Medical Consultant CV Example

A medical consultant CV that includes all the necessary details and is tailored carefully to the job description puts you in a great position. It can help you pass the ATS screening stage, make a strong impression with the employer and reach the latter stages of the recruitment process. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Standard medical consultant CV sections

Your medical consultant CV writing strategy may vary significantly according to numerous factors, such as your previous experience, your seniority and the requirements in the job description.

However, no matter where you are in your career, a medical consultant CV must present a clear, compelling narrative of your professional journey. To help you build that story, we’ll now break down the document piece-by-piece—from the initial contact header to your most significant career milestones.

CV Header

Start your medical consultant CV by adding a professional-looking header that contains all your relevant contact information. Include your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't typically necessary for UK job applications). Additionally, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

For jobs in the UK, a personal photo is usually not required on your CV. That, along with any other personal details such as age, gender, ethnicity and nationality, are generally discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010, which aims to reduce and eliminate discriminatory practices, such as recruitment bias.

CV Summary

Underneath your contact information, write a brief CV summary or CV objective to introduce yourself and highlight a few key skills and qualities. This can help the employer to quickly form a first impression on your suitability for the medical consultant role. While the CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, a CV objective highlights your career ambitions, making it more suitable for junior candidates.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included in the job description.

An effective summary will include brief reference to one or two of your strongest skills, ensuring they reflect the skills listed in the job description. It's important to make your skills and qualities feel unique to you, and show how you've used them to positive effect in your career to date. Find an example below of a positive medical consultant CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

See above for an example of an ineffective summary, with subtle differences leading to a reduction of impact. For a summary to make less of an impact, it might include generic or vague information, lack evidence of your impact, or fail to highlight specific personal qualities that make you stand out from other candidates. It may also lack tailoring to the job description or include long, poorly structured sentences.

Professional Experience

As with most CVs, your medical consultant CV work experience section tends to be the most vital part of your application. Employers tend to look to this section for evidence of how you've developed useful and relevant skills, and used them to add value for previous employers. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

Create a list of all your most relevant roles, going back up to 10 or 15 years if necessary. Include your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Include bullet points that explain how you put your skills to good use in each previous role.

The difference between an average CV work experience section and an outstanding one is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence. You'll want to show how your actions led to measurable positive outcomes for employers, and indicate a progression in your skills throughout your career. Here's an example of best practice in a medical consultant CV work experience section:

Take a look at a less strong medical consultant CV work experience section above. An unengaging work experience section could be too generic, focusing too much on day-to-day duties rather than skills and achievements. It could also fail to address the job description or lack evidence to show the impact you've made in your career to date.

Education

With your education section, you'll draw attention to your most recent and highest qualifications, particularly emphasising any qualifications listed as a requirement in the job description.

To be eligible for medical consultant positions, you typically need to have a relevant university degree, and include it in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, you should definitely mention it in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your most relevant skills, such as statistical data analysis or medical imaging interpretation.

When adding your qualifications to your education section, choose the highest relevant qualifications, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent. When adding each qualification, include the name and level of the award, the institution, its location (if necessary), and the dates you attended or graduated. It can also be valuable to add bullet points outlining your key achievements and activities, such as projects you worked on, modules you completed, awards you won or societies you participated in while studying.

It may also be useful for you to add any specialist industry qualifications, certifications or licences that you might require for the role. If you choose to add these, remember also to add an expiration date, if the licence requires renewal in the future.

Key Skills

The skills section of a medical consultant CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a medical consultant CV, it's valuable to highlight essential skills from your skill set, such as time management and statistical data analysis, to grab the attention of hiring managers and show you're qualified for the medical consultant position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are the specialist technical skills that are essential for carrying out the duties of the role. They might be developed through study, on-the-job training or experience in the industry, and some hard skills may require a licence or certification. For medical consultant jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include electronic health record expertise, and medical imaging interpretation. Check the skills specified in the job description, and add four or five key hard skills to your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The ideal hard skills section will feature the most essential hard skills from the job description, while closely reflecting your own best technical abilities. The closer your strongest skills are to matching the job description, the higher your chances of success.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in a medical consultant CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills differ from hard skills because they tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles. Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that define your style of working and determine how well you're likely to fit in with the team and wider organisation. Transferable skills are among the most in-demand skills for employers, with rapidly changing and evolving ways of working requiring ever-more flexible and adaptable employees. Soft skills are also highly valuable for junior and entry-level positions, where candidates aren't expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience and career achievements.

Just like the hard skills section, begin by reviewing the job description to learn the most desirable soft skills to include in your medical consultant CV. Only add soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

Explore the examples below to identify soft skills commonly presented in a medical consultant CV.

Languages

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. List any foreign languages you speak, together with an indication of your proficiency level.

There are several methods of confirming your foreign language skills on your CV. The simplest way is by assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You might wish to use an internationally recognised standard for your language skills, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This divides your language skills into the following categories:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications, Training and Licences

If you've invested your time and resources into gaining extra qualifications beyond the minimum requirements for the role, you could highlight these in a certifications section. It can enhance your chances of success to show specific training and certifications. Not only do these prove you're qualified for the role, but they also indicate proactivity and a dedication to professional development. Furthermore, a certifications section is particularly valuable if you're applying for a role that sets out required certifications or licences in the job description. These might include technical roles that require the use of specialist software or equipment.

Take a look at this list of example certifications and licences for medical consultant candidates:

Additional Sections

Adding optional sections to the end of your medical consultant CV is a good way of showing you have the necessary skills for the job. Consider optional sections for your CV if you're looking for ways to show you're right for the job, beyond your work experience. Optional sections are particularly valuable if you haven't had the chance to build up relevant work experience, for example, if you're applying for entry-level roles or you're changing careers to a new industry or role.

You can find more detailed advice on tailoring your CV in our career resources, where we cover proven ways to highlight your skills effectively.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. In addition, you can use hobbies and interests to show elements of your personality that might not shine through otherwise, giving you a chance to offer something different to most candidates. However, hobbies and interests can only add value to your CV if they provide evidence of skills and experience that you can use in the role you're applying for. As such, only add hobbies as a way of filling gaps in the skills you've developed or used through work experience.

Achievements

Listing your key career achievements in a distinct section can be an effective way of drawing attention to them. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Volunteer Roles

Another valuable optional section for your CV is volunteering. This section can offer a great alternative showcase for your skills and experience, if you don't have much relevant work experience. Consider adding this section if you have any relevant unpaid experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer. Your volunteering section should follow much the same structure as your work experience section.

Add a description of the volunteer role or a job title if you had one, the name of the organisation, its location and the start and end date of your volunteering. List bullet points that show how you put relevant skills to good use to create positive results for the organisation.

Most impactful action verbs for a medical consultant CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points is a great way to focus this section and show the impact you've made in your career to date. Starting each bullet point with an action verb that reflects the skills required for the role will help the reader to easily cross-reference your skills to the job description. Always remember to back up any action verbs you use with evidence that shows the impact it made and the achievements that it led to. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

Medical consultant CV example

Now you know how to create a medical consultant CV for maximum impact, take a look below at this full, completed example:

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

How to make your CV ATS compatible

Employers and recruiters now routinely use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to ease the burden of the selection process. One of the key functions of these systems is CV screening, which reviews CVs and ranks them based on their likely fit for the role. This saves recruiters and hiring managers the time and effort of reading every CV in detail. With many vacancies often receiving hundreds of applications, ATS software can really relieve the burden on hiring teams and free them up to focus only on the most suitable candidates.

The growing prevalence of ATS apps requires a shift in approach by jobseekers, to prepare a CV with the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage. That's why we've put together a list of key ATS CV tips, to maximise your chances of success:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description, increasing your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use clear, conventional CV headings to make your CV easier to navigate, including 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout, avoiding special design elements such as text boxes, columns or unlabelled graphics that can confound ATS scanning apps.
• Select a font that can enhance the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, with size 10 to 12 for body text and 14 to 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points in place of full sentences and paragraphs, as these are easier for ATS apps to scan and parse, and help your keywords stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of steps to creating an ATS-compatible medical consultant CV, but with just a few small changes, you can ensure your CV passes this stage. Use one of our ATS-compatible CV templates, which are designed by experts to give you the best chances of success.

Key takeaways for an impactful medical consultant CV

To make a strong first impression on hiring managers, tailor your CV for every application, adding keywords and phrases that match the job description. Choose the most fitting CV format for your experience level, and focus on showcasing how you've developed the necessary skills for the role, and used them to positive effect in previous roles.

Finally, using a clean, professional CV template like those offered by Jobseeker, can help your CV stand out among its competitors and give you the best chance of success with your applications.

Sources:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, Hiring Trends