Rocking Resumes For Interns Edition

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HOW TO WRITE AN INTERNSHIP RESUME: Rock your internship resume with our comprehensive guide and sample templates Before we start, please see the Job-Depot website for bountiful resources for building your resume, including a mammoth of a list hyperlinked to university career center resources all to guide you best - Gems for the Intern!

Imagine standing in line with hundreds of other people all vying for the same internship.

And, when it’s finally your turn to sell yourself, the first thing the job recruiter says to you

is, “You have six seconds.”

Six seconds?

That may sound crazy but an eye-tracking resume study done by TheLadders found

that’s how long a potential employer looks at each resume. You have to make an

impression and make it quickly. Something has to make your resume stand out. We’re

here to help.

We created 15 professional templates for you to download. We found samples of

real-life resumes that landed internships. And, we put together a resource toolkit with

almost 1,000 sample resumes, tips and ideas created by the best universities. It’s tough

to grab an employer’s attention in a fraction of a minute, especially when you have little

or no job experience. But, you do. You just have to be a little more creative in finding

them. Look at your past jobs and the duties you performed in a new light.

For example, if you are applying for a banking internship and never worked in a bank,

think out of the box. Maybe you handled money at a concession stand. Or, maybe you

had to balance a cash drawer in a job as a supermarket checker.

Remember, your immediate goal in landing an internship is to acquire skills that

contribute to achieving your academic goals. The job and salary come later.

Intern recruiters know you don’t have professional level qualifications. They’re looking

for someone who wants to learn and has transferable skills like:

● Ability to communicate

● Willingness to work hard

● Creativity

● Problem-solving ability

● Initiative

● Ability to multi-task

● Leadership

There are a few basics every internship resume should be:

● One page in length.

● Clean, error-free and easy to read.

● Structured and written to highlight your strengths.

● Able to make your name and the position you are seeking immediately clear.

Let’s get down to business.

First, build a complete professional profile. It should be a master list of every job,

skill and academic achievement you have in your background. It’s a data dump of every

responsibility you’ve ever had. Keep updating it. Keep it fresh, and it will provide a

valuable tool to help you customize each resume you send out.

Think of your resume as a mashup of what you have to offer and what a particular intern

recruiter wants. Pull from your professional profile and emphasize the skills you have

that each employer wants.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), your GPA isn’t as important to intern recruiters as you

might think. In 2013, internships.com surveyed 300 intern recruiters and found

employers put more value on relevant work experience than academic performance.

Objective statements can be as simple or descriptive as you want. Just remember, the

objective statement must tell an employer what you have to offer in a split second. That

means you have to write lean and mean. Tight and bright. Shoot for 10 words or less.

Here’s an example. You are a junior, journalism major/political science minor at State

University looking for an internship. You have experience writing news and features for

the college paper. You also created fliers for a local political candidate. Last summer,

you were a part-time copy editor at a community weekly. You would someday like to be

a press secretary. You are also a swimmer and have won state meets.

Here are several internships you might apply for and appropriate objective

statements. Take a look and see how you can tailor these for yourself.

Some general guidelines:

Make it concise and specific. Don’t be vague.

● Find the keywords in the job description and focus on those when describing

your knowledge and abilities.

● Make your objective as unique to you as possible.

Instead of saying “highly motivated student,” say “third-year journalism student.”

Instead of saying “excellent communication skills” say “produced political fliers.”

Emphasize your benefit to employer.

● You want to tell the company what you can do for it, not what it can do for you.

● BAD: “Seeking a team-oriented newsroom that fosters my writing

development.”

● GOOD: “Journalism student brings team sports experience to reporter

internship.”

● Emphasize the job experience, character traits, personality and work ethic that

make you valuable to the company.

Make it impersonal.

● Write it as a label description. Do not write in first person.

● Instead of “I have experience writing code,” say “code-writing experience.” It’s

almost always best to leave out adjectives and personal pronouns.

Try to make each word engaging. You want to pull the employer into your resume not

put up roadblocks to keep him or her out.

Should you include an Objective?

An objective is merely a statement that tells how you can benefit the company.

Who wouldn’t want an employer to know that? What employer wouldn’t want to know

that? Yet, opinions are sharply divided on whether or not to include an objective on a

resume.

Why is that?

Well, if you look closely at the arguments against it, you’ll see that it’s the word itself and

not its function that turns people off. Objective statements were too often long, vague,

unfocused harangues that employers skipped over when looking at resumes.

An objective statement like “seeking a challenging and rewarding position in a dynamic

organization for potential growth” is merely a lot of words that say nothing.

Applicants started leaving them off resumes, replacing them with categories of different

names that serve the same purpose: Summary, Career Goal, Job Goal, Skill Set,

Profile, Tagline or About Me.

Whatever you call the section of your resume that tells an employer how your particular

skills and knowledge will help the company achieve its goals, it’s still an important part

of your resume. It defines you. It’s especially important when applying for an internship

because early in your career, your limited work history can’t define your career goals.

One size doesn’t fit all

Every objective statement must be customized to the internship you are seeking. Don’t

copy and paste the same objective into each resume you send out.

When an employer reads an objective statement tailored to the internship the company

seeks, you will be seen as someone who knows and cares about that position in that

company. It gives your resume credibility and signals to the employer that everything

else in your resume is relevant to that internship.

It’s time to compile your resume, the story of you.

These are the sections you should include on your internship resume:

● Objective

● Education

● Relevant Coursework

● Skills

● Relevant Experience

● Professional Experience

● Honors & Activities

Ready …

You’ve done background on the company. You know what it’s all about. You know the

firm’s mission statement.

You’ve identified the keywords that describe what the company wants. Marry those

keywords to ones describing what you have to offer as often as you can.

Set …

Even if your actual skills or experience is lacking, you can organize your resume to work

for you. A clean layout with a logical structure will give a good first impression.

Go!

Contact Information

● Display your name, your email address and phone number prominently. (By

the way, make sure your voicemail greeting sounds professional.)

● If your mailing address (your location) bolsters your resume in any way, put

that there, too.

● If you have a strong LinkedIn profile, include the URL to your page.

● Don’t use a silly email address. One that includes your name is the best.

Objective

● Make it clear you are seeking a specific position.

● Include other words you think are important. For example, “Competitive

swimmer seeks administrative assistant job at XYZ Sports Company.”

Education

● Start with the degree you are currently working toward. Note the date you

expect to graduate. For example, “B.A. expected in June 2017.’

● List your previous degrees in reverse chronological order, including the name

and location of each institution attended.

● Include majors, minors or areas of specialty for each degree.

● Include your high school only if you want to highlight its academic reputation

or if its location is relevant to the internship.

Relevant Coursework

● Use this to convince the employer that you have learned appropriate

transferable skills even if you haven’t experienced them in the workplace.

● Describe what you have studied that demonstrates your proficiency in skills

required for the internship.

● Include class projects that bolster your value to the employer.

Skills

● Engage the employer early. Write a strong summary of your qualifications.

Start sentences, whenever possible, with active verbs.

● Align what you have to offer with what employer wants.

● List the skills that are most important to the internship for which you are

applying.

● Be creative. You’d be surprised how many life skills transfer to job skills.

● Include proficiencies as well as interpersonal skills.

Relevant Experience

● Include interests that are relevant to the internship. If you are applying for a

job in sports marketing, describe your summers working at the baseball

stadium.

● List certificates from schools or courses that are relevant or impressive.

● Describe situations in which you were a leader or an innovator.

Professional Experience

● Minimize the fact you don’t have much relevant job experience by highlighting

the transferrable skills you got in other jobs. For instance, working at a

fast-food restaurant requires much more than bagging burgers. You have to

be able to communicate, work as a team, manage your time and handle

money.

● Show results of your work.

● Use active verbs whenever you can.

● Remember, past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior so you want

to tout your accomplishments.

● Tie professional experience back to objective.

Honors and Activities

● List the awards and academic honors you have received.

● Highlight specific courses, club affiliations and volunteer work relevant to the

internship you are seeking.

That should help you write a winning resume. But remember, a resume should always

be a work in progress.

In addition to tweaking and tailoring for each particular job, continually update your

professional profile with new skills and experiences.

Be confident and aggressive. Sell yourself. Get hired.