By: Christi O’Brien Recruiting Manger, Ellit Groups.

In the competitive world of healthcare consulting, your resume serves as your initial introduction to potential employers and clients. It’s your chance to make a strong first impression and stand out from the crowd. To ensure your resume shines and effectively communicates your expertise, you must tailor it for both recruiters and clients. In this guide, we’ll explore the essential steps to tidy up your resume for a successful career in healthcare consulting, specifically within the Epic world.

Finishing Touches

Why are we starting with finishing touches? Because most of the resumes we review as a recruiter are okay in content but need a good editor. Here are some of the most common problems.

• Look at verb agreement among your bullets. Some say if you are still at a particular job, those should be present tense while the other past jobs should be past tense. In the consulting world where you may only be on contract 3 months, past tense on all is fine. The important thing is to be consistent. Example: the past tense of “to lead” is “led”, not “lead”, often missed on resumes since it doesn’t get picked up by spell check.
• Speaking of spell check, add common industry terms to your own dictionary. Often you can do this by right clicking and choosing “Add to Dictionary”.
  • Start with HIPAA so it doesn’t get autocorrected to HIPPA.
  • You should also do it for OpTime, ServiceNow, and anything else where there are no standard dictionary equivalents.
  • Take a moment to Google-search the tech and client names to ensure full accuracy including spelling.
• Know and love the Oxford comma. The comma is usually a better choice than the forward slash.  Here is an example.
  • If you are listing your job title as “Ambulatory/Healthy Planet Applications Analyst”, you really aren’t using the forward slash correctly and should change it to “Ambulatory, Healthy Planet Applications Analyst”.
  • If you are really using the forward slash correctly – to show “Or” like his/hers or to indicate a debate like over/under – then note, there is no space in between the words and the slash.
  • Review the grammar rules for when to capitalize and when not to.
    • We see a Superfluous Number of Capitalized Words in resumes. See what we did there?
    • Also – it’s “Epic”, not “EPIC”.
• Use proper word processing tools for things like bullets, page breaks, spacing, and don’t just enter a dash or asterisk in place of bullets, or insert a bunch of line spaces when you want to start a new page.

Write a Strong Summary

If you only have a few sentences to make someone decide if they should interview you, here is your chance. Be specific about your skills and avoid taking up space with soft skills or saying you can use Microsoft.

• Focus on the number of years of relevant experience and skills related to the job you’re trying to land.
• Seed this with perks you bring like having an operational background as a Practice Manager, starting out in nursing, or having worked for Epic in the past.

Highlight Your Epic Certifications

Epic certifications are a crucial component of your resume as they demonstrate your specific expertise within the Epic system. Be sure to list all relevant certifications prominently, including the module(s) and version(s) you’re certified in.

• Include a Certifications section, write them exactly as they appear on your Epic User account, and consider including the original version certified, and your CEE status.
• When recruiters or clients verify certifications, it is shocking to see how many people haven’t matched what Epic has to what candidates list in their resume. Take the time to check.
• If you also work with Cogito, Clarity, Bridges, Beaker, or something similar that often involves other technologies or tools, include a Tech section to list your ancillary and third-party experience.
  • Examples to include: SlicerDicer, Radar, Crystal Reporting, Cloverleaf, or WellSky.
  • It’s often the side skills that will land you the job, so create an easy-to-follow list in a Tech section or add some bullets after your summary, so they are near the top of your resume.

Showcase Relevant Experience

Detail your work experience with a focus on relevant projects and achievements. If your job title at the hospital was “Applications Analyst III”, then change it to be more descriptive of what you did. “Epic Revenue Cycle Claims Analyst” is more specific and eye-catching. Make your job title meaningful, add the applications you supported in the title.

• Currently, recruiters are looking for people talking about their work in Hyperdrive
• How they’ve utilized the Epic version with Book It.
• List new features and functionality you’ve done in the latest releases of Epic.
• Mention unique things about your clients, for example, “Helped this FQHC increase reimbursements by 48%.”

Current Naming Conventions

It’s time to update everything to the current Epic name of your application – stop using ADT – it’s Grand Central. If you have ADT way back in your resume, then you can put “ADT (now Grand Central)”, “Dorothy (formerly Home Health)”, “Rx (now Willow)”, etc. Stop using CPOE and say Orders.

Projects

We see a lot of resumes now where consultants don’t list each project and client name. We will almost always push back and ask you to provide that. We want to see a clear timeline starting with the recent project first and going backwards from there. It is important to show how long you spent at each client site as well as having the bullets to describe your duties for each project.

• If you were employed at one consulting firm over time, feel free to list that but break out the client projects with dates within that section.
• Should you have the consulting firm listed for each client project? We like it when they are included but understand we will take those off before we send it to our clients.
• When one size doesn’t fit all, you may need multiple versions of your resume. For instance, you might have one focused on Project Management and another for Analyst work.

Employment Gaps

If you have a gap, feel free to list it in your chronology. For instance, Caregiver to ill family member, April 2020 – January 2021, or Travel Sabbatical, February 2021 – July 2021. That can help answer questions about gaps in employment.

Keywords

Most recruiters are finding you in a search by keywords in your resume or LinkedIn profile. Read over some job descriptions that match you well. Look at the keywords the recruiter will likely be using in their search.

• For instance, We may be searching for a Resolute Analyst using, “Epic, Certified, Resolute, Hospital Billing, Claims, and Charge Router”.
• When we search LinkedIn and our resume database, your resume will come up higher in the results if you have the highest frequency of those keywords.
• Like WellSky mentioned above, we may be tasked to find a Beaker Consultant with WellSky and instrument interface experience. Mentioning these other things will set you apart from all the other Beaker candidates.

Include Client Outcomes

Clients and employers want to see tangible results. Whenever possible, quantify your achievements. Show how your work positively impacted patient care, financials, or operational efficiency. Here’s an example:

• Achievements:

Achieved a 30% reduction in billing errors, resulting in a $1.5 million annual revenue increase for the client.

Resume Length

Toss this one-page business out the window! When hiring a consultant, we don’t want a new college grad, we need experience. Experience means your resume doesn’t fit on one page. OK, it shouldn’t be more than 5 pages, either.

• Remember, recruiters read a ton of resumes. Use a clear font and respectable type size, 10 pt and up.
• Take the space you need to have that Certifications section, maybe a Tech section if appropriate for your skills.
• If you need to truncate after listing specifics for a few years, you can list work without bullets or summarize.

Relevant Experience

If you have relevant experience before Epic work, we want to see that. Too many people shorten their resumes by just chopping off everything older than 10 years.

• You can keep relevant info by doing something quick at the end like, “11 years of nursing with a focus on pediatric oncology and critical care”.
• Do not repeat bullets across numerous entries. If you were a Credentialed Trainer, focus on the things that were different from project to project in your bullets.

What about ageism?

We have been asked this recently and we counter that with, “Do you want to work somewhere that doesn’t value the depth of experience you bring?” If you have 30 years of expertise, go on and flaunt that. We cannot justify any reason to hide experience.

Include Contact Information, City, and State

Why do people send out resumes without contact information? We’ve received resumes that have neither phone number, nor email. This must be an oversight. Go check and put it on yours.

• Please include your city and state of residence. Since most of our Epic jobs remote these days, this is important.
  • Clients need consultants who are available during their working hours.  Those consultants living in another time zone may not being available during the client’s working hours and ask us to supply them consultants in their same time zone.
  • Providing that information helps us ensure you fit our client’s demographic.
  • Scheduling interviews based on your time zone to avoid calling candidates too early or too late based on the recruiter’s time zone.
  • We also use this information for our Candidate Tracking System. Why risk any of it?

Conclusion

A well-tailored resume is your ticket to success in the competitive field of healthcare consulting, particularly within the Epic ecosystem. By focusing on your certifications, relevant experience, soft skills, quantifiable achievements, and customization for each opportunity, you’ll create a resume that appeals to both recruiters and clients. Keep it concise, error-free, and don’t forget to showcase your unique value. With a tidy resume, you’ll be well on your way to securing your next healthcare consulting role or client engagement.