Student Guides

The Internship Resume Guide: Section by Section

"I don't have enough experience for a good resume" is the single most common thing students tell us, and it's almost never true. You have more usable material than you think. Here's how to put it in a format that actually gets read.

Contact & summary

Lead with a name, city/state, email, phone, and a portfolio or LinkedIn link if relevant to the role. Skip the objective-statement cliché ("Seeking a challenging position…"). A two-line summary that names your major, target role, and one concrete strength does more work, and gives you a natural place to echo the exact job title from the posting, which matters for ATS matching.

Education

List your school, degree, major, and expected graduation date. Include relevant coursework, a strong GPA (generally 3.3+), and relevant honors, but only while you're a student or within about a year of graduating. Trim it back once you have 1-2 real roles to show instead.

Experience: yes, this includes what you're discounting

These all count as real experience if you did them:

• Class projects with a deliverable (a designed app, a research paper, a built model)
• Student org leadership or event planning
• Part-time or retail jobs (the transferable skills are real: customer communication, handling volume, ownership)
• Freelance, volunteer, or unpaid project work

For each entry, write 2-4 bullets in the format: action verb → what you did → measurable result. "Managed social media for a student club" becomes "Grew student org Instagram from 200 to 1,100 followers over one semester by planning a weekly content calendar." Same work, dramatically more evidence.

Skills

List tools and skills the posting actually mentions, in language that matches it. This section is one of the highest-leverage places for exact keyword matching. Group by category (e.g., "Design Tools," "Languages") if you have more than six or seven.

Formatting checklist

• One page, standard margins
• Single column, no tables or text boxes
• One standard font throughout (Arial, Calibri, Georgia)
• Exported as a text-based PDF or .docx, not a scanned image
• Consistent date format across every entry

For the reasoning behind why formatting matters this much, see What Is an ATS?.