5 Internship Resume Examples [Templates to Land a Job in 2025] 

Write Your Internship Resume

Writing an effective internship resume demands a clear focus on your skills, achievements, education, and whatever you have for work experience. Since, as an intern, you have limited work experience, it’s advisable to focus on your academic achievements, coursework, projects, volunteer work, and extracurricular activities.

One important thing that you should know when writing your intern resume is tailoring your application to the specific role you’re after. Research the company and add keywords demonstrating you understand your potential employer’s principles and values. That way, you align yourself with the recruiters’ expectations and boost your chances of getting noticed.

In this section, we break down for you everything you need to craft an irresistible resume for an internship: what sections to avoid, how to overcome your lack of experience, and answers to common internship resume questions.

Picking your internship resume template

Your internship resume template is what makes your first impression to recruiters. Pick a professional, clean, easy-to-read template highlighting your relevant education, skills, and experience to set the right tone. The secret here is a consistent formatting layout, clear sections, and simple and professional fonts. At the end of the day, you want your qualifications to stand out, and hiring managers aren’t distracted from that.

Do you know that complex design, wild fonts, and excessive color aren’t the best for your intern resume? They distract recruiters, and they can easily miss out on why you’re the best candidate for the role. Besides, these extra decorations don’t play well with applicant tracking systems (ATS), and you don’t want your application thrown into the waste bin before a real hiring manager reviews it.

When choosing your intern resume template, it’s also crucial to consider the industry you’re applying to. Traditional sectors, such as consulting, law, and finance, prefer classic designs, while creative fields, such as design and marketing, accept visually creative designs. And since you have little to no experience, the layout should emphasize your education and skills over your work history. All in all, the best template for an internship resume is one that effectively showcases your strengths to recruiters in a simple, polished, and professional way.

Adding an appropriate header

In an intern’s resume, the header and contact information must be easy to find, professional, and clear. Your name comes at the top and in a larger font than the rest of the sections. Typically, your first and last name would serve as a great header – this is no place for your nickname.

Your phone number, professional email address, and city and state come below your name. A combination of your first and last name is preferable for the email. If suitable, add your LinkedIn profile or online portfolio if it’s related to the internship sector. Don’t add unnecessary details like your home address because no one needs them.

Readability and consistency are important when formatting the header. Choose a clean font that is well-aligned and easy to read. You want recruiters to easily call you to offer an interview or confirm you for an internship. Making it easy for them to do this increases your chances of success.

The best format for your internship resume

The reverse chronological format tops the formats you can use for your intern resume. It’s considered the best approach, especially when you have some work or internship experience. It lists your work history from your current role to your previous ones.

In a scenario where you lack direct work experience, a functional format would suit you the best. Here, the focus is on skills you have gained from coursework, projects, and volunteer opportunities.

Lastly, a combination (hybrid) format blends elements from the chronological and functional formats. It showcases your impressive work history alongside the skills that have helped you achieve your goals.

At the end of the day, you want to be the best candidate for the job. That means you choose the resume format that gives recruiters a vivid view of why they should hire you. Highlighting your skills should be one of the major objectives your intern resume should meet.

Crafting an effective internship resume objective

For an intern resume with no experience, you’ll need an objective. The objective statement has to be concise and clear and, at the same time, highlight your skills, career aspirations, and passion for the position. You should also clearly communicate your eagerness to learn from the team and contribute to the company’s success.

First, state the position you’re applying for and back it up with skills and an academic background that make you the perfect candidate. The strategy here is to sell the potential employer on your value even if you don’t have much direct work experience.

Moreover, your internship resume objective should align with the company’s values, mission, and vision. Such an addition demonstrates your proactive mindset and genuine interest in working there. You’re after writing a statement that hooks recruiters by setting a positive tone and making it hard for them to drop you from the race.

Highlighting your education & certifications

Education and certifications say you’ve been to a classroom to learn and apply the best practices for a specific industry. These two sections in an intern resume add a layer of authority and assure prospective companies that you have the academic background and basic understanding of what and how things should be done.

When adding education, start with your highest or current level. Include the school’s name, field of study, major, graduation year, city, and state. If you’re yet to graduate, add your expected date and year of graduation. To show your academic achievements, you can include your GPA, if it’s above 3.5, and any other academic recognitions for excellence.

For certifications, put them under a specific section and include the certification title, issuing body, date of completion, or expiry date (whichever is applicable). Whatever you add here, ensure that it’s relevant to the role you are after. To get it right, prioritize certifications highlighting your technical capabilities, industry-specific credentials, and relevant soft skills.

Example of how to add certifications in an accounting intern resume

Adding extra education details

In an intern resume with no experience, you should take advantage of your education as much as possible. Anything related to education and shows recruiters why you qualify for the role is worth adding to your piece.

Here are extra sections that you can add to your education:

Coursework

Relevant coursework demonstrates your abilities in a classroom setting and how they can be used in a real work setting. It shows your technical skills, commitment to learning, and ability to adhere to the industry’s best standards. Whatever you include here has to be directly related to the role you’re trying to get.

Example of relevant coursework in an accounting internship resume:

Awards and Honors

Awards and honors showcase your dedication and academic excellence. They’re a subtle way of saying you’re passionate and will hit the ground running in any professional setting. They can include recognition of outstanding academic performance, an award of scholarship, or industry-specific credentials after demonstrating exceptional qualities.

Example of awards & honors in an internship resume:

Extracurriculars

Extracurriculars are another effective way to demonstrate your soft skills, such as excellent teamwork, communication, leadership, and problem-solving, even when you don’t have a lot of work experience. Participation in sports and student clubs says a lot about your capabilities and adds value to your application for an internship.

Example of extracurriculars in a resume for an internship:

Demonstrate your work experience

Whether you like it or not, potential employers want to see what you can do in a real work environment. This ultimatum doesn’t mean you’re doomed if you lack direct work experience in the field you’re seeking an internship. You can bring transferrable skills from coursework, voluntary work, extracurriculars, projects, and part-time work to build a work experience section showing your true potential.

When adding experience, use snappy bullet points that start with active verbs and show what you did and achieved. It’s paramount that your accomplishments are not exaggerated because recruiters can smell a lie, and that doesn’t look good for your application.

To ensure that your experience section does what you intend – impress recruiters to give you a shot – go back to the job description and see what it asks. There, you’ll find the description of the ideal candidate, skills, and responsibilities. Use that information to your advantage by adding skills and using keywords that match what the potential employer is looking for.

Using active verbs

Using action-packed words in your intern resume clearly demonstrates your achievements, contributions, and competencies. These active terms present you as a result-driven candidate ready to take action. This is the kind of engagement recruiters are looking for before they can give you the opportunity.

For example, instead of using a passive bullet point like “responsible for social media updates for the marketing department,” you can replace that with “managed and optimized social media content to increase engagement by 21%”.

Showcasing your skills

Every internship you apply for will come with a unique set of skills the company is looking for in applicants. Therefore, using a mix of skills you possess from education and previous work experience, like team collaboration and problem-solving, and what is emphasized in the job description will be ideal.

Many internship candidates wonder about what mix of hard and soft skills they can list. Ultimately, it comes down to the position you’re applying to. Jobs in technical roles like finance will want to see as many of your technical abilities as possible, such as budgeting. However, something more customer service-oriented would benefit from soft skills like communication.

Need some ideas?

How to find internship opportunities

Looking for an internship can definitely feel overwhelming, especially when you don’t know where to start.

On top of helping you write an incredible intern resume, we also share these strategies to help you find an internship:

Key takeaways

You’ve come with us all the way to the end. Hopefully, you’re ready to build your resume and break into your dream career path with an internship. For the sake of remembering, here’s what you’ve got from this guide: