If you are straight out of the college and think an internship would be the best way to get hold of an experience or still better, if internship is a part of your course curriculum, then you would certainly need to tailor your resume that is best suited for an internship.
However, it is not so that since you are applying or have applied for an internship in your field, you will face any less competition. There are several like you who plan to enter their field as interns to gain a whole lot of exposure in different departments or aspects of their work so as they can choose the department they would most like to work in, in their future. There are also some who plan to take a gap in their work history just to do internship in a field of their choice and learn much in return.
Internship
However, if you tailor your resume to the needs of a recruiter looking for interns, your chances of getting selected is much higher.
Include Projects, Seminars and Dissertations in your Resume
Of course as a fresh graduate, you may not be having any relevant work/volunteering experience, but mentioning your coursework that is relevant to your field – the seminars, projects, laboratory work, or dissertations, term papers, etc. that won you those academic laurels could even help you bag an internship in a reputed workplace.
Listing down your academic accomplishments and specific works related to your field during your course can help you jot it all down in your resume. You can have a completely separate section on the coursework you have done that is relevant to your field.
If you are planning to intern in an Ad agency or in the media background, a mention of your campaigns for company/corporate clients and the videos or news articles that you have created can leave an impact on the recruiter if you particularly mention them under your academic achievements at the very beginning of your resume, just after your personal details.
Do not forget to mention your significant contribution towards the project and the outcome you achieved.
Make Your Resume A Concise Document in only a Page
Since you are not experienced, the recruiter would not like to skim through pages on each and every detail about you when you are not even applying for a permanent job with the company. Hence, keeping your resume short and precise is the key to bagging that precious internship in your career.
A resume with multiple pages is only acceptable in certain circles and for people having more than a decade of experience, people for whom it is very difficult to list down all their experiences in a page or two.
Your personal details along with your name, contact details, date of birth and nationality, your main educational profile, skills, field of interest in the internship, future career goals or assignments you are looking forward to should be a part of your curriculum vitae. However, do not make this too long; either limit it to a short para or mention your competencies in few bullet points.
Giving a chronological detail of your educational qualifications starting from the most recent one first along with the name of your institution, degrees you have acquired, the subjects studied and grades obtained. You can also mention particular subjects or classes that are relevant to your field of internship. You can here add in your proficiency in a foreign language as well.
Experience Details in your Resume
Also mention your extra-curricular activities since school and do not hesitate to give details of the tuition classes you have given to juniors or even a summer job at the call centre. Your relevant experiences even if they were unpaid and mentioning your volunteering or part-time temporary jobs or freelancing works under ‘relevant experience’ section can be useful.
Apart from this, if you use concise language and start your phrases with action verbs or adjectives, proofread and edit your resume for spelling and grammar errors, give exact details on your awards and achievements so far, along with a mention of some good references. Don’t forget to keep it professional.
All the Best!
