The world of travel healthcare is an exciting one: It blends a passion for travel with both career and personal growth. As a traveling surgical tech, the opportunities to learn and grow are endless. In fact, you’ll gain new experiences and insights into key components of your role across diverse teams and locations.

If you’re eager to learn how to become a surgical technologist on the road but are unsure how to stand out to prospective employers, start with your resume. This guide will detail expert tips on how to optimize your surgical technologist resume, including how to highlight your skills, tailor your resume for travel, and avoid common mistakes.

Key Components of a Strong Surgical Tech Resume

Showcasing your skills as a surgical technologist is all about being thorough—you worked hard to get where you are today, and that should show on your surgical tech resume. The details are important for hiring managers, too. As they search to fill staffing shortages, they’re likely looking for key components that reflect your journey as a surgical tech.

To that end, here are some resume must-haves:

• Education – Most employers require surgical technologists to complete formal education—this can look like an associate degree or certificate. List the name of your degree or certificate and where you received it, like a technical institution or university.
• Certification – Hiring managers will be on the lookout for certification to perform your duties as a surgical tech, so don’t forget to list them, as well as the certifying agency. Not all certifications are required, but they can be preferred in some care settings. Common certifications include Certified Surgical Technologist (CST) or Tech in Surgery-Certified (TS-C).
• Experience and training – Detail the depth of staff experience you have and the extent of training you’ve received in the operating room. Don’t forget to include any core duties of a surgical tech while also highlighting your unique achievements.

Highlighting Your Surgical Tech Experience

Demand for travel surgical technologists can fluctuate based on the location you wish to work, so certain hospitals and healthcare settings can be competitive in terms of applicants, too. For that reason, it’s important to craft a resume that effectively highlights your experience and makes you stand out.

Here’s how to do it:

• Use concise language – While you want to make sure not to miss any details on your resume, it’s important to be concise when communicating your skills. Hiring managers likely review multiple applications at a time—a clean, relevant resume is easier to read and can push you forward in the hiring process.
• Quantify with metrics – Quantifying your experience can offer keener insight into your accomplishments and suggest the kind of impact you might make in your new role. For example, get specific on how many surgeries you’ve assisted, as well as any measurable contributions you made to your hospital, your team, or patient experience.
• Include hard (and soft) skills – In addition to any hard skills you’ve acquired in your training, soft skills reflect essential characteristics of a great travel surg tech (more on this later) and provide a holistic picture of the proficiencies you’ll bring to the role.
• Share your specialties – Listing your specialties showcases your finer skills and can help you stand out in a large pool of applicants. To that end, be sure to include skills and surgical specialties you’re proficient in such as ENT or gynecology. Include the types of cases you have experience with too, like open heart cases, and any specialty tech equipment you’re accustomed to operating, like robotics or DaVinci.

Let’s talk a little more about emphasizing your skills for a surgical tech resume.

Emphasizing Skills That Travel Healthcare Employers Seek

Whether you’re a recent graduate or a seasoned surgical technologist, you’re likely familiar with the importance and expectation of your role. As a travel surgical tech you’ll perform similar duties, but you’ll do it all in shifting care environments and with changing teams.

To that end, it’s important to emphasize the skills travel healthcare professionals are looking for when filling roles. And it’s not just hard skills that can help you stand out—soft skills are essential in the world of travel healthcare as they reflect the personal characteristics that can help you thrive in the field.

A few skills in particular can make surgical technologist ideal for travel positions, such as:

• Strong communication
• Openness to feedback
• Stress management
• Adaptability
• Attention to detail
• Problem-solving

But what about other techniques you can use to tailor your resume for travel positions?

Tailoring Your Resume for Travel Positions

Your resume might already reflect your qualifications and achievements for a surgical technologist position, but tailoring your resume to reflect the travel positions you’re applying for can help move you forward during the application process.

List Relevant Job Skills

As you’re sifting through applications for travel surgical tech positions, take a closer look at the qualifications prospective employers are asking for, and the keywords they’re using to communicate staffing needs. If you have relevant job skills that make you a great match, list them!

For example, perhaps you find a job posting that’s looking for a travel surgical tech with experience scrubbing on-call cases in the OR, and they want the ideal candidate to possess excellent time management skills and problem-solving capabilities. In this case, you’d want to make sure your resume notes that you can manage your time effectively, even amidst changing priorities, and can adapt to surgeries that don’t always go according to plan.

Customize Your Work History

Keep in mind you don’t have to list every facility you’ve worked at or position you’ve held. Instead, customize your work history to reflect your recent work experience and most applicable roles.

Include Your Travel and Per Diem Experience

Traveling is a core component of any travel healthcare profession, so including any travel experience you have showcases that you’re accustomed to the stressors of travel.

Maybe you took a temporary position at a clinic in a neighboring town or city to fill a staffing shortage. Even if you didn’t go very far, your experience traveling to other hospitals and working with different teams is the exposure hiring managers might be looking for to fill a travel role.