International Development Career Services

A good resume is hard to find, but a great one doesn’t have to be difficult to write. These tips will help you design a well-written, thoughtful resume for applying to global health positions. This template is particularly relevant to entry and mid-level professionals in global health, and some advice may be useful to anyone trying to break into global health from another sector or industry. Follow these tips to make the perfect global health resume and land the job of your dreams.

Use a layering approach to write your executive summary

The executive summary is money in your pocket. It appears at the top of your resume, right under your name and contact information, and typically takes up to one-third of the page (five to eight sentences). In global health, professionals tend to wear many different hats. Your job might require you to backstop a program and provide project management support and on top of that, you might be contributing to writing proposals, providing technical support, doing monitoring and evaluation, recruitment and human resources, and many other things. So, how do you capture all of that in your summary without making it look all over the place? I like to use a layering approach to write the executive summary, which I call “tree ring writing”. You start right at the center of the circles–your professional brand– and make your way out to capture the most important information about your career as it relates to the job you are applying to.  

In approximately five to eight sentences begin layering your rings:

• Start with your area of focus, expertise, and/or professional brand. Put a lot of effort into this first sentence. Where do you add the most value? What is unique about you?
• Describe how you acquired your experience (e.g., mainly by working in academia, the non-profit sector, the for-profit sector, direct clinical services, government agencies, etc., or a combination of the above).
• List out your specific technical skillsets (e.g., data analysis, statistics, reporting, project management, budget management, etc.).
• Specify the global health program area your career, education, and/or practicum to date has focused on (e.g., maternal and child health, nutrition, infectious diseases).
• Describe people skills you are known to have (diplomatic, tactful, coachable, adaptable, etc.).
• List the languages you speak, and countries you have worked, interned, and/or studied in.

It doesn’t have to be in this order, and you don’t have to include all of these points. However, whatever you choose to include in this section should be relevant to the job you are applying to.

 Here are a couple of examples for entry-level professionals:

A highly analytical recent graduate who balanced full-time work and studies while also pursuing interests in providing remote technical support to a local NGO in Kenya. Recently earned Bootcamp certification and actively seeking to apply expertise in data analysis and modeling in an entry-level data analyst role. Multilingual in English, Korean, and French. 

Strong project management and cross-functional collaboration skills developed during the Global Health Alliance internship in Ghana and as project lead at The Best University. Conducted research on elderly malnutrition and created modeling credited with reversing disease state in late-stage severe acute malnutrition. Outstanding analytical, critical thinking, and technical abilities. Regards working with diverse teams as key to innovation in the global health arena. Excels in fast-paced environments. Highly coachable and open to receiving constructive feedback.

Use the work experience section to back up your statements in the executive summary

Just writing a stellar executive summary is not enough. The task is to link the adjectives in the executive summary to the text underneath. The reviewer will be looking for evidence to support the statements you make in your executive summary, so your work experience should complement your executive summary.  This, of course, doesn’t mean that you can copy and paste your job descriptions. Spend some time thinking about what you were hired to do and what you have achieved in your role(s) to date. I recommend the STARR method in designing the bullet points in the work experience section. It is easy to apply, and each sentence becomes instantly more powerful. STARR stands for:

Situation – Describe the situation. (Projects? Problems solved? Performance Objectives?)

Task – Describe the task and what obstacles you faced to accomplish it. (Aggressive timelines? Budget? Workload? Staffing needs? Gaps?)

Actions –List the actions you took. (Project planning? Resource management? Communication?)

Results – Describe the results you helped obtain and the benefits to your employer. (Outcomes? Effect to the project? Support to beneficiaries? Benefit to your actions?)

Relate – Make sure your bullet points relate to the job you are applying to. (Is this bullet point about the job description or just about me? Does it include any keywords from the job description?).

Let’s see it in a couple of examples:

BEFORE: Wrote a monthly department newsletter.

AFTER: Championed department newsletter, creating a comprehensive platform for shared data between team and field offices.

BEFORE: Monitored project spending.

AFTER: Created and maintained project pipelines enabling visibility into spending for leadership to secure future project funding.

Your resume should be about the job description, not about you

It is important to read the job description of the role you are applying for because it gives you a glimpse of what the organization wants. You want to take that into your resume and adapt your resume to each individual job description. Make your resume about the job description and what the employer needs, not about you. Sometimes we are so busy writing about ourselves that we forget that our resume should be about the job we are applying to.

Use keywords like “program design and implementation,” “technical capacity building,” “monitoring & evaluation, strategic information, “project deliverables,” and “project work plans”.

The global health sector in general has many keywords, abbreviations, and terms that are repeatedly used and understood by professionals in the sector. As a job seeker, the best place to look for keywords is in the job description. Keywords in global health are not necessarily universal as this field has many types of players. For-profit entities may use the word “client” to describe the “funding agency,” while non-profit agencies might use “funder” or “donor agency.” Every organization in global health is different and uses its own set of keywords. Seek out appropriate words and use them strategically throughout your resume, as best possible.  

Don’t use dense blocks of text, follow a 1” page margin, and use a very simple resume design

The truth is recruiters and hiring managers want to know everything about you, but they don’t want to read it. Recruiters and hiring managers receive many resumes to scan through in short periods of time, so make it as easy as possible for them to read yours. Dense blocks of text are too difficult to read. Use white space to draw the reader’s eyes to important points. Use simple bullet points to separate your text. Refrain from using fancy bullet points, which are distracting and don’t add value to your document. Simple, commonly used fonts, such as Times New Roman, Calibri, Tahoma, or Ariel work well and in terms, of size, go for at least 11.

There is an eagerness to fit a lot of important information into a short document, but don’t do it at the expense of margins. Keep your page margins at 1” at least.  Also, tables are not a solution to condense information. They may look distorted once they go through the applicant tracking system and they are generally harder to read.  Don’t go overboard with resume template designs. Something simple, as I shared above, will do. Employer logos, photos, graphics, and other embellishments are distracting and may not do well with the applicant tracking system used by the prospective employer. Simple plain-text documents are best. Let your thoughtful, brief, and to-the-point statements do the work for you.

Don’t limit the number of pages

What matters most is the content so don’t limit yourself to a specific number of pages. Use the number of pages you need to give an accurate reflection of your professional history as it applies to the job. That being said, it is possible for your resume to be too long. For example, I once reviewed a resume that was 30 pages long. At some point, you give up reading such long documents. What I typically see is two to three pages for entry-level professionals, three to five pages for mid-career professionals, and five to ten for senior-level professionals. However, anything less or more is also totally acceptable.  

Pay close attention to grammar and spelling

Pretty much all global health positions – both for headquarters and field positions – have many writing responsibilities, so your impeccable writing skills are very important. Grammar and spelling are strong indicators of a candidate’s attention to detail and getting the work done, so hiring managers are always on the lookout for grammar and spelling mistakes in a candidate’s resume. You will really stand out if your resume is flawless in terms of good grammar and spelling, and you will likely get chosen over candidates with resumes that are poorly written. Make sure you get an extra set of eyes to review your resume before you submit it. Good luck!