One of the most crucial elements of any resume is
your personal statement or what is sometimes referred to as
your career goal statement.
In this video I'm going to show you how you
can use a personal statement to really help your medical
student resume stand out from the rest.
Hello, I'm Dr Anthony Llewellyn and I'm the career doctor.
I'm here to help you manage your medical career in
this viewer requested series.
We are focusing in on the medical student resume and
today I am talking about personal statement.
If you don't know what a personal statement is, it's
that piece of narrative texts that normally follows your name
and brief details on your resume and summarizes you as
a job applicant.
Other names for personal statements are personal summary, personal profile
and career goal statement.
Now, if you've watched any of my videos about CVS
and resumes, you will know how important I view your
personal statement to be.
It's possibly the most important part of your resume and
personal statements are even more important if that's possible.
When it comes to the medical student resume.
This is because you have no formal on the job
experience as a doctor, which is normally the next most
critical part of a job resume.
So let's talk first briefly about the benefits of a
personal statement and we'll go over how you should construct
your personal statement towards the end of this video.
So the benefit of a personal statement really boils down
to one big thing, which is your ability to control
the narrative of your resume.
Think about it, if a prospective employer has not met
you before and they are reviewing a resume along with
a bunch of others, having a quick snappy, well-written summary
at the top of your resume is like gold to
them.
It saves them time by giving them the key things
that they need to know.
Think of it like the abstract on a research paper
or an executive summary on a report.
How many times have you written one or other of
these and then not even bothering reading to the rest
of the paper or report I'm betting it's at least
nine times out of 10.
Look, people only have limited memories and like it or
not, they're going to try to simplify you to make
it easier on them.
So what is better than to control this simplification through
the use of a well constructed and controlled statement on
the top of your resume Why not control the narrative
of your career Why not you do that rather than
them making it up by hopping all over your CV
or resume.
And even if they do know you, which happens a
lot in medicine, the summary is still going to help
them in that simplification as I don't really know everything
about you.
So that's why I personal statement is crucial.
Let's now talk about how to construct one.
So in order to go back constructing your personal statement,
you're going to need a couple of things as well.
Firstly, you should ideally have written at least the first
draft of the rest of your resume already.
You need that because personal statements should link to the
other components of your resume.
They're pointing out all the good bits.
Secondly, you should also ideally have a position description.
Now, this may be hard depending on where you're located.
So if you're in new Australia or New Zealand, you are
normally applying for an interim position at a number of
places across these two countries.
So there may not be an absolute clear job description
in the UK.
It may be a similar issue applying foundation posts for
residency applications in North America.
There may be a job description available for the actual
post normally.
However, there is some form of document that has the
selection criteria on it, which is what we're actually looking
for.
What we are endeavoring to do is to match our
best strengths to the job and Tyler in statement as
much as possible.
So once you know what the key things the employer
is looking for, think about the key strengths or key
skills that you have in your resume, which matched to
these criteria.
Now we've already talked about one of these in our
previous video about talking about communication in your resume.
Communication almost always comes up as a key selection criteria
for intern and resident posts.
It's because it's so crucial that you have good communication
skills, especially when transitioning from medical school into the workforce.
So my formula for personal statements is as follows.
First off, start by telling them what you can offer
them, what value do you bring
It's really important that you leave with this first, employers
are looking for people who can add value to their
organization even if it is future potential.
You are being respectful by offering them something first.
After all, it's their job, not yours.
So for example, as a medical student, you might say
something like, I recently graduated from one of Australia's most
innovative medical school training programs where I developed a strong
clinical capabilities along with excellent communication and teamwork skills as
evidenced by high writings in communication workshops and excellent supervisor
reports which I have listed in my resume.
It's important that you do provide some measure of justification
for your strengths even if it is referring to someone
independent, particularly with something like communication.
The next part is that you need to show them
why this position is a natural next step for you.
Now this is relatively easy to do for a medical
student resume, but there is an opportunity to personalize things
a bit.
For example, in seeking this internship opportunity, I would strongly
welcome the opportunity to work in your hospital as I
felt that I've already developed a strong understanding of the
organization through my 12 months on placement.
Finally, you want to leave them with a personal reason
for why you feel you are a good fit for
this particular job.
Now this may be a little bit hard if your
resume has to be submitted to a number of hospitals
at the same time, so might be a little difficult
to personalize it down to that level.
But if you can do that, then please do so.
One way of achieving this is to make your personal
statement our career goal statement.
So we can do this by finishing off our personal
statement by talking about where we see this job helping
us or taking us into the future.
Let's say in about three to five years time.
For example, working at this hospital will in particular give
me a strong opportunity to develop my passion for general
medicine as it is one of the few tertiary facilities
in the state that has retained a general medicine department.
Ultimately I would love to do my basic physician training
at your institution.
If you can point out something that's good about the
hospital and I referenced the seniors are working there for
a good while, then employers really love that.
So that's one example of a medical student resume.
Personal statement.
I know it can be hard crafting a personal statement,
so I'll leave a couple more on the blog posts
that I've written on medical student resumes, which I've left
a link to in the description below.
It's called medical student resumes are written and video guide.
A couple of points about personal statements before we dive
off them.
Some related questions.
Many have about personal statements are as follows, 1:00 AM I
limited to listing just one strength In my personal statement
Answer.
No, but you will probably find it hard to provide
a strength for all the criteria.
So it's best to limit yourself to say two or
three at the most.
Otherwise you can risk losing their attention and also stop
them focusing on where you want to be.
Remember, this is determining the narrative that you want them
to remember you by.
So you have to make some choices here.
So if you want to be known as the medical
graduate with a strong research background, do that.
But perhaps that doesn't mean that you refer to yourself
as the medical greater man who used to be a
management consultant.
Try not to confuse them too much about who you
are.
Second, how long should a personal statement be answer.
You should try to make it as brief as possible.
Get someone else to read it for you.
If you can use one word rather than three, go
for the one word.
As a general rule for a medical graduate, I wouldn't
do more than a couple of paragraphs filling up, say
about the top third of your front page on your
resume.
But it's all relative.
And as you go on further in your career, you
may want to devote more front page real estate, your
personal statement.
Remember the front page is the most crucial part of
your resume.
Anything that's important should be on there somewhere.
Three is there anything I should not put in my
personal statement Look, the main thing to avoid is statements
or claims that you can't back up or you don't
back up in your resume.
For example, if you say that you have excellent clinical
skills, then you should at least list the key ones
you have developed under education.
As I say, statements such as a strong focus on
high quality communication or strongly valuing teamwork get quite cliched
and great on experienced employers.
Don't add something in like this unless you can really
back up how you have demonstrated at in your career
so far.
So that's personal statements.
As I said, I will leave a couple more examples
in the related blog post medical students, resumes are written
and video guide.
I'd love your comments on this video, particularly if you
are from a country outside of Australia.
For example, what have you been told about personal statements
in your resume, in your country I don't think it's
useful or important.
Do you get to tailor your resume? Or do you need
to keep it generic at this stage of your career
And remind that that if you liked this video, please
leave me a like, and if you'd like more than
one, why not subscribe and turn on notifications and I'll
see you in the next video about medical student resumes,
both an hour