Crafting an Impressive Resume for Medical Virtual Assistant Positions
A resume is of paramount importance when you work as a medical virtual assistant. A medical virtual assistant resume is more than just a document you show off to employers, clients, and doctors to land a position, it is a representation of yourself as a professional.
Your professional achievements, skills, and qualifications are important factors when you work in the healthcare industry. Your medical assistant resume is a testament to these achievements.
Competence and qualifications are important factors when you work in any industry, but even more so in the medical field. Every doctor or client will want to take a look at your medical assistant resume to see if you are competent and qualified enough to work in their clinic.
Your resume is your first contact with doctors. You need to make sure that it captures their attention immediately to ensure your employment.
Many employees and virtual medical assistants don’t pay too much attention to their resumes. They see it as a simple formality rather than a badge of honor. Having said that, if you’re looking to make it as a medical virtual assistant in the medical field, you must learn how to craft an impressive medical assistant resume.
You don’t need a certified professional resume writer to craft an impressive resume. Here’s how you can make one on your own.
Essential Components of a Medical Virtual Assistant Resume
The main purpose of a good resume is to make you an attractive prospect to employers and clients even before they meet you. It must shine a light on the skills you have that are beneficial to the medical service.
You must remember that medical clients receive a plethora of medical assistant resumes whenever they are looking to fill a position. You must make sure that yours stands out from the rest by filling it with essential and relevant components.
Education
Your medical assistant resume needs to mention your educational background. Education is highly relevant in the healthcare sector. Your employer or client needs to know whether you received proper education and gained extensive knowledge of the healthcare industry prior to joining the patient care workforce.
That said, if you took up a medical major in college, that’s something you will need to highlight in your resume. This is something doctors and medical employers will find highly attractive. However, a lot of successful virtual medical assistants took up courses in college that had nothing to do with the medical field.
Considering that, if you didn’t take up a medical major in college, still include your educational background in the education section of your medical assistant resume.
Personal Information and Profiles
Your resume should include personal information that your employer will want to know about prior to connecting with you. These personal information include:
- Full name
- Contact number
- Email address
- Location
You can also include online professional profiles and portfolios if you have them. These will give employers a glimpse of your work, qualifying you better as a medical virtual assistant. Many employers look for LinkedIn profiles as well. You can put this on your resume so they can find your profile more easily.
Professional Summary
Put a brief but concise summary of your professional experience in your medical assistant resume. Make sure this section is worded articulately and comprehensibly. When an employer reads this part of your resume, they should have a clear picture of your skills, capabilities, and experience as a medical virtual assistant.
If you’re a certified medical assistant, this should be mentioned in your resume summary as well. Let your doctor or employer know that you’re the virtual assistant that their clinic sorely needs.
Your medical assistant resume summary should be short but informative. Use your words wisely and efficiently.
Appropriate Experience
Most employers and doctors look for medical assistants who are experienced. The medical field is a high-pressure environment. It isn’t easy to handle patients, keep patient appointments and medical records, and keep up with practices constantly. It’s best suited for those who have prior experience in any medically-related jobs.
If you’ve worked with doctors before as a certified medical assistant, or if you’ve worked as a medical professional before becoming a virtual assistant, this needs to be highlighted in your resume.
When listing down your experience and employment history, mention the dates and the duration of each employment. Your longevity with doctors as a virtual medical assistant is also relevant information prospective employers will want to know about. List your employment history chronologically for coherence.
Relevant Skills
A component in your virtual assistant resume that’s just as important as experience is your relevant skills. These are skills that you’ve acquired in your experience and training as a virtual medical assistant. These skills include, but are not limited to the following:
- Telehealth support
- Scheduling appointments
- Customer services
- Handling of EHR software
- Handling of medical billing tools
- Technologically proficient
- Can handle high-stress situations
- Hardworking
- The ability to take initiative
As you can see, your skills should include your innate abilities such as being a hard worker and the ability to remain composed under pressure as well as learned skills like handling software and tools necessary for a virtual medical assistant.
Professional Accomplishments
The accomplishments that you’ve accumulated over the years as a professional virtual medical assistant also need to be included in your resume. This section will make you stand out from the rest of the applicants.
These achievements can include hitting or exceeding performance targets, improving clinic productivity numbers, maintaining medical records, increasing patient satisfaction, and more.
When a doctor sees this, your resume will immediately become more attractive compared to others. It shows dedication and pride in your work, as well as the excellence you bring to the clinics you’ve worked in.
Training and Certifications
A certified medical assistant is a more appealing hire than a virtual medical assistant who’s not. If you’ve certified yourself as a medical assistant, your resume should reflect that. Any prior training you’ve undergone that is relevant to being a medical virtual assistant should also be mentioned in your resume.
These training programs should concern your role as a virtual medical assistant. Telehealth training, HIPAA compliance, diagnostic testing, medical assistance, and other on-the-job training are some of the programs you should mention in your resume. These qualify you better as a medical assistant and give you a higher chance of being hired by reputable doctors.
Affiliations and References
Finally, mention any affiliations you may be associated with as a virtual medical assistant. These can be organizations or collectives that are relevant to medical assistance and healthcare. Doctors and employers appreciate reading about these and hiring employees who are active in the industry enough to be affiliated with such organizations.
Clients and employers also look for professional references whenever they hire new employees. That said, list at least three professional references an employer can contact. References can be former employers, hiring managers, or other upper management superiors that you’ve previously worked for.
Tailoring Your Medical Assistant Resume For the Role
You increase your chances of being hired by clients, doctors, employers, or virtual medical assistant agencies when you tailor your resume to the individual or organization that you’re applying for. This is more time-consuming than using a singular, generic resume format or template for every company you apply for. However, it will ultimately serve you better as a professional virtual medical assistant if you can take the time to tailor your resume.
Having said that, make sure to read each job description thoroughly. Assess whatever the employer, client, or organization is looking for from virtual assistants in terms of skills and qualifications. If you meet the job seekers’ criteria, mention these skills and qualifications in your resume. This will catch the eye of hiring managers and give you a better chance of getting an interview.
Hiring managers and human resources are adept at identifying tailored resumes and those that are not. Give employers a reason to pay attention to you more closely than other candidates by tailoring your resume to the employee you’re applying for.
Couple this with having a resume that’s full of nothing but essential components and your chances of being hired are infinitely better compared to virtual assistants who have basic resumes.
Do’s and Don’ts
The following are several “do’s and don’t’s” when it comes to creating a medical assistant resume. Follow these unspoken rules and your next resume template will appear more attractive than the others on the hiring manager job search front’s pile.
Do include skills and experience that are relevant to the position
As you are well aware by now, two of the most important sections of your medical assistant resume are your experience and skills section. Put the skills that you’ve acquired over the years as a virtual medical assistant clearly in your resume to even have a chance of getting hired.
Don’t include skills that have nothing to do with being a virtual medical assistant
If you happen to have professional experience with other jobs in separate industries in the past, then you’ve also gathered important skills from those positions. Having said that, if these job skills aren’t necessary for being a virtual medical assistant, then it isn’t necessary to include them in your resume at all. Skills like programming inventory management, sales, or interior designing may be impressive in their own industries, but they’re virtually useless when you work as a virtual medical assistant.
Do include professional references
Your professional references can aid you in landing a position as a virtual medical assistant. If you’ve managed to provide quality patient care and effective assistance to medical professionals and nursing staff in the past, make them your professional reference and they can put in a good word for you.
It’s best to let your references know beforehand that you’ve made them your professional references so they can expect to be contacted by employees and hiring managers.
Don’t put colleagues and friends as professional references
It can be tempting to put friends who also have professional experience and other virtual assistants from previous clinics as your professional references. After all, they can easily put in a good word for you, giving you a higher chance of being hired by employers.
While that may be true, hiring managers and HR have a way of determining the legitimacy of references and your employment history. Don’t ruin your chances of being hired by falsifying your references.
Do make it appear neat and professional
The healthcare industry is keen on professionalism and uniformity. If you’re looking to get hired as a virtual medical assistant, your medical assistant resume needs to look clean, professional, and coherent. Make your resume attractive, but only use clean and sharp colors representative of the healthcare clinic or quality care organization you’re applying for.
Don’t overuse color and graphics
As a follow-up to the previous point, avoid putting graphics and harsh colors on your medical assistant resume template in an attempt to make it look attractive. This may work when you’re in more creative industries such as content writing, graphic design, or video editing.
A medical assistant resume needs to appear more monochromatic and professional rather than colorful and eye-catching.
Do make it brief but complete
A medical assistant resume doesn’t need to be too long. In fact, it is way better if you can compact every piece of information needed for your medical assistant resume objective to keep it brief. Keep your resume sweet and short but make sure it is complete enough that it gives employers and doctors a clear glimpse of you as a virtual medical assistant.
Don’t convolute your resume
Convoluted resumes are unnecessary and can be time-consuming for employees. You are highly likely to dissuade hiring managers from paying attention to your resume if it is too long and filled with unnecessary details. That said, avoid putting information in your resume that is irrelevant to your position as a virtual medical assistant.
Do title your resume neatly and coherently
As a virtual medical assistant, you will be mainly applying for a new job and for positions while working remotely. When you attach your resume to job applications or as you apply on job boards, make sure your resume is titled neatly. Putting your name as a title should more than suffice. Don’t let the title of your resume be just a series of jumbled, random characters.
Don’t put false information in your resume
Avoid putting false information in your resume just for the sake of making it longer. Having false information on your resume has a tendency to go back to haunt you later on in your career. Only put skills, experience, and other relevant information that are truthful.
Do pair it with a good cover letter
A well-written cover letter can be just as important as your resume. If you truly want to enhance your chances of getting hired, take the time to write a cover letter as well before submitting your resume.
Get Hired As a Certified Medical Assistant
Your medical virtual assistant resume is your entry point to healthcare clinics and organizations. It is the document you pass when you apply for a virtual assistant job and begin your career as a certified medical assistant. It is a highly important piece of documentation. Make sure you treat it as such when creating your virtual medical assistant resume examples. It could just jumpstart your career and give you a better life moving forward.