Psychologist Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a licensed clinical psychologist about eight years past her doctorate, working in an outpatient clinic inside a health system after a postdoctoral fellowship in community mental health. The name, employers and school are made up. Keep the structure and replace the license, caseload, assessments and outcomes with yours.

Psychologists are one of the few US professions that use both documents, and sending the wrong one costs interviews. A CV (curriculum vitae) is the long academic record: every publication, presentation, grant, teaching role, practicum and supervisor. A resume is a one- or two-page summary built for one job. Here is how to choose.

• Use a CV for: doctoral internship applications (APPIC), postdoctoral fellowships, faculty and research positions, hospital credentialing packets, and any posting that says CV. Length is whatever it takes; 4 to 10 pages is normal.
• Use a resume for: clinic, health system, group practice, school district, corporate, EAP and telehealth-company jobs. Two pages for a licensed psychologist; one page for a bachelor's- or master's-level applicant.
• If a posting says either, send a resume and offer the CV on request. Recruiters at health systems read hundreds of applications and will not search a 9-page CV for your caseload.
• Outside the US (UK, Australia, India, the Philippines), "CV" is simply the name for the resume. Keep it to two or three pages and follow the country's conventions on photos and personal details (none in the UK or Australia).

“Half the psychologist applications arrive as an 8-page academic CV for a clinic job. The first page shows whether the license is active, what populations they treat and how many clients they can carry; if that requires a hunt, the application goes to the maybe pile.”

• License. Licensed in this state, license-eligible (postdoc hours done, EPPP passed) or still accruing hours. Each is a different job and a different pay grade; say which you are in the header.
• Populations and treatments, by name. "Adults with anxiety and PTSD; CBT, ACT, prolonged exposure" tells the director you can fill a specific gap. "Diverse populations, evidence-based practice" tells them nothing.
• Assessment competence. Which batteries you administer and interpret (WAIS, WISC, MMPI, PAI, ADOS, neuropsychological screens) and how many reports a year. Assessment is billable and scarce.
• Productivity and outcomes. Caseload, sessions per week, no-show rate, documentation timeliness, measured change on the PHQ-9 or GAD-7. These numbers are on every clinic dashboard; put yours on the resume.
• Supervision, groups and consultation. Supervising trainees, running groups and consulting with primary care or psychiatry make you cheaper to deploy and are worth a bullet each.

Licensed psychologists use a summary: license and state, years, populations, treatments, assessments, one outcome number. Students and bachelor's-level applicants use an objective, because the reader needs to know which job you are aiming at in a field with many titles.

Clinical resumes are full of duty statements ("provided individual and group therapy"). Turn each into what you did, for whom, how many and with what result. Never include identifying client details; numbers about your caseload are fine, stories about a client are a HIPAA problem.

List 10 to 14 skills and name the actual protocols, instruments and systems. Hiring managers and applicant tracking systems look for the specific words in the posting, and "strong interpersonal skills" is not one of them.

Treatment skills (list the ones you are trained in, and say trained versus certified honestly):

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills
• Trauma treatments: prolonged exposure (PE), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), EMDR (EMDRIA-approved training), TF-CBT for children
• Exposure and response prevention (ERP) for OCD; behavioral activation; motivational interviewing
• Parent management training, PCIT, applied behavior analysis for child and autism work
• Group therapy, psychoeducation and crisis intervention

Assessment skills (name instruments and the editions you use):

• Cognitive: WAIS-IV or WAIS-5, WISC-V, WPPSI-IV, Stanford-Binet 5
• Personality and psychopathology: MMPI-3, PAI, MCMI-IV, Rorschach (R-PAS)
• Neurodevelopmental: ADOS-2, ADI-R, Conners 4, CAARS, Vineland-3
• Achievement and school: WIAT-4, WJ IV, BASC-3, behavior rating scales
• Screening and outcome measures: PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, C-SSRS, OQ-45
• Report writing, feedback sessions and diagnostic interviewing (SCID-5, MINI)

Systems and practice skills:

• Electronic health records: Epic, Cerner, TherapyNotes, SimplePractice, Valant (name yours)
• Telehealth platforms and PSYPACT interjurisdictional practice
• CPT billing codes (90791, 90837, 96130–96139), medical necessity documentation, payer audits
• Clinical supervision, program development and quality improvement
• HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2 (substance use records), mandated reporting and duty-to-warn rules in your state

Titles in this field are legally controlled. In every US state, "psychologist" requires a doctorate (PhD, PsyD or EdD in psychology), a supervised internship, postdoctoral supervised hours in most states, the EPPP exam and a state license. Master's-level clinicians are licensed as counselors (LPC, LMHC), clinical social workers (LCSW) or marriage and family therapists (LMFT), not as psychologists. School psychologists are credentialed separately by state education agencies, usually with an EdS or master's plus internship. Use only the title your license allows.

• Board certification (ABPP) in a specialty such as clinical, neuropsychology or child and adolescent is optional and a strong signal; list it with the year.
• List treatment trainings with the provider and year (for example EMDR basic training through an EMDRIA-approved provider, PE intensive training). Do not write "certified in CBT" unless a body actually certified you; write "trained in."
• Requirements for postdoctoral hours, the jurisprudence exam and continuing education differ by state. Check your state board's rules before stating that you are license-eligible.

A bachelor's degree in psychology does not qualify you to practice, but it does qualify you for the jobs that lead there: behavioral health technician, psychiatric technician, registered behavior technician (RBT) in ABA clinics, case manager, residential counselor, research assistant, psychometrist and crisis line worker. Your resume should aim at one of these, not at "psychologist."

1. 1Put the target job title under your name ("Behavioral Health Technician" or "Research Assistant"), not "Psychology Graduate."
2. 2Write a two-line objective with your degree, GPA if 3.5 or above, the population you want to work with and any hours you have already logged.
3. 3Move Education to the top and add relevant coursework, your thesis or capstone, and lab or statistics tools (SPSS, R, Qualtrics).
4. 4List practicum, volunteer and research work like jobs: hours per week, number of participants or clients, tasks (coding transcripts, running study sessions, leading activity groups), and the supervisor's discipline.
5. 5Add trainings that are quick to get and valued: RBT (40-hour course plus competency assessment and exam), CPR and first aid, crisis intervention or de-escalation training, mental health first aid, HIPAA training.
6. 6Keep it to one page, no photo, PDF.

• Two pages for a licensed psychologist; one page for bachelor's- and master's-level applicants. Send the full CV only when asked.
• Order: header with credentials and license, summary, licenses and certifications, clinical experience, assessment and supervision (if you want them to stand out), education and training, selected publications or presentations (3 to 5 at most on a resume).
• Use a clean single-column layout like the cvplex psychologist or medical-clean template. Health systems use applicant tracking systems that read plain text; no photo, no columns, no tables for skills.
• Write degrees after your name ("Maya Feldman, PsyD") but do not add unlicensed titles. "Licensed Psychologist" goes in the title line only if it is true in the state you are applying to.
• Never include client stories, initials or diagnoses tied to a person. Numbers about caseload and outcomes are fine.
• Dates by month and year. Training years (internship, postdoc) are expected to be short; label them clearly so they do not look like job hopping.

Words to mirror from the posting when they apply to you: licensed psychologist, license-eligible, PSYPACT, doctoral, APA-accredited, psychological assessment, psychological testing, evidence-based, CBT, DBT, ACT, trauma-informed, integrated care, primary care, telehealth, caseload, EHR, Epic, supervision, crisis intervention, risk assessment, measurement-based care, HIPAA, Medicaid, Medicare.