Nursing Resumes & Portfolios

Resumes vs. Portfolios: What is the difference?

A resume:

• Is usually 1-3 pages long
• Follows standard format
• Describes education, work history, and other relevant experience in short blurbs (i.e. 2-3 sentence paragraphs or bulleted lists)
• Is standard in most job applications (note: Some larger employers use computer to scan resumes for keywords, making these computers the mechanism for "cutting" many applicants before a human ever see the application)

A career portfolio:

• Is an in-depth document that supplements (not replaces) a resume
• Takes many forms but generally includes artifacts (e.g. tangible objects that demonstrate  work such as care plans, marketing brochures, outlines of training sessions, manuals, spreadsheets, memos)
• Can be paper or electronic, including webpages, PDFs, and even PowerPoints