NMC registration goes at the top

The first thing any NHS or private employer checks is that you are on the NMC register and in which part: adult, children, mental health or learning disability. Put it in your personal statement and again under skills or qualifications, in a form that does not give away the number: "NMC registered nurse (Adult), PIN available on request".

Do not print the PIN itself. It is a personal identifier that the employer will verify directly on the register once you are shortlisted, and a CV travels further than you think: agencies, job boards, shared inboxes.

Add the date of your last revalidation. It tells the reader the registration is live without a phone call. If you are newly qualified and waiting for your PIN, say so plainly: "NMC registration pending, expected October 2026". Nurses who trained overseas should state the stage they are at, such as CBT passed and OSCE booked, and the English test result.

Describe the setting and the skills, not just the job title

"Staff Nurse, Band 5" appears on thousands of CVs and tells the reader almost nothing about what you can do. What they want to know is the type of ward or service, how acute the patients were, your typical caseload and which clinical skills you used day to day.

Compare: "Staff Nurse on a 28-bed acute medical unit, caseload of 6 to 8 patients per shift including sepsis and COPD exacerbations; IV medicines and blood products, NEWS2 escalation, cannulation and venepuncture." A ward manager reading that knows within seconds whether you could work their unit.

Name the systems you have used, such as the electronic patient record or e-prescribing, and the competencies you are signed off for. These are the words shortlisting panels search for.

Band 5 to Band 6: show the step up

A Band 6 CV is not a Band 5 CV with more years on it. Panels for senior staff nurse, deputy sister or charge nurse posts look for evidence that you are already doing parts of the job: taking charge of shifts, supervising healthcare assistants, supporting students as a Practice Supervisor or Practice Assessor, leading an audit or a quality improvement project, holding a link nurse role.

Write those as separate bullets with numbers where you have them: how many shifts a month you take charge, how many students you have supervised, what an audit changed. "Led a hand-hygiene audit that raised compliance from 84% to 97%" is a Band 6 sentence.

How NHS shortlisting actually works

Most NHS trusts recruit through NHS Jobs and Trac, where the application form and the supporting information statement do the work a CV does elsewhere. Shortlisters score you against the essential and desirable criteria in the person specification and nothing else. A CV is still required for bank and agency work, private hospitals, care providers and many posts at Band 6 and above, and it is where you keep the material you paste into supporting information.

So structure the CV around the person specification. Read it line by line and make sure each essential criterion is visibly covered somewhere: registration, experience in the setting, specific skills, mandatory training, values. Trusts use values-based recruitment, so one or two concrete examples of compassion, communication or courage in practice count for more than listing the 6 Cs.

Compliance details that save the recruiter a phone call

HR will ask for these anyway. Having them on the CV, with dates, moves you up the pile.

• Enhanced DBS check, with the date and whether you are on the Update Service.
• Mandatory training with dates: basic or immediate life support, manual handling, safeguarding adults and children with the level, infection prevention and control.
• Occupational health clearance, if you are moving between trusts. Immunisation records themselves stay with occupational health.
• Right to work in the UK, and visa type if relevant. For sponsored roles this is the first filter.
• A full driving licence if you are applying for community, district nursing or hospice-at-home roles.
• Availability: nights, weekends, long days, and how soon you can start.

Common mistakes in nurse CVs

These are the reasons a well-qualified nurse ends up in the "maybe" pile.

• Printing the NMC PIN, date of birth or National Insurance number on the CV.
• Job titles without the setting, bed numbers or patient group.
• A list of duties copied from the job description instead of your own practice.
• No dates on DBS, revalidation or mandatory training.
• Applying for Band 6 with a CV that shows no supervision, audit or leadership.
• A photo. UK employers do not expect one and many prefer not to see it.
• Three or more pages. Two is the norm; one is fine for a newly qualified nurse.