Best Jobs For Former Certified Nursing Assistants [2023]

It’s tough to be a certified nursing assistant nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a certified nursing assistant isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become certified nursing assistants in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many certified nursing assistants no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former certified nursing assistants to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANTS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANTS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Registered Nurse	7.64%
2	Licensed Practical Nurse	4.98%
3	Customer Service Representative	3.02%
4	Medical Assistant	2.59%
5	Home Health Aid	2.38%
6	Patient Care Technician	1.73%
7	Cashier	1.72%
8	Sales Associate	1.44%
9	Administrative Assistant	1.15%
10	Unit Secretary	0.79%
11	Pharmacist Technician	0.76%
12	Patient Care Assistant	0.72%
13	Server	0.67%
14	Internship	0.62%
15	Assistant Manager	0.6%
16	Phlebotomist	0.59%
17	Receptionist	0.56%
18	Volunteer	0.56%
19	Office Manager	0.54%
20	Direct Support Professional	0.53%
21	Office Assistant	0.5%
22	Substitute Teacher	0.5%
23	Technician	0.45%
24	Nurse Technician	0.44%
25	Manager	0.41%
26	Staff Nurse	0.41%
27	Teacher	0.39%
28	Billing Specialist	0.36%
29	Customer Service Trainer	0.36%
30	Security Officer	0.32%
31	Personal Care Assistant	0.31%
32	Supervisor	0.31%
33	Teacher Assistant	0.3%
34	Crew Member	0.29%
35	Resident Assistant	0.29%
36	Waitress	0.29%
37	Respiratory Therapist	0.28%
38	Medical Records Clerk	0.28%
39	Mental Health Technician	0.27%
40	Sales Representative	0.27%
41	Surgical Technician	0.27%
42	Student Nurse	0.27%
43	Specialist	0.26%
44	Personal Assistant	0.26%
45	Physician Assistant	0.26%
46	Assistant	0.24%
47	Nurse	0.24%
48	Case Manager	0.24%
49	Machine Operator	0.23%
50	Team Leader	0.23%
51	Senior Technician Specialist	0.23%
52	Associate	0.23%
53	Care Associate	0.22%
54	Nanny	0.22%
55	Medical Assistant Externship	0.22%
56	Emergency Medical Technician	0.22%
57	Medical Technologist	0.22%
58	Career Manager	0.21%
59	Customer Service Associate	0.21%
60	Certified Nurses’ Aide	0.21%
61	Warehouse Associate	0.21%
62	Housekeeper	0.21%
63	Med Technician	0.21%
64	Secretary	0.2%
65	Laboratory Assistant	0.2%
66	Driver	0.2%
67	Dental Assistant	0.19%
68	Radiologic Technician	0.19%
69	Medical Receptionist	0.19%
70	Clerk	0.19%
71	Correction Officer	0.18%
72	Front Desk Receptionist	0.18%
73	Aide	0.18%
74	Patient Service Representative	0.18%
75	Patient Access Representative	0.17%
76	Certified Pharmacist Technician	0.17%
77	Call Center Representative	0.17%
78	Nurses’ Aide	0.17%
79	Coordinator	0.16%
80	Preschool Teacher	0.16%
81	Program Manager	0.16%
82	Store Manager	0.16%
83	Residential Counselor	0.16%
84	Staffing Coordinator	0.15%
85	Direct Care Staffer	0.15%
86	Production Worker	0.15%
87	Research Assistant	0.15%
88	Medication Aide	0.14%
89	Owner	0.14%
90	Human Resources Coordinator	0.14%
91	Warehouse Worker	0.14%
92	Owner/operator	0.14%
93	Ship Worker	0.13%
94	Front Desk Coordinator	0.13%
95	Hospice Aide	0.13%
96	Support Specialist	0.13%
97	Certified Medical Aide	0.13%
98	Clinical Assistant	0.13%
99	Cook	0.13%
100	Technical Support Technician	0.13%

Most Common Jobs For Former CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANTS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a certified nursing assistant would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former certified nursing assistants to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANTS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed certified nursing assistant under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a certified nursing assistant, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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