Medical Assistant Resume Example & Writing Guide

A medical assistant resume is the lifeblood of your job search. A clear and compelling message will get you to your goal—a great new job—stat! A low-energy, understated resume could leave you in the waiting room. Take charge of your career with a medical assistant resume that gets recruiters’ hearts pumping.

How can a resume make that much difference? By clearly and dynamically presenting your qualifications and professionalism.

As a healthcare professional, you know that patients, especially ill ones, may make quick judgments on the quality of their care. If that judgment is negative, they may not return. A resume for a medical assistant is like that first visit to a new doctor—the first impression may be the last. Don’t let a great opportunity pass you by. Make the most of every application with a resume that compels HR to take notice.

Resume guide for a medical assistant resume

Fill your prescription for success with Resume.io. Our guides and resume examples cover over 500 professions, and our resume builder makes creating a dynamic resume easier than ever.

This resume guide and corresponding medical assistant resume example will cover the following:

• How to write a medical assistant resume
• Choosing the right resume format for a medical assistant
• How to add your professional contact information
• Using summaries to your advantage
• Adding your medical assistant experience
• Listing education and relevant experience
• Picking the right resume design/layout
• What the medical assistant market looks like and what salary you can expect

How to write a medical assistant resume

Every medical assistant resume sample will be different, as every medical assistant is unique. However, they should all contain certain common elements. Your resume should contain the following sections:

• The resume header
• The resume summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The resume skills section
• The education section

Within each section, you are adding evidence of the value you bring to each clinic, hospital or practice in which you have worked. In other words, you are selling yourself to your prospective employer. Just as each resume is different, each healthcare environment is different. To make the best case that you are the right person for the job, you need to know what the employer needs. Do your due diligence to discover the demographics of patients, their needs, what the exact role of the medical assistant is at that workplace and how your skills will fit in. Armed with that information, you can best showcase your value proposition.

The tips below offer a blueprint for focusing the message of your resume.

• Speak directly to each employer by customizing your document. You may need to reorganize the bullet points in your employment history, switch out a skill or rewrite your summary to aim at the qualities within the job description.
• Emphasize achievements rather than responsibilities. Tell what you did, but also the results of your actions. Did you reduce patient wait time? Specialize in calming nervous patients? Increase efficiency in exam room setup? Be as specific as possible, using data when appropriate.
• Be intentional with the design of your resume to project the image of a professional and organized medical assistant.
• Pay attention to keywords within the job ad to increase your chances of overcoming the ATS.

Choosing the right resume format for a medical assistant

Medical assistants must be organized, neat and efficient. Those traits translate into a resume that contains crisp lines, clear section separations and clarity.

To best show off these attributes in a medical assistant resume with experience, use the reverse chronological order format. Below is an example of this format.

If you are beginning your career, or have made a career change, a functional or hybrid format may work better because either provides the flexibility to focus your resume on transferable skills or education.

Our resume builder offers many choices in different styles, all of which can be personalized. Within these styles, we also have options of all three formats available as resume examples.

Because medical assistants must present a professional and efficient image at all times in their healthcare environment, we recommend choosing one of our professional layouts.

Include your contact information

A header that clearly states your contact information, without including unnecessary details, serves two purposes: 1. to allow HR to reach out without difficulty and 2. to add a design element to your medical assistant resume.

Here are the details you need to include (and how) plus a few to leave out:

• Full name and title. List your first and last name. Use the title of the role you are pursuing.
• Professional email address. Use a clean format like [email protected]. Don’t use a quirky, unprofessional email address.
• Phone number. List a number where you can be readily contacted, with a professional voicemail greeting.
• Location. List only your city and state. Don’t list street address or zip code. It’s both outdated and unsafe. Note 'Willing to Relocate' here if applicable.
• LinkedIn. If your LinkedIn profile is active, relevant, and shows your sales network, include it here.

Don’t include:

• Date of birth. Not necessary and could potentially lead to age discrimination.
• Personal details. Marital status, social security number, passport number, etc.

Make use of a summary

Do you greet each patient with a personal message such as “Good morning, Ms. Smith? I see you’re here for a physical. Anything in particular we should pay attention to?” This greeting demonstrates that you know your patients and are attentive to their needs.

The 2-3 sentence summary of your resume serves the same purpose. It demonstrates that you are familiar with the healthcare setting and are attentive to the employer’s needs, but it has the added function of highlighting the achievements and attributes that make you an excellent fit for the opening. 

Use concise phrases and strong action words such as counseled, treated, assisted, sterilized, prepped or monitored to describe your achievements.

A summary is not a repetition of your work history bullet items in sentence form. Instead, it showcases the very best of your career and illustrates your professional personality. This where you can say that you are detail-oriented and precise, but place emphasis on patient relationships or that you excel at calming nervous children. Don’t neglect administrative tasks like your efficient scheduling or data collection.

You can find adaptable medical assistant resume examples summary below:

Outline your medical assistant work experience: the pulse of your career

Using reverse chronological order, list each job, job title, the location and the dates of your tenure in the employment history section of your medical assistant resume. Then, consider what you achieved and your value add to your employer in each position.

Your goal is to build a story of career success through bullet items that show off your successes and how they improved medical care or saved time or money for the practice. Begin each item with a strong action you took and follow it with your results. Get specific and use data and details wherever possible.

Listing job duties will make your resume sound like a generic job description. A resume needs to distinguish you from the crowd. These basic bullet items are a mere list of tasks:

• Collected patient data
• Took vital signs
• Assisted doctors with exams

Can you tell anything about the medical assistant who wrote that job description? A dynamic work history section goes far beyond listing responsibilities to enticing HR by showing how you use your skills to improve the practice and patient satisfaction.

Here are improved versions that still include the tasks performed:

• Developed online patient data and achieved 90% compliance, reducing crowding in waiting room and time before patient saw doctor by average of 6 minutes.
• Collected, recording and evaluated vital signs including blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and respiratory rate of average of 40 patients per day.
• Prepared exam rooms, provided necessary equipment and assisted patients in positioning and comfort.

Take a look at the medical assistant  employment history resume sample below:

How to write a medical assistant resume with no experience

The keys to developing a resume with no medical assistant experience lie in your transferable skills, or the skills that you have demonstrated in other jobs or positions of responsibility that apply to working in a healthcare setting.

Have you always been interested in helping others? Perhaps you babysat or helped an older neighbor with chores or shopping. That makes you empathetic, caring and communicative. If you worked an afterschool job at a fast food restaurant, you have demonstrated responsibility, ability to follow procedure and health and safety standards and time management.

Use your summary to focus on why you want to begin your career in medical assisting and the skills you learned in your certification program. Include any jobs with transferable skills in your employment history section, but consider using a functional or hybrid format to play up your education. 

Include the relevant key skills that make you a great medical assistant

At first glance, the skills section seems like an easy one to put together, but it needs to be well thought out because it tells recruiters if you have what they are looking for and what you think are the most important attributes for the job.

The best medical assistant resume skills lists blend hard and soft skills to develop a complete picture of your professional abilities as well as demeanor. Hard skills, the technical proficiencies necessary to perform your duties, may include: CPR, phlebotomy, vital sign assessment, safety and privacy regulations, knowledge of anatomy and electronic medical records systems 

Patients and medical staff may be more concerned with your soft skills. Empathy, communication, customer service, teamwork, adaptability and stress management are the soft skills that will make you a welcome face around any healthcare establishment. 

To guide you in curating this section, our resume builder suggests pre-written key skills to choose from. You may also set the proficiency range for each. This section is also fully customizable.

Here’s what the skills box looks like in our medical assistant resume template. 

Saying you are an excellent communicator is a start, but provide examples of your skills throughout your resume. For example:

• Active listening by describing a time you helped a patient by paying careful attention to their description of their pain
• Problem-solving by telling how you resolved a scheduling error that caused a doctor to be overbooked
• Attention to safety procedures by detailing how you sterilize and clean an exam room.

The best method of discovering what your prospective employer values is to review the job description with care.

Detail your education & relevant medical assistant certifications

Medical assistants need a high school diploma or its equivalent and completion of  a post-graduate medical assistant program, most of which take six months to a year. The education section of a resume for a medical assistant lists these accomplishments in reverse chronological order.

If you have been on the job for a few years, you may have other accomplishments that may be listed here. They include:

• Training and certification. Certification in any medical procedures, advanced training, courses or workshops.
• Ongoing education. If you are working toward an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in a medical subject, add your program and expected date of graduation.
• Professional development. Any professional organizations or seminars that advance your medical knowledge or administrative abilities.

For entry-level workers, consider giving more weight to your skills and education by moving your employment history section down the page.

Pick the right resume layout and design for a medical assistant resume

Your scrubs are always crisp and clean, your personal appearance neat and you greet patients with a smile. The exam rooms sparkle and every instrument is in its place. You project an image of professionalism, friendliness and organization. 

The design of your resume needs to do the same. Remember that first impression counts, so you want the hiring manager to take notice because your sleek, easy-to-read resume reflects the qualities they seek in a medical assistant.

Unless you are applying to work in a pediatric practice, avoid any images and bright colors. Color is unnecessary, but if you choose to use it, stick with a muted tone.

A medical assistant resume should stick to the basics to avoid any hint of clutter or fuss. Choose a modern, easy-to-read font for your text with an opposing, bold font for section titles. Your name should be the most noticeable text on the page. We suggest one of or many simple layouts from among the field-tested resume templates we offer.

These templates take your focus off formatting and other technical details so you can hone in on your content and get your resume out there faster.

Medical assistant text-only resume example

Medical assistant job market and outlook

The aging population continues to fuel rapid growth in the healthcare industry and that includes medical assistants. Healthcare hiring hit a 30-year peak in 2023. That means more new opportunities for trained workers.

What type of salary you can expect as a medical assistant

Medical assistants earn a median salary of $38,270. Those working in outpatient care centers earned $42,820; those in hospitals earned $40,060; physicians’ offices, $37,970; and other health practitioners, $35,070.

Key takeaways for building a medical assistant resume

Medical assistants perform valuable functions in all healthcare settings To make the most of your training, your resume needs to project an image of competence, organization and empathy along with detailing your medical and administrative knowledge. Customize each application to highlight the skills and traits that best suit each job description.

Our online resume builder will help you step into the market faster so you can land your next great job.