Health Coach Resume: Sample & Guide

You're a health coach skilled at guiding clients towards their wellness goals. But what about your own career goals?

Let's get your resume in peak condition! Our expert guidance will help you create a health coach resume highlighting your expertise, making hiring managers eager to book a one-on-one with you.

This guide will show you: 

• A health coach resume example better than 9 out of 10 other resumes.
• How to write a health coach resume that will land you more interviews.
• Tips and examples of how to put skills and achievements on a health coach resume.
• How to describe your experience on a resume for a health coach to get any job you want.

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Considering broadening your job search? Check out these guides: 

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• Best Resume Example for Every Profession

Health Coach Resume Example

So—

This is your short-term goal: write a resume that’s at least as good as the sample above. Long term? Land your dream job. 

Here’s how to write the perfect health coach resume: 

1. Choose the Right Format for Your Health Coach Resume

Health coaches develop tailored wellness, nutrition, and fitness plans for clients. They also provide support and advice to help clients reach their goals. Expert knowledge and communication skills are important in this role, so your health coach resume needs to prove that you have both. 

It all starts with the right formatting. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to send in a professional document that’s clear and easy to read—not something that looks like the ingredient list on a soda can. 

So—here’s how to format your health coach resume: 

• Set your sights on the reverse-chronological resume format. It’ll bring out your biggest achievements, plus recruiters are familiar with it. 
• Create a resume header with your contact information: name, job title, phone number, and email. You can add links to social media if you publish your own content that shows your health coach skills and expertise. 
• Use the right resume margins (1 inch) and line spacing (1–1.15). 
• Pick a font that’s clear and easy to read and set it to 11–12 points. Classics like Arial or Calibri make for the best resume fonts. 
• Mark each of your resume sections with a clear heading (13–14 point). 
• Stick to the essentials. The optimum resume length for most health coaches is one page. Two-page resumes are fine if you have at least 7–8 years of experience and a long list of achievements. 
• Submit a PDF resume, unless the employer asks specifically for a Word Doc. 

...and that’s your resume layout, done and dusted! If you want to see results faster, pick a professional resume template to customize. 

Still working on your on-page feng shui? Read more: How to Format Your Resume: Full Guide to the Best Resume Formats

2. Write a Resume Objective or Resume Summary

When you meet a new client, chances are that you work hard to make a good first impression and immediately inspire confidence. 

Your career profile is basically the resume equivalent to that first meeting: 

You have a few seconds to impress the recruiter and prove you’re the right person for the job. 

Professional career profiles come in two types: 

• Experienced candidates write a resume summary: the best bits of the resume, condensed into a bite-sized paragraph. 
• Entry-level candidates create a resume objective: your career wellness vision, featuring your best transferable skills and what you aim to accomplish. 

Here’s what to include: 

• Your years (or level) of experience
• A couple of your best skills relevant to the job ad
• One or two of your most impressive professional achievements
• An offer to use your skills to help the company achieve its goal(s). 

Can’t think of anything just yet? No (acu)pressure! 

You can leave your career profile blank and come back to it at the end—it’ll be much easier to figure out once everything else is in its place. 

Read more: Writing the Perfect Resume Introduction: Guide & Examples

3. Create a Strong Work Experience Section

Getting your work experience section right is a key milestone: without it, your entire application won’t meet its objectives, and you’ll go right back to square one. 

Just listing your previous duties and responsibilities won’t cut it—it’ll make you look like a passive underachiever, and that’s the last thing you want (especially in your profession!). Instead, you need to focus on what you achieved in each job. So—

Here’s how to add work experience to your resume: 

• Start with your most recent position and work your way back. For each entry, add your job title, the name of the company or organization, and the dates you worked there (month + year). 
• (Optional) Include a one-sentence description of the role if you feel it’s necessary. 
• Add up to 6 bullet points describing what you achieved in each job. Bullet points on a resume are an effective way of getting information across in a clear, concise way. 
• Start each bullet point with an action word for maximum engagement, and use numbers wherever possible, e.g. Developed 10+ personalized wellness plans per week with a 100% customer satisfaction rating. 
• (Optional) Highlight your proudest professional moment as a separate key achievement. 

To keep your resume focused, include more detail about your most recent job and limit the number of bullet points for older entries. And of course, just as you personalize the care plan for each patient, make sure to tailor your resume to each job ad. 

See? 

Your resume is in much better shape already! 

How much is too much? Read more: How Many Jobs to List on Your Resume

4. Make Your Health Coach Resume Education Section Shine

The next step in helping your resume reach its full potential is adding a well-rounded education section. 

If you have a few years of relevant work experience, employers will care a lot more about your work history than about what you did in college. So, just list your degree, college name, and years of attendance. 

For entry-level resumes, however, it’s worth adding further details to turn your degree into an even bigger advantage. 

Here are some directions you could take: 

• Add GPA to your resume if it was 3.5 or higher. It’ll show you’re a high achiever! 
• List relevant coursework on your resume if you took classes related to the role you’re applying for. 
• Mention relevant extracurricular activities on your resume to show you’re proactive and passionate about your profession. 

If you’re writing a resume with no work experience, your schooling is your biggest strength. Consider placing your education section directly below the introduction to make it stand out more! 

Read more: Minors and Majors on a Resume: How to Describe Your Degree

5. Add a Healthy Measure of Professional Skills

Even though you’ve mentioned a few key skills in your profile and work experience, it’s worth adding a separate section with a list. This way, you’ll highlight your abilities, show you know what it takes to be successful as a health coach, and help ATS do its job. 

ATS, in case you’re wondering, refers to Applicant Tracking Systems: software that, among other things, scans resumes for keywords. Anyway—

Here’s how to come up with the best skills to add to your resume: 

• Start by reflecting on your professional skills in general. Make a list, including soft skills like communication, hard skills like behavioral health assessments, and everything in between. Remember to include relevant computer skills, too. 
• Take another look at the job ad. What skills does the employer mention? Write those down on a separate sheet. 
• Compare the two lists and mark the skills that appear on both, then choose up to 10 most important ones. Those are going on your resume! 

You’ll need to repeat this process every time you apply for a job. Why? Well— 

There are many niches within your profession, and they often call for slightly different skill sets. For example, health coaching for hospital patients will require a different approach than working as a holistic health coach for corporate clients. 

Here’s an example skills list for a health coach in the wellness niche: 

Wellness Coach Skills

• Diet planning
• Mental health guidance
• Goal-setting
• Behavioral health
• Holistic approach
• Communication
• Empathy
• Active listening
• Teamwork
• MS Office

Creating a resume with our builder is incredibly simple. Follow our step-by-step guide and use content from Certified Professional Resume Writers to have a resume ready in minutes.

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When you’re done, our online resume builder will score your resume and our resume checker will tell you exactly how to make it better.

6. Include Additional Sections on Your Health Coach Resume

Almost done! 

You’re making excellent progress on your application—

Now, it’s time to treat your resume to some complementary therapy and include bonus sections to give you an edge over the competition. 

Here’s what you could do: 

• Add licenses and certifications to your resume to highlight your continued professional development. Your ACE cert deserves a section of its own, after all! 
• List volunteer work on your resume to show you enjoy helping others and working as part of a team. 
• Add your language skills to your resume: being fluent in a foreign language could set you apart from other applicants. 
• Mention memberships in professional associations on your resume: being a member of the NSHC, for example, shows you take your profession seriously. 

Are hobbies on a resume a healthy choice? Read more: How to Put Hobbies on a Resume + List of Best Hobbies to Use

7. Attach a Cover Letter to Your Health Coach Resume

All done! ...or are you?

If a client only completed 50% of the tasks in their health plan, wouldn’t you be concerned? 

Yeah. 

Your resume is just one half of your application: the other is your cover letter. And yes, you do need a cover letter if you want a shot at getting the job. But don’t worry— 

Writing a good cover letter is far easier than getting clients to stick with their programs! 

Here’s how to write a great cover letter: 

• Make sure you’re using the right cover letter format. 
• Start strong by listing a big professional achievement in the opening lines of your cover letter. Your goal? Motivate the recruiter to keep reading! 
• Prove you’re the right fit for the job. Describe yourself, list additional achievements, mention your best skills, and show you understand the role and the company’s values. 
• Don’t ask for an interview. Instead, end your cover letter on an offer to discuss your skills in more detail and to help the company reach a specific goal. 
• Aim for around 4 paragraphs: the best cover letter length is under one page. 

That wasn’t so bad, was it? And it was definitely worth it: 

According to our HR research, 45% of employers won’t even open an application if it doesn’t include a cover letter. 

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

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See more cover letter templates and start writing.

That’s it! 

Your new health coach resume is full of energy and ready to go out there and win you a job! 

Thanks for reading! Are you happy with your new health coach resume? Is it difficult to measure your achievements as a health coach? Perhaps you can share some advice of your own? Drop us a line in the comments below!

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This article has been reviewed by our editorial team to make sure it follows Zety's editorial guidelines. We’re committed to sharing our expertise and giving you trustworthy career advice tailored to your needs. High-quality content is what brings over 40 million readers to our site every year. But we don't stop there. Our team conducts original research to understand the job market better, and we pride ourselves on being quoted by top universities and prime media outlets from around the world.

Sources

• https://www.aafp.org/fpm/2010/0900/fpm20100900p24.pdf