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Today's topic is good skills to include on a resume for a dental hygienist.

But before we get to that, let's talk about the difference between hard skills and soft skills.

Hard Skills Vs Soft Skills

You might have heard these terms before: hard skills vs soft skills.

Hard skills sometimes are called technical skills. They're basically skills that are technical in nature that are easily tested from person to person and they are things that are a little bit more on the tangible side.

For example computer skills, typing skills, those sorts of things are hard skills.

Soft skills are a little bit harder to test and they tend to be a little bit more personality based.

For example, your customer service skills, communication skills, things of that nature are considered soft skills.

So that's kind of the difference between hard and soft skills.

Sometimes you come across a skill that can fit into either category. For example, being detail-oriented. That's pretty easily tested but it's also sort of part of your personality so sometimes you'll come across skills that are kind of in the in-between area but more often than not most skills are going to be categorized as either hard or soft skills

Which to include?

So when it comes to a dental hygienist resume, when it's a dental hygienist as a physician that definitely has a technical aspect to it so technical and hard skills but it's also very service based which means there's going to be a lot of soft skills that are needed for this position as well.

So when you're writing your resume, make sure you have a good balance of your hard and your soft skills mentioned in your resume.

With that in mind, what kind of skills should we be using on a dental hygienist resume?

Hard skills to include

For the hard skills you would probably want to mention your computer skills, your experience with different software and applications, as well as experience with different EMR systems.

Your knowledge of HIPPA is also a technical skill, along with federal regulations, state regulations and those sorts of things.

Your technical skills the different skills you've gained an experience you gain with different types of equipment associated with your profession those are all technical skills all very good to include on your resume.

Soft skills to include

On the soft skill side you might want to talk a little bit more about your customer service skills, your chair-side manner and you might want to talk a little bit about being organized or detail-oriented or things of that nature.

So those are some very good skills to include on the soft skill side also maybe might want to get into if you are a compassionate person or if you have a passion for this industry so those sorts of things okay and if you get that theorem a lot of different good skills that would be good to include on a dental hygienist resume

When in doubt...

But if you get stuck always, always, always read the job posting. The job posting is a great tool to figure out how to structure your resume because it includes all of the information that a potential employer is looking for and that's really what a resume is isn't it? A personal advertisement for your skills and your knowledge and your ability.

Include skills in sections other than the skills section of your resume

So if you've read the job posting you'll see what the employer is really interested in learning about you as a person as an employee potential employee so if you've read that and you see all these different skills that they have listed both hard skills and soft skills make sure that you're using those not just in the skills section of your resume but in the professional summary and your work history in all those different areas.

I hope that gave you some insight into the types of skills to be included on your resume as a dental hygienist.

If you have any other skills you think would be great to include on a resume, please leave them in a comment below.

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