Dental Assistant Resume: Examples and Tips

Dental assistants play an important role in dental team operations. You should be able to assist the dentist in dental procedures, perform routine laboratory tasks and cater to patients’ needs, as well as be proficient at office management duties. This position usually requires solid training, with extensive on-the-job experience as a plus.

Use these resume examples and tips to build an impressive resume for a dental assistant position.

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Dental Assistant Resume Sample

Top 4 Characteristics of a Best-in-Class Dental Assistant Resume

  1. Summary Showcase your interpersonal, management and technical skills in a few brief sentences. Supplement your primary skills (e.g., chairside assisting, patient care) with personality traits that help you excel as a dental assistant. For example: “Amiable and skilled dental assistant with an eye for details.” Also indicate your experience level through your professional achievements, e.g., “Over three years’ experience in both private and dental corporate offices.”
  2. Skills Peruse the job description for keywords that you should include in your resume, matching your strengths with what the recruiter is looking for. Emphasize hard skills that tick all the right boxes (e.g., sterile maintenance, dental hygiene, dental radiography) and intangible or “soft” skills that make you more desirable as a dental assistant (e.g., organizational abilities, customer service).
  3. Work history Substantiate your work accomplishments with quantitative data wherever possible. Phrases such as “Reduced patient wait times by 15%” add support to skills such as effective schedule administration. If you’re short on full-time professional experiences, list internships, extracurricular or volunteer experiences that helped you develop relevant skills.
  4. Education In addition to a diploma, certificate or degree from an accredited college-level education program, mention if you’ve undergone additional training or certification, such as certified dental assistant (CDA) via the Dental Assisting National Board (DANB).

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Find the Right Template for your Resume

No need to spend hours trying to make your resume “look” right — here are three template designs that you can easily tailor for a dental assistant position using our resume builder.

Accentuate

The two-column layout allows you to combine your skills with your work history and give a clean and crisp look to your resume.

Emphasized

Perfect for catching a recruiter’s eye, this template presents information in an organized dual-column layout, with a splash of creativity through subtle use of colors.

Bold

The applicant’s name is featured in a bold, colorful resume font, projecting confidence and tenacity. The arrangement of section headings in the left margin makes for easy navigation.

For more professional, modern and creative template designs you can use, visit our free resume templates page.

Do’s and Don’ts for Your Resume

  • DO cover your interpersonal, managerial and technical abilities in your resume.A dental assistant has a wide range of responsibilities, including office management duties (e.g., scheduling appointments, documenting patient data), patient interactions (e.g., educating patients on oral health practices, or making sure patients they’re comfortable), technical know-how (e.g., dental radiography, placing sedative restorations and retraction cords) and soft skills that show how you go about work, such as the ability to mult-task, and good communication skills. Make sure you feature skills that cover this range of needs.
  • DO quantify your professional accomplishments and abilities.Stating that you “organized appointments for an average of 60 patients a day” in your previous dental assistantship or that you “prepared teeth cleaning materials for 40+ procedures a day” makes a greater impact than generic statements such as “prepared teeth cleaning materials.” This gives recruiters a clearer image of your professional achievements.
  • DO mention any relevant certifications, awards and other relevant activities.In your education section, feature all certifications that relate to dentistry, such as being a National Entry Level Dental Assistant (NELDA), as well as any specific coursework in areas of oral health, recognitions or awards you’ve received for your work (e.g., “Employee of the Month” at a dental office), or extracurricular activities that speak to your dental and administrative abilities (e.g., volunteering to help patients at a bloodmobile).
  • DON’T forget to mention common tasks as well as specialized functions. While your capabilities in specialized areas can make your resume stand out, make sure you also display your proficiency at regular job-specific tasks that indicate whether you’re a good fit. So mention skills that are unique (e.g., sealant, fluoride and topical anesthesia application) but also address your effectiveness at regular duties (e.g., processing X-rays, instrument sterilization, taking dental impressions).
  • DON’T replace dentistry terms with generic keywords or phrases.Since dentistry is a specialized field, recruiters will appreciate the use of specific terminology. For instance, instead of mentioning that you know how to prevent the spread of infections, state that you are skilled at “infection control.” Similarly, it is better to use the term “coronal polishing” instead of making a general statement about being skilled at removing plaque.
  • DON’T submit your resume without proofreading it. It’s been shown that recruiters take less than 7 seconds for an initial review of a resume — within this time, they will make a quick judgment about you as a candidate, so don’t undermine your case with glaring typos, incomplete information or incorrect grammar.  Review your resume before you submit it, to make sure it’s free of errors.