Hiring managers will understand that most recent nursing grads don’t have working nurse experience outside of their clinical school experience. As such, you should definitely include work experience you’ve had in such a way that it speaks to traits that are relevant to nursing.

Some of these things can include skills such as:
Customer care and compassion, time management, ability to perform under stress, critical thinking, adaptability, and attention to detail.

Any number of non-nursing work experience can speak to these skills.

Here are a few examples: customer service, child care, office work, retail, serving in a restaurant — just to name a few.

If you were part of an organized team sport, or played a sport in college, it’s helpful to include that in your resume.

You can add this to the “Affiliations” section of your Trusted profile.

This depends on your level of experience in general. If you went straight to nursing school from high school, it might be relevant for you to go back to your high school experience or award achievements.
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If you’ve had quite a bit of volunteer experience and/or award achievements, you might not want to list them all. Think through which skills you want to demonstrate most, and choose which experience to include accordingly; extra points for anything that relates to nursing or healthcare directly.

Prior to writing your resume or cover letter, you should reflect on what you want your application to show.

If you have a strong interest in a particular area or specialty, you should think about how other experiences you've had (not just clinical ones) can demonstrate skills that tie into that.

You can reflect these skills in both your work experience, as well as your rotations and capstone/preceptorships.

Although not all jobs or residencies might not require a cover letter, we recommend writing one to accompany your nursing resume.

Your cover letter can help fill some of the gaps on your resume by telling your story at a higher level and speaking to who you are as a candidate.

Although it’s not required, including your GPA can be helpful to demonstrate your academic achievements in nursing school. Hiring managers will look at your overall work or clinical experience, your story as told by your resume and/or cover letter, and your relevant involvement in activities in and out of school to determine your fit—not just your GPA.
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In case you would like to add it, you can add it under the Education section of your Trusted profile.

You can add your non-clinical work experience in the portion of the resume builder called “Work Experience.”