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How to tailor your resume for a Physician Assistant role

A screener on a Physician Assistant posting wants procedures and setting, not rotations, because a resume that lists training instead of skills reads like a student's. Tailoring means matching your specialty to the posting's setting and moving a procedure count above rotation history.

Four moves for this posting
  1. Move your procedure counts, like joint injections or first-assist cases, above rotation history; numbers on procedures turn a claim into evidence a supervising physician can check.
  2. Match your specialty and setting to the posting's own wording, emergency medicine, ortho, urgent care; the title alone is too broad for a screener to place you.
  3. State your patient volume per shift and level of supervision, matching any autonomy language in the posting; autonomy is what separates otherwise identical PA resumes.
  4. Cut generic clinical-duty phrases and replace them with the procedure and its count; specificity on procedures is the entire differentiator in this particular screen.
The fact behind this

The claim that ATS systems auto-reject 75 percent of resumes traces to a 2012 marketing claim, not research. (traced to a 2012 vendor marketing claim)

Before you tailor anything

Start with the version a recruiter opens right now, then make these moves against it.

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