resume samples at ResumeHelp if you want your resume to look better than other job seekers’ resumes.

Q: Are soft skills or hard skills more important for CNA jobs?

Both soft skills and hard sills are very important for CNA jobs. Hard skills are the skills that allow you to be a caregiver for someone in a care facility, such as taking vital signs and helping with first aid. Soft skills, however, are the skills that allow someone to know you care for them. These are the interpersonal skills and connections that you use to ensure your patients feel comfortable and safe. Both of these skills are crucial to CNAs, and it’s important that you highlight them in your job description.

Q: How do I create the rest of my CNA resume?

This is just one small portion of writing a CNA resume. If you’re looking to write more than just the job descriptions, you can find out more about writing a CNA resume at ResumeHelp. From there, it’s easy to use the resume builder to create a resume that looks good and also gets you an actual job.

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