Points to remember when composing your resume:

Please remember a well-written and informative resume will greatly enhance your chances of being selected for interview.

Only include relevant details. Do not include, for example, conferences attended as a medical student and sporting awards from your period at school.

Include your primary and specialist qualifications as well as any others which are relevant to your clinical practice. Provide details of the academic institution or professional body that awarded your qualifications. Only include qualifications that are awarded by competitive examination or by continual assessment following an authorised curriculum. Do not include qualifications that have been bought by subscription.

Details of your current post should specify the name of the hospital/facility, the department, the name of your supervisor and the list of your duties and responsibilities.

When writing about employment/practice history, avoid writing too much about the hospital - write about your responsibilities.

Present your previous positions in reverse chronological order – start with the most recent position first.

Medical registration - provide details of all registrations you currently hold and have ever held with medical licensing authorities (whether or not you are currently working or have ever worked in that country or state)

Post Graduate Medical Training - State the specialty in which you obtained your specialist qualification, with comprehensive details of your post graduate medical training including the duration of each part. This information may be used to assess whether you meet the criteria during interview. You need to show that the post graduate training you completed is equivalent to the post graduate training required for the award of a certificate of specialist training in your specialty in Australia. Identify which posts were training posts, their specialty content and the names of your supervising consultants. If you have kept a logbook during your training, make a note accordingly. (Your logbook is likely to record details of practical procedures carried out by yourself, seminars and courses attended. If you were appraised as to your progress during training please include details in this section)

Courses and conferences – provide details of those attended over the last five years including their scope and duration.

Clinical or Procedural Skills and experience - it is important to give as much information in this section as you possibly can. Hospitals need to be reassured in which areas you are able to work independently, or with assistance and supervision. You should include wherever possible:

• Types and number of operations carried out with and without supervision
• Types and number of practical procedures carried out: such as endoscopic procedures and invasive procedures (e.g. cardiac catheterisations, central vein cannulations, joint injections etc)
• If you are an anaesthetist, types of anaesthetics administered with some comment as to your proficiency at varied types of anaesthetics
• Details of skills obtained e.g. Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS)

Wherever possible you should provide details of the size of your current workload:

• Number of operating sessions per week
• Number and types of operations being carried out
• Number of out-patient clinics per week
• Numbers of patients seen per clinic by yourself
• Number of in-patients under your care at any one time and an example of a typical case mix of patients
• The frequency of your on-call and details of your exposure to acutely ill patients
• How much of your time is spent with non urgent cases and how much with acutely ill patients

Detail recent examples of complications experienced in your practice and how you followed these up.

Give full details of continuing professional development/continuing medical education which you have undertaken since your specialist qualification.

Briefly describe all of your research projects during your career to date. Document the outcomes of your research projects. List your publications and identify those published in peer review journals.

Referees - ensure that the referees are aware that you are nominating them in your application for employment in Australia and have agreed to act as your referee. Referees must be able to comment on the quality of your work. Referees should be a senior medical colleague or a direct supervisor. Referees should not be family members.

Don’t forget to use the spellcheck function on your computer!