Seven Healthcare IT Analyst Candidate Résumé Tips to Get The Job

In the fast-paced healthcare IT consulting industry, your résumé is the first impression for recruiters or hiring managers. Since hiring firms and health systems look at mounds of résumés each day, the first impression is vital. To stand out, use these seven tips for healthcare IT analyst résumés.

1. Put your certifications first. Don’t bury them by putting them after your work experience or with your education information at the end of the document. This is especially important when verified vendor certification is a particular employment requirement. Be specific with the vendor modules or applications.
   
   
2. List your current location/address. Within this industry, many roles require consultant travel or local candidates, especially for project onboarding. The candidate location is key for matching the travel expectations of both the candidate and hiring firm or client hospital.
   
   
3. Highlight the skills most relevant to the position you are applying for within the professional summary. Customize this section each time you submit your résumé for consideration. Focus on your skills, qualifications and past achievements in similar positions. This section also gives you an opportunity to bring any relevant experience that may be buried further down (and possibly missed) in your résumé to the front page.
   
   For example, perhaps you are Epic certified in multiple modules and are applying for an Epic Grand Central analyst position. With certifications in Cadence and Prelude, as well as Grand Central, your last engagement was as an Epic Cadence analyst. Use your professional summary to highlight the Grand Central experience, so the recruiter (or hiring manager) does not need to get halfway through the second page before seeing the applicable information.
   
   
4. Stay consistent with formatting and verb tense throughout past roles details. While it is okay to use the present tense for bulleted statements under your current employer and then switch to past tense for the rest, that is the only time there should be a difference. Flipping back and forth throughout the document is confusing. Plus, it shows laziness for not updating the verb tense. In addition, it is up to you to end bullet statements with a period or not. Whatever you decide, stick with it throughout the document. Consistency conveys an overall cohesive document to positively reflect your contributions.
   
   
5. Start your support statements with action. The most effective bullet statements start with a verb– "managed, designed or built." Avoid the phrase "responsible for" and get straight to the action.
   
   Instead of "Responsible for collecting, analyzing and documenting business operations and workflows," try "Collected, analyzed and documented business operations and workflows."
   
   
6. Check spelling with each résumé version change. Be especially attentive to the acronym "EHR," since Microsoft Word automatically changes it into "HER." Double check the spelling of various applications and programs you work with, since Word’s dictionary may not have those saved. When you run a spell check and the program stops on an unknown word, take the time to look it over.
   
   
7. Capitalize the first word in a sentence or proper nouns. Don’t be fooled by job titles or department names, like project manager, business analyst, director or operating room.
   
   Generally, these are not considered proper nouns. Keeping capital letters to a minimum to ease readability. Notice how much more difficult it is to read the first version compared to the second in the example below:
   
   
   • Met with Process Owners, Directors, Department Administrators and Access Managers to prep the facility for implementation Go Live
   • Met with process owners, directors, department administrators and access managers to prep the facility for implementation go live

Apply these seven tips to avoid candidate résumé fluff. Doing so saves recruiters and hiring managers time, while increasing the likelihood of interviews and a potential long-term placement.