Chaplain resume examples from 2026

Put a resume summary on the top of your resume to highlight your accomplishments. A resume summary sums up your experience and skills, making it easy for hiring managers to understand your qualifications at a glance. Here are some tips to write a strong, impressive resume summary:

Step 1: Mention your current job title or the role you're pursuing.

Step 2: Include your years of experience in chaplain-related roles. Consider adding relevant company and industry experience as relevant to the job listing.

Step 3: Highlight your greatest accomplishments. Here is your chance to make sure your biggest wins aren't buried in your resume.

Step 4: Again, keep it short. Your goal is to summarize your experience and highlight your accomplishments, not write a paragraph.

Hiring managers spend under a minute reviewing resumes on average. This means your summary needs to demonstrate your value quickly and show why you are the perfect fit for the chaplain position.

Your Skills section is an easy way to let recruiters know you have the skills to do the job. Just as importantly, it can help your resume not get filtered out by hiring software. Here is how to make the most of your skills section and make sure you have the right keywords:

1. You often need to include the exact keywords from the job description in your resume. Look at the job listing and consider which of the listed skills you have experience with, along with related skills.
2. Include as many relevant hard skills and soft skills as possible from the listing.
3. Use the most up to date and accurate terms. Don't forget to be specific.

These five steps should give you a strong elevator pitch and land you some chaplain interviews.

Next you should include your work experience. Structure your work experience section by listing your most recent experience first, followed by earlier roles in reverse chronological order.

Start with your job title, company name, city, and state on the left. Align dates in month and year format on the right-hand side.

Include only recent, relevant jobs. Avoid including work experience over 20 years to avoid ageism.

Beneath each job, you should have bullet points to emphasize why you're the perfect fit for the chaplain.

Your resume is your chance to show your biggest accomplishments. Don't just list your job responsibilities, instead take the opportunity to show why you're really good at what you do. Here is how you do that:

• Start with strong action verbs like managed, spearheaded, created, etc. Your goal is to show what you did and verbs will help demonstrate your contributions.
• Use numbers to quantify your achievements. Did you save time with a new report? Increase revenue? How large was the team you managed?
• Keep it concise. You're highlighting your achievements. Consider if all details you are sharing are relevant, or can be written more efficiently.

Here are great bullet points from chaplain resumes:

Here is the best way to format your education section:

• Display your highest degree first.
• If you graduated over 5 years ago, put this section at the bottom of your resume. If you lack relevant work experience, the education section should go to the top.
• If you have a bachelor's or master's degree, do not list your high school education.
• If your graduation year is more than 15-20 years ago, it's better not to include dates in this section.

Here are some examples of good education entries from chaplain resumes:

If you have any additional certifications, add them to the certification section.

Include the full name of the certification, along with the name of the issuing organization and date of obtainment.

If you have any of these certifications, be sure to include them on your chaplain resume:

1. Certified Chaplain
2. Certified Master Chaplain (CMC)
3. Ethics in IT (GEIT)