Hospital and health-system recruiters screen nursing resumes credential-first. Before anyone reads a word of your experience, the ATS search has already filtered on license (RN, state or compact), certifications (BLS, ACLS, PALS), and unit type (ICU, med-surg, ED, telemetry). A strong nurse with those details missing or buried simply doesn't appear in the results.
Here's how to make sure your credentials and unit experience are visible to the software — then run your resume through the free checker to confirm.
Give licensure its own section near the top — not the bottom — with each credential on its own line: "Registered Nurse (RN), Texas, compact license, exp. 2027". Write both the abbreviation and the full phrase at least once, because systems and recruiters search both. Include BLS, ACLS, PALS, or specialty certifications (CCRN, CEN, OCN) the same way, with issuing body and expiry.
Whether to print your license number is a judgment call — many nurses include state and expiry only, and provide the number when asked. What matters for screening is that the license type, state, and active status are explicit and machine-readable, not implied by your job history.
Recruiters search by unit: "ICU", "med-surg", "emergency department", "telemetry", "L&D". Name your unit explicitly in each role — "Staff RN, 24-bed medical ICU" — rather than describing duties and hoping the unit is inferred. Include patient ratios ("1:2 in CVICU") and bed counts; they're how experienced managers read acuity at a glance.
EHR systems are genuine keywords too. "Epic" and "Cerner" appear constantly in nursing job descriptions, and hospitals migrating systems specifically search for nurses who already know theirs. List the EHR you charted in alongside your clinical skills.
Paste your resume — and the job description if you have one — and get an instant ATS score with the exact keywords you're missing and what to fix first.
Check your resume free — no sign-up, instant score →It's optional. License type, state, and expiry are what screens filter on — 'RN, California, exp. 2027' is enough to match. Many nurses hold the number back until an employer requests it for verification, which is a reasonable privacy default.
Treat clinical rotations as your unit experience: name the unit, hospital, and hours ('240-hour capstone practicum, medical ICU'). Add your license, BLS/ACLS, and EHR exposure from clinicals. New-grad residency screens search for those exact things because they can't filter new grads on years of experience.
No — but format them so they don't look like job-hopping. Group them under one heading ('Travel RN — Aya Healthcare, 2024–2026') with each contract's unit and hospital as sub-lines. The unit keywords from every contract still count as matches.
Clinical and procedural: ventilator management, titrating drips, wound care, IV insertion, charge experience. Skip generic soft skills ('compassionate team player') — they match nothing and take space from the terms unit managers actually search.