Dental Assistant resume example
A certified dental assistant's resume — chairside volume, radiographs, sterilization results and the certification a dentist checks before anything else.
Invented for this page. The name, the employers and every number in it are made up — a real resume is somebody’s personal data and is not ours to publish.
Written for applications in the United States. The notes say what to change elsewhere.
Updated
Alyssa Nguyen
alyssa@example.com | (303) 555-0187 | Denver, CO
Summary
DANB Certified Dental Assistant with four years chairside in a busy general practice, assisting 14 patients a day across restorative, endodontic and surgical procedures. BLS current.
Experience
Dental Assistant
Jun 2022 – Present
Cherry Creek Family Dentistry, Denver, CO
Prepared and staffed 14 chairside appointments a day across fillings, crowns, root canals and extractions, turning each operatory around in under 8 minutes.
Took and processed 40 digital radiographs a week in Dexis with a retake rate under 3%.
Kept every weekly spore test passing for 2 years by rebuilding the sterilization log and checklist the practice now uses.
Dental Assistant Extern
Feb 2022 – May 2022
Front Range Dental Clinic, Denver, CO
Charted 300 periodontal exams in Dentrix under supervision, with every chart passing the clinic's records audit.
Education
Dental Assisting Certificate
Aug 2021 – May 2022
Mile High Career College, Denver, CO
Skills
Chairside: Four-handed dentistry, Radiography, Impressions, Sterilization, Patient education
Software and certification: Dentrix, Dexis, DANB CDA, BLS
Why it is written this way
Certification comes first
DANB certification and a current BLS card are what a practice screens on, so they open the summary. State rules on radiography differ, so name the state's when you hold one.
Chairside work in numbers
Patients assisted a day, operatory turnaround and the radiograph retake rate are what a dentist and an office manager actually notice. “Assisted the dentist” is the job title restated.
Infection control is evidence when it is tested
Weekly spore tests either pass or they do not, so two years of passes is a fact a practice can rely on. It earns a bullet of its own.
US conventions: Letter, city and state
No street address, photo or date of birth. The page is set on Letter paper.
Shapes to fill in
Each blank is yours to complete. These are the same scaffolds the builder offers for this occupation — none of them says anything until you fill it in, which is what keeps them useful rather than a lie somebody else wrote.
Handled scale or volume
- Operated ___ serving ___ ___ a ___
- Scaled ___ from ___ to ___ without ___
- Managed ___ worth ___ across ___
- Processed ___ ___ per ___ at ___ accuracy
Improved quality or reliability
- Cut ___ defects from ___ to ___ by ___
- Raised ___ from ___ to ___ over ___
- Eliminated ___, ending ___ that had cost ___
- Introduced ___, cutting ___ incidents by ___%
Led people or a programme
- Led ___ people through ___, delivering ___
- Hired and trained ___, of whom ___
- Coordinated ___ across ___ teams to ___
- Mentored ___, ___ of whom ___
Also called
Certified Dental Assistant (CDA) · Certified Registered Dental Assistant · Dental Aide · Dental Assistant (DA) · Dental Nurse · Dental Specialist · Dentist Attendant · Expanded Dental Assistant · Expanded Duty Dental Assistant (EDDA) · Expanded Functions Dental Assistant (EFDA)
From the O*NET occupation database. Worth checking which of these a posting uses, because that is the wording its keyword search will be built on.
What a parser reads from this resume
This is the actual plain-text output for the document above — the same text an applicant tracking system extracts, and the same text this app hands you when you download the .txt. Nothing is lost between the page and the parser, which is the whole argument for a single column of real text.
Alyssa Nguyen alyssa@example.com | (303) 555-0187 | Denver, CO SUMMARY DANB Certified Dental Assistant with four years chairside in a busy general practice, assisting 14 patients a day across restorative, endodontic and surgical procedures. BLS current. EXPERIENCE Dental Assistant | Jun 2022 - Present Cherry Creek Family Dentistry, Denver, CO - Prepared and staffed 14 chairside appointments a day across fillings, crowns, root canals and extractions, turning each operatory around in under 8 minutes. - Took and processed 40 digital radiographs a week in Dexis with a retake rate under 3%. - Kept every weekly spore test passing for 2 years by rebuilding the sterilization log and checklist the practice now uses. Dental Assistant Extern | Feb 2022 - May 2022 Front Range Dental Clinic, Denver, CO - Charted 300 periodontal exams in Dentrix under supervision, with every chart passing the clinic's records audit. EDUCATION Dental Assisting Certificate | Aug 2021 - May 2022 Mile High Career College, Denver, CO SKILLS Chairside: Four-handed dentistry, Radiography, Impressions, Sterilization, Patient education Software and certification: Dentrix, Dexis, DANB CDA, BLS
Keep reading
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Six years of backend work, written so the results are readable without knowing the systems.
Guides that apply
How long should a resume be? One page, two, and when the limit is a rule
The conventions in the US, India and the UK, the places where a page limit is enforced rather than advised, and what to cut first.
How to put a number on a bullet when you do not have one
The advice is always “quantify your achievements”. Here is what to do when the number is not written down anywhere.