1. Spelling doesn’t count: “Yeah, I wanna wurk hear.”

Don’t worry if your resume has spelling and grammatical errors.  You don’t want a potential employer to think that you’re capable of doing a good job documenting in the patient’s medical record!  Once that little nugget gets out, there’s nothing but expectations of you for clear, concise and grammatically correct documentation.  There’s a reason you didn’t get an English degree: money;  oh, and you didn’t want to have to be good at writing.

2.  Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Nothing says, “call me about that job,” more than your contact information on the top of every page of your resume. But, the sooner you get a job, the sooner you have to move out of your parents’ house, ending that blissful, mortgage-free existence, and forcing you to live in some apartment where your pretty sure that the last tenants saw personal hygiene as optional.

3.  I got passion in my scrubs and I ain’t afraid to show it. I’m PT and I know it.

If LMFAO can abbreviate, so can you. If some human resources person can’t figure out a WBAT from a W/C, it’s not your problem. If they’re hiring PTs and PTAs, they should be responsible for looking up any abbreviations that appear on your resume, right? BTW, since everyone knows “texting language” by now, go ahead & put it on ur resume 2 save time. As an added bonus, no one can tell you can’t spell when u write like ur txting.

4.  Who’s better than me?  Nobaaahdy.

Why wouldn’t someone want to read about everything you’ve done since high school? Don’t limit the lucky person who reads your resume to the last 5 years of your life. You should put everything you can think of in your resume no matter how irrelevant to the position, because the longer it is, the more important you are. Why would they ask for the resume if they didn’t want to know?

5.  Nunchuk skills… bowhunting skills… computer hacking skills…

On your resume, under special skills, go ahead and list those skills that would make Napoleon Dynamite jealous. Along with skills unrelated to the job, make sure you list the obvious ones too to help out the HR personnel (who are too busy trying to decipher your abbreviations). Things like therapeutic exercise skills, ultrasound skills and transfer skills will definitely help you stand out from the crowd.

So, good luck in your job hunt. (If you try any of this stuff, you’re going to need it.)

For advice you really should follow, start with I Am Graduating from Physical Therapy School:  How do I build an awesome resume?  And what the deuce is a CV?