Internship Resumes

An internship oriented resume is different from a job-oriented resume in the following ways:

• In seeking an internship, your immediate goal is an applied learning experience which contributes to achieving your academic goals, rather than a job and a salary.
• You will be expected to have transferable academic skills and background; you should not be expected to have professional level qualifications.
• To convince an organization that you have appropriate transferable skills your resume will describe your academic background in more detail than in a job-oriented resume.

The standard resume includes the following:

• Identifying information (name, address, telephone, e-mail address)
• Objective Statement (one line that gives your immediate goal);
• Education (name, city, and state of all degree- or diploma-granting institutions, plus your major, minor, and concentration.
• Relevant course work
• Experience (job title, company, city, state, and dates of employment, plus a description of your tasks and accomplishments using significant action verbs and key nouns.
• Activities
• Skills

An internship resume will resemble the chronological employment resume with a few modifications:

• Write an Objective Statement that includes the word "internship" and your field of interest. For example: "Internship in human resources," or "Internship in financial services." You don't want a hiring manager to confuse your goal with that of a job seeker.

• Provide details about your academic background, including relevant courses, GPA, honors, scholarships, etc. to indicate you are a quick learner and can effectively assimilate information. Include high school information, if helpful. Employment resumes usually eliminate high school activities, and tend to minimize or reposition detail about academic experiences.

• Include dates for education and experience, including your projected date of college graduation. Use academic units of time to pinpoint your dates: for example, summer, 2004 rather than 6/03-8/03 or fall, 2004 rather than 9/2004-12/2004.

• Include detailed information about activities: volunteer work, research, and leadership. It's permissible to describe relevant high school activities.

• List all jobs held, although they probably do not relate to your career goals. You will be communicating a strong work ethic, and you will be demonstrating some skills and accomplishments. You need your first internship to get you started with career related experience; you can't be expected to have it in the first place! Your employment resume will probably highlight your relevant experience and downplay or eliminate "survival" jobs.

• Identify your skill set. Put yourself in the internship manager's place; what skills do you think she would like to see in an intern? Computer skills? Foreign language? Organizational? Ability to coordinate? Research? Artistic accomplishments? Try to match your skills with those needed. (Don't forget to ask a counselor in your career services center to help you pinpoint these skills.)

• Limit your resume to one page. While it is sometimes permissible for the employment resume to run to two pages, the internship resume should be streamlined.

Here's What to Put in Your Internship Resume

• Degrees or certificates from colleges, community colleges, technical schools or formal training programs. Be sure to note the date you expect to get your degree, for example, B.A. expected June 1998.
• Academic proficiencies and/or courses of study: areas of academic study you have explored in depth. Don't list program titles, look to your "equivalencies" on your evaluations for some hints.
• Jobs, part- or full-time. Unless you have an extensive and varied work history, list most everything that has contributed a transferable skill.
• Volunteer or community service activities.
• Campus community participation. Note involvement with campus student organizations, participation on hiring DTFs, etc.
• Academic accomplishments. What are some of the ways you have demonstrated your proficiency in an area of study through understanding of principles of a subject? This could be producing a video, participating in a group designing a new system, writing a research paper or many other ways.
• Relevant personal accomplishments. Knowledge of another language, artistic accomplishments. What are the tools you can use? Many professions have their own tools and will be interested if you know how to use them. Here are some tools: statistical analysis, video production, computer programming, the use of certain lab equipment, field identification of plants and/or animals, mapping, graphic arts.

A few words about portfolios

A resume is only a snapshot of who you are; a portfolio can be more like an autobiography. Many organizations may find a resume doesn't give them enough information about you. They may want to see the video you produced, read that research paper or see examples of your writing or your lab analysis skills. If you have a portfolio you will be prepared to give them examples of your work that actually demonstrate your proficiency rather than just telling them about it. Portfolios can be useful in any area, not just the arts. Support for developing a portfolio may be available in your program. It is also available in the Career Development or Academic Advising office.

SOME SAMPLES