Dental Hygienist Resume: Examples, Free Templates & Skills Tips

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As a Dental Hygienist, you know what it takes for your patients to maintain good oral health. However, are you having trouble making your resume look clean and fresh? If so, use our expert resume templates to give your resume the repair that it needs.

Dental Hygienest Resume Example MSWord®
Give a recruiter a nice smile by using our Dental Hygienist Resume template in Word to freshen up your resume.

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Helping people smile is important work. You’ll know that already as a dental hygiene professional.

However, to get hired for a job, you’re going to need to show you’ve got the stuff to help patients maintain the best oral health possible.

You also will want a dental hygienist resume that stands out.

But what do dental hygienist resume templates require succeeding in a job hunt?

If you’ve never written a resume before or your current template is falling flat, we’ve got the answers for you.

In our guide on how to write a dental hygienist resume we can tell you all the key points that will make your next application the one that lands you the job.

Our expert dental hygienist resume writing guide explains:

• How to pick the best dental hygienist resume template
• The ways to perfect a dental hygienist resume objective
• The key points to add to your work experience section
• The skills expected on a dental hygienist resume in 2022
• How to tweak your education for the job at hand
• Other sections that can add extra power to your hygienist resume

Not only that, once you know how to fill your registered dental hygienist resume sample in like a pro, we can help you make it look great!

With our expert resume builder you can create an easy-to-edit, optimized template in just a few minutes.

Before you start a resume for real, let’s get visual.

Looking over completed dental hygienist resume samples is the best jumping-off point to help you on the path to success.

Use our dental hygienist resume example below to get a clearer view of what you’ll need.

Resume Example

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[Lauren Sandler]

[Dental Hygienist]

[45 Jonas Drive, Oakland, CA, 687030 | 782-332-2214 | lsander81@gmail.com]

Summary

Compassionate, California licensed dental hygienist with 6+ years of experience in assessing oral health, educating patients in good dental management, and providing oral hygiene procedures. Possess exemplary skills in patient care, managing anxiety and pain relief, and currently hold a 95.7% customer satisfaction rating.

Experience

Dental Hygienist

Smiles Dentistry | Oakland, CA 2019 – 2021

• Managed workloads in busy dental practice with 800-1000 patients
• Assessed patients to understand oral hygiene methods and necessities
• Removed plaque and tartar buildup using the proper tools and accessories
• Provided essential advice on how to maintain good oral health
• Achieved a patient satisfaction rating of 95.7%

Junior Dental Hygienist

Ackerman and Johnson Dental Services | San Francisco, CA 2016 – 2018

• Provided support to more than 500 patients over 2 years
• Performed x-rays and other screening tests
• Administered pain relief and fluoride treatments for patients
• Prepared patients for dental surgery procedures

Education

B.S. Dental Hygiene

Laney College | Oakland, CA 2013 – 2016

• Achieved a 3.5 GPA
• Major: Dentistry and Oral Science
• Relevant coursework: dental assistance, self-care programs, cleaning and stain removals, digital radiography

Skills

• Dental surgery preparation
• Plaque and tartar removal
• Pain control and anxiety management
• Advanced patient care
• X-rays and digital radiography

Licenses

• Dental Hygiene Committee California – License No: GJS439

Certifications

• Red Cross: CPR and First Aid Training
• California Department of Public Health: Radiography and Fluoroscopy

Hobbies and Interests

• Painting
• Reading
• Volunteering: Red Cross

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So now you’ve seen a sample dental hygienist resume, and you’re ready to start your own.

But before you start filling out the page, you’ll need to get the format right first.

This will dictate how you organize all the information on the page.

In most cases, you’ll get the best results from a reverse-chronological template.

This places your work experience history in prime positions and shows your most up-to-date working record.

This is exactly what a hiring manager wants to see first.

Most companies these days use algorithmic filters such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to save time and cut resumes that are poorly formatted or hard to read.

Therefore, you’re going to need a machine-readable format to submit your final application. In this case your best option is either PDF or TXT.

If you find yourself in a situation where the employer doesn’t accept doc files or docx you could be the one losing out.

If you use our resume builder, you can rest easy knowing ATS won’t come for your application. All our files are prepared in a format that gets through filters easily.

A dental hygienist resume summary or objective should be carefully crafted to get the best results.

To cut to the chase: it needs to tell the recruiter the things that qualify you most for their specific job opening.

As a dental hygienist, that means talking about your licensing, key skills, and a few achievements from your career.

The summary is the first thing a recruiter will see, and can have a big impact on if they keep reading.

You only have a few sentences, so you need to bring your ‘A’ game to this task.

Example Summary

Summing up your career in just a few sentences can be tricky.

Getting the balance right between length and depth is the key.

That’s not going to cut it on a professional dental hygienist resume.

This is way too short and generic. It also focuses too much on you rather than the open job.

So, what is a good summary for a dental assistant resume?

Let’s look at a practical example:

Open wide and say, “ahhh”!

This summary will get people interested in your dental hygienist resume.

It offers clear details about your years of experience, the skills you’ve mastered, and the licensure you’ve earned.

Even better, it goes into a little more detail about some of the KPIs you’ve achieved.

In short, this is going to keep a reader interested much more than the vanilla version we looked at before.

Now we’ve got the recruiter’s interest.

Your next job is to make your experience section shine like freshly whitened teeth.

Always lead with your most recent experience and work backward. Your headline, achievements, and skills in each role should appear as a short bullet point list.

Also remember, the dental hygienist job description for your resume will dictate what you prioritize.

Don’t include jobs that have no relevance to dental hygiene or dentistry. These will just waste valuable space on the document.

This means your achievements and KPIs should always be tweaked for each job you apply for.

But just what are the duties and responsibilities of a dental hygienist that stand out?

Overall, you’ll want to show you know key tasks such as screening patients, performing cleanings and whitening treatment, preparing patients for surgery amongst other things.

You should only mention each key competency once. Otherwise, the section will become repetitive.

Ultimately you want to show a recruiter why you’re a unique opportunity as a candidate, so be sure to introduce duties at the earliest stage.

This should be done in the order they were learned before introducing new, more specialist tasks.

Dental Hygienist Resume Examples: Experience Section

The experience section is usually what recruiters are most interested in.

However, something the example below isn’t quite right.

Nope, this isn’t going to do the trick.

Recruiters will balk when they see a few poorly described dental hygienist tasks listed on the page.

They’ll lump you in with the hundreds of other average candidates out there, junk your application, and move on with their day.

You need to make your profile stand out, and fast!

Instead, try an approach like the sample resume dental hygienist experience section below:

Here we can see some results of things you actually did.

The reader can tell quickly what you are able to do and how well. This gives them exactly what they need to know.

By optimizing your experience section in this manner, you’ll be well on your way to interview city.

Your training and qualifications as a dental hygienist count for a lot.

This is a highly specialized job and hiring managers won’t accept anything below a minimum standard.

You will need a certification or licence in dental hygiene to get picked.

In the case of an entry-level dental hygienist resume, however, your education section can be even more crucial.

If you are writing your dental hygiene resume as a new grad you’ll need to go into extra detail.

Dental Hygienist Resume Education Section

Ok so you’re fresh out of dental school and you need a job.

Getting recruiters looking at your resume is time-critical.

Unfortunately, if you use an example like the one below you could be waiting a while to hear back from prospective employers.

Uh oh, the recruiter might need some pain relief after reading that.

The information included here tells us very little about what you learned when you studied beyond the absolute basics.

You should go into a little more depth about the precise elements of dental hygiene and treatment that you studied.

As you can see in our optimized example below:

As you can see from this tweaked dental hygienist sample resume the trick to acing your education section is to focus on relevance.

We can see the grade you achieved, your major and some handpicked relevant coursework.

Those are going to get results.

You don’t need to overwork your education section. Especially if you’ve got a well-established career.

Ok, let’s get into one of your biggest selling points.

Your skills.

To be blunt, dental hygienists have a lot of them, but knowing what to prioritize is key.

In this section, you should pick around 3 to 4 technical hygienist skills that you excel at.

These should also tie in directly with the open position being advertised.

However, don’t forget dental hygienist resume skills aren’t only technical. You’ll also need some good soft skills too.

Working with patients requires the ability to build rapport, communicate well and interact comfortably with people.

Hiring managers will want to see personal skills that show you work well with people, so be sure to throw 2 to 3 their way too.

Some of the best dental hygienist skills to put on your resume include:

A resume for a dental hygienist can go further than just the basics.

There are good choices for other sections that you could add to make your individual application look tip-top.

It can be worth spinning off your training and qualifications into their own unique sections.

You can also use a little detail about any relevant hobbies and interests.

Let’s see how this might work in the examples below.

Dental Hygienist Resume Sample “Other” Sections

Right, so you’ve decided to add some extra sections to your resume.

Nice choice.

But be careful. Adding irrelevant or pointless information for the sake of it could cost you dearly.

As we can see with the example below:

What is this?

This is just going to confuse the reader. It doesn’t add anything to your dental hygienist application and wastes valuable space and reading time.

Things need to be a little more focused when you add extra sections.

Let’s see how that can be done…

This rounds off a dental hygienist resume perfectly.

We’ve got a special section covering your hygienist license.

Another looking at your certifications.

And finally, some extra details about personal interests that would further qualify you as an expert dental assistant.

Everything fits in with the kind of profile a hiring manager for a dental hygienist will normally be looking for and no space is wasted.

Getting a dental hygienist’s resume cleaned up for an individual job takes a bit of work.

However, by remembering the key points discussed in this article, you’ll save a huge amount of time getting everything in order.

Remember to follow these golden rules to optimize your resume to perfection:

By keeping these guidelines in mind, you’ll be able to tweak your final template to perfection.

We can help make the process even easier, too.

Our online free resume builder can help you create a design and ATS optimized template in just a few minutes.

To create a dental hygienist resume template free online today using our expert tools, simply click below.