Registered nurse CV example (Australia): what hiring managers and ATS software look for

Nursing is one of the few professions where the person reading your CV is usually a nurse. That changes what works. A nurse unit manager reading applications between shifts is scanning for a small number of specific things, and they will find them in about twenty seconds or they will move to the next file.

The good news is that the list of things they check is short and predictable. The bad news is that most nursing CVs bury three of them on page two.

The four things checked first

AHPRA registration. Number, registration type, and any conditions or notations. This goes near the top, not in a qualifications section at the bottom. A nurse unit manager cannot shortlist you without it and will not go looking.

Clinical setting. Med-surg, ED, ICU, theatre, aged care, community, mental health, paeds. These are close to separate professions in practice, and the first question in the reader's head is whether you have worked in theirs.

Currency. When you last practised in that setting, and how much of it. Someone who did two years of ICU in 2019 and has been in a clinic since is a different candidate from someone who came off nights last month.

Shift availability. Rotating roster, nights, weekends, on-call. Nursing rosters are the constraint the whole ward runs on, and a candidate who is clear about availability is easier to hire than one who is not.

Everything else on your CV supports these four. If a reader has to hunt for any of them, you have made your CV harder to shortlist than the one underneath it.

Before

Registered Nurse St Vincent's Hospital, 2021 to present

Provide nursing care to patients on a busy ward. Administer medications, monitor patients, document care, liaise with the multidisciplinary team. Participate in ward meetings and quality improvement activities. Preceptor to student nurses.

This describes the job description of every registered nurse in Australia. It does not describe you. A reader learns nothing that separates you from the next forty applicants, and the recruitment software learns nothing either, because none of the specific terms in the job ad appear.

After

Registered Nurse | AHPRA registration NMW0001234567 (current, no conditions) St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney | Acute Medical Ward (32 beds) | March 2021 to present Full-time, rotating roster including nights and weekends

• Deliver care for an average patient load of 4 to 6 on a 32-bed acute medical ward, with a case mix weighted to respiratory, renal and complex diabetes.
• Advanced skills: peripheral IV cannulation, IV antibiotic and infusion management, ECG acquisition and interpretation, tracheostomy care, syringe driver management, wound care including negative pressure therapy.
• Deteriorating patient response: MET call first responder, ALS certified, current since 2021.
• Preceptor to 11 undergraduate and graduate nurses since 2022, including three transition-to-practice nurses through their full 12-month program.
• Co-led a falls prevention audit that revised the post-round hourly checking process, contributing to a reduction in ward falls over the following two quarters.
• Electronic medical record: eMR (Cerner), plus prior experience with iPM.

Same nurse. Same ward. The second version is shortlist-ready and the first is not.

The Australian specifics that get missed

AHPRA number. Include it. Some applicants leave it off out of privacy caution, but it sits on a public register by design, and its absence slows down every recruiter who has to verify you.

Registered or enrolled. Nationally, AHPRA registers you as a Registered Nurse or an Enrolled Nurse, and that is the wording to use on a CV going anywhere in the country. In Victoria you will still see Division 1 and Division 2 used for the same distinction, particularly in enterprise agreements and older job ads. If the ad uses the Victorian wording, mirror it. If it does not, stick with RN or EN.

Enterprise agreement level. If you know your classification, for example RN Level 1 Year 5 or RN Level 2, include it. It tells a hiring manager immediately where you sit for pay and scope, which removes a whole conversation.

Mandatory checks. Working with Children Check, NDIS Worker Screening, National Police Check, and the immunisation requirements that apply in your state and to your role. If you hold them, list them. If they are current, say so with the expiry year. These are hard gates and a candidate who has already cleared them is cheaper to hire.

Postgraduate study. Graduate certificates in critical care, emergency, perioperative and similar carry real weight. Name the qualification and the university.

Agency and casual work. Do not hide it. List the agency as the employer and name the facilities and settings underneath. Breadth across sites is a genuine asset, particularly for roles that need someone who can land running.

If you are a graduate

You have no clinical years yet, so the structure changes. Lead with placements, described the same way as jobs: setting, bed count, patient cohort, skills performed and supervised. A graduate CV that says "clinical placement, 4 weeks, ED, tertiary referral hospital, exposure to triage, trauma presentations and paediatric ED" is doing far more work than one that lists placement dates.

Then the transition program you are applying for, your availability, and your checks. Keep it to two pages, which for a graduate is genuinely achievable.

If you are applying through a statewide graduate intake, the criteria are their own exercise and worth reading up on separately. We have covered the largest of them in GradStart and new graduate nursing applications.

Getting past the software first

Larger health services, and most state health departments, run applications through recruitment software before a nurse unit manager sees anything. The software matches your text against the ad's text. It does not know that "cannulation" and "peripheral IV insertion" are the same skill, or that "acute medical" and "general medicine" describe the same ward. If you want the detail, we have written up what an ATS actually does.

So read the ad and mirror its vocabulary. If it says "deteriorating patient recognition", use that phrase rather than "MET calls". Keep both if both are true. Do not use tables, text boxes, headers or columns for anything that matters, because those are the layout features most likely to be parsed badly or dropped entirely.

Score your nursing CV against a job ad, free →

The short version

Registration number and type at the top. Setting, bed count and patient cohort so the reader can place you. A real skills list rather than a summary of the profession. Checks and availability stated plainly. The ad's own words wherever they are also true of you.

Twenty seconds is what you get. Spend them well.