Keyword Atlas · Nursing & Patient Care · No 22
The words hiring systems and licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses hiring managers actually look for, drawn from the U.S. Department of Labor occupational database and the bodies that certify this field. Sourced, dated, and checked by machine.
The keywords
Tap any keyword to see exactly where it comes from and how to use it in a real bullet.
Skill mix
Federal knowledge ratings for licensed practical and vocational nurses put Psychology first, with Customer and Personal Service next, and Medicine and Dentistry further down the list. That does not mean clinical skill counts for less. It shows that reading patients and serving them well rate as everyday core knowledge. Lead with hard skills like medication administration, but keep room for the interpersonal terms.
Wage terrain
Placement
Title, years, your license, and one specialty setting. This is the densest keyword real estate on the page.
Hard skills and tools, each attached to an outcome with a number.
Exact-phrase matching for screening software. Mirror the job posting's own wording.
One or two signature keywords woven into a story. Never a list.
The receipts
75% of nursing resumes are rejected by ATS automatically, before a human ever sees them.NO PRIMARY SOURCE
Employers admit their own hiring systems screen out qualified candidates who don't exactly match the stated criteria.VERIFIED · HBS/Accenture 2021
Asked constantly
Start with the hard skills O*NET lists for this occupation, such as medication administration, vital signs measurement, patient condition monitoring, and wound dressing and basic care. Add your LPN/LVN license and BLS, the EHR you have used, and a few soft skills like service orientation and social perceptiveness. Mirror the wording of each posting.
Use the posting's exact phrases for skills, tools, and your license, and keep the layout simple so it parses into clean fields. Real screening is mostly knockout questions on the application form, such as a required license or minimum years of experience, so answer those accurately. Employers do apply rigid filters, which is why exact wording matters.
Epic Systems, MEDITECH software, and eClinicalWorks EHR software are all flagged as O*NET Hot Technologies for this occupation. Name the exact system you have used rather than writing a general phrase like electronic medical record EMR software, unless the posting uses that wording.