When you are preparing for medical job applications in Singapore, CV is the first document required. Prospective employers would use it to assess your skills and experience in a quick glance. You should use the CV effectively to showcase your skills, experiences and achievements that you had acquired throughout your career. You need to be relevant and clear in your CV so that the prospective employer can easily determine whether you meet the requirement for the job.

The Structure of CV

Based on my years of experience as recruitment consultant, I would suggest the following structure in preparing your CV.

• Personal details – include your full name with abbreviated qualifications, gender, date of birth, nationality, marriage status, where are you currently worked at, your language skills (briefly mention) and contact details.
• Medical qualification – list down your qualifications, from your basic (MBBS, MBBCh), post graduate (MRCP, FRCR 2A, FRCEM Intermediate) to the most recent qualification or degree, with the years when you obtained them. Dont forget to include your linguistic assessment examination (OET, IELTS) or other advanced qualification.
• Medical registration – list down all of licenses or registration that you had, together with the name of the medical council, country, registration number and the years of validity.
• Working experience – this is the key highlight of your CV. You need to provide a historical list of the jobs that you had after your internship / housemanship training. For every job details that you provide, remember to include:
  • Your job position – for example, Medical Officer, Resident Physician or Consultant.
  • The department, institution name, city and country – for example, Department of Emergency Medicine, All India Medical Center, New Delhi, India.
  • The years of service – list out the starting date and ending date, or whether you are still working there. You might want to write in a clear format (DD-Month-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY), such as 01 January 2020 – present.
  • Brief description of the hospital – do take note that you might be applying for international job and the prospective employers might not fully aware of the details of the medical service in your country. Explain briefly some details in one bullet point –  the size of the hospital / number of beds and whether it is a regional hospital.
  • Clinical skills and experience performed – a description of the medical duties, procedures and treatment that you perform. This is the key highlight of your job. List down everything in details, such as assisted in the laparoscopic surgery, performed catheterisaton, intubation, ventilation and so on.

Image 1 – example of working experience section of the CV

• Other experience – this will be your experience beside medical practice. If you dont have such experience at the moment, it is okay to leave it blank.
  • Management and leadership experience – list out your experience such as your roles in organising / steering committee, rota management or supervision of junior doctors.
  • Research experience – list out your topic of research, time spent, location, supervisor and source of funding, aims and your role, and final outcome.
  • Clinical audit experience – list out your topic of audit, month or year completed, location or institution, your role, and the guidelines audited against.
  • Teaching experience – list out the audiences or the group of people you have taught, the teaching method, time span or duration.
• Internship / Housemanship experience – list down the details of the discipline, period of internship and the institutions or hospitals where you conduct your internship / housemanship.

Image 2 – example of internship section of the CV

• Clinical Skills, Technique and Experience – this will be the section where you can list out your unique skills, technique and competencies that are related to the job or career you are pursuing. This is a summary of your skill set in keywords.

Image 3 – example of clinical skills section of the CV

• Development courses and conferences attended – list down the courses and conferences you have attended, including the title of the course, the course provider and location, the date or certification of validity of trainings.

Image 4 – example of development courses section of the CV

• Presentations and publications – list the date presented or published, title or topic, date, and location or journal.
• Personal Skills
  • Information technology – list down your familiarity or proficiency in IT such as Ms Office, statistical and research tools.
  • Linguistic skill – list down the languages that your are able to converse or write with the level of proficiency for each of them.
• Personal interests
• Referees – List at least three or four referees from your current and previous posts with their full details (dont forget their contact number and email address) so that the prospective employers can easily reach out to them to verify your working experience under them.

GENERAL ADVICE

 We have some practical advice for you to prepare your CV.

• Ensure that your CV has a clear structure, relevancy and clarity – this is to enable prospective employers to have a clear overview of you.
• Formatting – do not use different font types, sizes, colours that might distract readers. Avoid the use of expand / collapse heading which might risk any section not being read by the prospective employers. Ensure that your formatting, layout and structure remain consistent.
• Do not fabricate any information – any fabrication, misrepresentation and untrue information will cause you to be blacklisted by the hiring employer, termination from your job (if you have been appointed) or even blacklisted by the medical council. This will severely impact your career in the future.
• Provide relevant attachment – remember to resize the documents to reduce the file size with online tools. You might find difficulties sending extremely large sized attachment or it might even end up in the junk mail folder of the recipient.

WRAPPING UP

Having a perfectly written CV will not guarantee being shortlisted by prospective employers. However, it will be able to increase your odds of success and stand out among the other applicants.

Nucleus Health DO NOT charge you any fees for assisting in your medical job applications in Singapore. Besides CV preparation, we will assist you all the way to Medical Registration (License) and Employment Pass (Visa) application.

We hope that the tips provided will be helpful to guide you preparing a well structured CV.