Dental Assistant Resume Guide + Tips + Example
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On the hunt for a job as a dental assistant? To land a great position, you will need a strong dental assistant resume. Not sure where to start? We can help! Use our guide to create a compelling resume for a dental assistant role and win hiring managers over with your excellent scheduling, records management and dental radiography skills.
Start by editing this dental assistant resume template, or explore our library of customizable resume templates to find the best one for you.
Sample resume for a dental assistant (text version)
Beth Gifford
New Rochelle, NY 10538
(555) 555-5555
example@example.com
Summary Statement
Amiable dental assistant with over two years of experience in a private dental office. Skilled at taking dental X-rays, preparing dental impressions and assisting dental hygienists and dentists. Able to schedule routine procedures, maintain patient records and develop a playful rapport with my regular patients.
Professional Skills
- Scheduling
- Fully trained in booking and maintaining appointments through various scheduling tools, including Luma Health, Appointment Plus, Acuity
- Scheduling and Booker.
- Confirm and update appointments for an average of 45 patients a day.
- Maintain and organize the professional schedules for three dentists at a private practice, ensuring that no professional is double-booked and reducing patient wait times by 13%.
- Organization
- Update records of dental treatments in electronic and paper form to ensure full coverage of patient information.
- Keep 200 records of dental treatments and X-rays as they occur, ensuring optimal patient care and follow-up treatments.
- Reorganized the supply closet to increase access to necessary safety equipment and protective covers.
- Sterile Preparation
- Prepare patients and work areas for treatments and procedures by laying out sterile bips, swabs, suction hoses, curing lights and surgical tools.
- Sterilize all dental instruments and procedure locations, ensuring timely procedures and reducing appointment delays.
- Prepared treatment rooms for patients by following prescribed protocols and procedures.
Work History
August 2019 – Current
ABC Dental Practice – New Rochelle, NY
Dental Assistant
July 2018 – September 2019
Eastern Dental – White Plains, NY
Dental Intern
Summary of Qualifications
- Give full attention to patients to ensure they are comfortable from registration through to the procedure.
- Keep confidential patient files that are well-organized, thorough and securely stored.
- Fully trained in rigorous cleaning and sterilization procedures to ensure a clean and safe environment for both dentists and patients.
Education
May 2019
The College of Westchester White Plains, NY
Associate of Science Dental Assisting
5 essentials of a top dental assistant resume
Contact details
Add your contact information to the top of your resume so prospective employers can contact you for an interview. As our example of a dental assistant resume shows, your contact information must include your full name, city, state and ZIP code, phone number and professional email address. If you have a LinkedIn profile, add this last.
Personal statement
A personal statement, also known as a professional summary, is a concise, three-to-five-sentence statement that tells the hiring manager who you are and what you can offer. Your dental assistant resume summary must include job-relevant skills and one or two notable accomplishments. It should also touch on how long you’ve been working as a dental assistant. If you are applying for your first job or changing careers, use a dental assistant resume objective instead.
Skills
Create a compelling dental assistant resume skills section so employers can see if your skill set matches their needs. Add your job-relevant skills to a bulleted list, making them easy to scan. It is best to include both hard and soft skills, such as sterilization for infection control and communication. If this is the first time you are applying for a dental assistant role, include transferable skills from other pursuits.
Work history
Whether this is your first job or you’ve been at it for decades, a dental assistant resume must include a section to display your job history. In reverse-chronological order, list your current and previous employers and provide practice names, locations and the dates you worked for them. Include three bullet points of measurable achievements for every job you list.
Education
As you can see in our sample dental assistant resume, it’s important to include an education section in your resume, whether or not you have a degree. In reverse-chronological order, use bullet points to display the schools’ names and the years you graduated. If you did not attend college, list your high school information and any courses or training you’ve completed since finishing.
See why My Perfect Resume is a 5-star resume builder
Action verbs for a stand-out dental assistant resume
To make your skills and experience shine, use a combination of action verbs and numbers on your resume.
Here is a short list of powerful action words to consider using on a resume for a dental assistant job:
- Assist
- Prepare
- Clean
- Sterilize
- Educate
- Process
- Schedule
- Record
- Document
- Help
- Explain
- Polish
- Maintain
- Organize
- Monitor
- Administer
- Communicate
- Plan
Check out our collection of resume samples to help you write the perfect resume for a dental assistant job. You will find dental assistant resume samples to inspire you!
Need a professional resume now? Our Resume Builder has all the tools you need to create an attention-grabbing resume in minutes! Just fill in one of our dental assistant resume templates or any other template that suits your needs. You can then make edits as you go, download your finished resume and save it in any file format you want. It’s that simple!
Top skills for your dental assistant resum
Review the job description for your target role closely and match the skills listed under the requirements to your skills and traits. You’ll want to populate your resume with both technical dental assistant skills and general interpersonal skills.
Consider some of the following dental assistant skills for your resume:
- Patient care
- Patient education
- Chairside assistance
- Knowledge of various dental procedures
- Coronal polishing
- Oral hygiene
- Sterile preparation
- Infection control
- Equipment and instrument handling
- Dental radiography
- Medical history taking
- Dental records management
- Record-keeping
- Appointment scheduling
- Booker
- Luma Health
- Administration
- Billing and accounts
- Customer service
- Attention to detail
- Dexterity
- Active listening
- Verbal and written communication
- Organization
- Time management
- Teamwork
- Collaboration
Certifications for a dental assistant resume
Licensure and certification requirements for dental assistants vary from state to state. While dental offices in certain areas might expect you to hold a Dental Assisting National Board (DANB) certification, others will be less strict about specific credentials. Either way, having one or more certifications on your resume is a good way to show prospective employers that you are committed to the profession and have developed specialized skills and knowledge.
Fortunately, there are several different certifications available for dental assistants. Below are a few options that could boost your resume:
Pair your resume with a matching cover letter
Dental assistant resume FAQ
1. What skills do I include in a resume for a dental assistant job?
Your dental assistant resume skills section should include a mix of hard skills, like coronal polishing and dental instrument handling, and soft skills, like attention to detail and teamwork. You ideally want to feature skills that are mentioned in the job posting, but only if they apply to you. Take a look at our overview of top skills for a dental assistant resume on this page and check out our dental assistant resume sample for more ideas.
2. What is a good objective for a resume for a dental assistant role?
To write a good dental assistant objective for your resume, you’ll need to succinctly summarize both your career goals and the skills and qualifications that make you an ideal candidate. You’ll want to briefly touch on the type of dental assistant position you’re looking for while also highlighting knowledge and experience that will help you address the specific requirements of the role. Try to mention unique qualities and accomplishments that make you stand out from other applicants, and always emphasize how you could bring value to a dental practice. Remember to keep sentences short, leave out personal pronouns and get straight to the point. When writing this statement, have a look at resume objective examples for a dental assistant role to get inspiration.
Remember that you should only use an objective for your dental assistant resume if you don’t yet have much work experience. If you’ve been employed in the profession for many years, it’s better to use a dental assistant summary for your resume.
3. How do you write a dental assistant resume with no experience?
To write a compelling resume for a dental assistant job despite having no work experience, you’ll want to focus on the qualifications you do have, rather than your limited employment history. Emphasize the technical knowledge you’ve gained through your training and your proficiency in software tools like Booker, Acuity Scheduling and Luma Health, as well as your ability to use dental equipment like suction hoses, matrix bands, curing lights and swabs. Also list supervised practical experience from your training and any part-time jobs, internships, volunteer work or extracurricular activities that involved patient or customer management and that equipped you with transferable skills that you can apply in a dental assistant role. Finally, to keep the focus on your professional skills and education while de-emphasizing your (lack of) work experience, you might want to use a functional or combination resume format. To organize your resume effectively so that it sells your value, we recommend you use a professional resume template for a dental assistant position.
Do’s and don’ts for building a dental assistant resume
- Use measurable achievements to describe your dental assistant skills and experience.
- Use action words to add impact to your dental assistant resume.
- Tailor your resume to your target dental assistant job.
- Use keywords from the job description throughout your dental assistant resume.
- Format your dental assistant resume so that it is easy to read by ATS software and human eyes.
- Lie about your dental assistant experience and skills.
- Boast that you are the “most competent dental assistant in the city.”
- Include irrelevant personal information, such as your ethnicity and age.
- Add skills and experience that are not relevant to a dental assistant role.
- Forget to proofread. A dental assistant resume with errors is unprofessional.
Top 4 tips for acing a dental assistant interview
Research.
It is vital to take the time to learn about the dental office’s history, goals, values and people before the interview. Doing so conveys interest, passion and commitment—traits that can set you above the competition.
Practice.
Practice does make perfect. To prepare for your interview, start by reviewing the most common interview questions, such as:
- How did you hear about this position?
- What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?
- Explain how you would be an asset to this practice?
Write down two or three possible answers for each question, then practice answering them with a friend or family member.
Ask questions.
Always have at least three questions for each person you speak with during the interview process. Doing so shows that you are genuinely interested in the role and have been paying close attention.
Some questions you might ask for a dental assistant job are:
- What would a typical day look like for a dental assistant here?
- What is the workflow like here and how do the dental assistant’s responsibilities fit into that workflow?
- Can you tell me more about the practice’s values, priorities and approach to patient care?
Prepare references.
Have professional references ready before your interview — you never know if the hiring manager might want to contact them immediately. Ask a former supervisor and two former colleagues who can speak about your performance as a dental assistant and who you are confident will give you a stellar review.
If you’re new to the working world and don’t have former coworkers for reference, you can get contacts from a former college professor or instructor, volunteer coordinator, internship manager, classmate or community leader who will provide positive feedback about your ability to perform the job.
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Dental Assistant Resume Example
Dayle Kavonic is a professional online writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience in digital content creation. She has written extensively on the topics of resume and cover letter writing, job hunting and career development.