If you are a student applying for an internship or for your first job out of college, your resume will be structured differently from other more experienced individuals. This is because you likely have less experience than other applicants. So, you want to highlight your academic achievements and abilities since those are your best selling points.
When gathering information for your resume, think about any related class work or projects that might apply to the job. If you wrote a paper and did a big presentation on class research, you can include that on your resume. Also, think about internships you had with professors, activities you did while in school, leadership positions you held, and honors you won.
The next step is to think about how all of those projects, internships, and activities prepared you for the working world. If you are applying for a student internship while you’re still an undergraduate, think about how your classes have prepared you for the job. If you are graduating, think about the skills you’ve learned. You’ll want to highlight all of those skills in a manner that shows that you can help the company out.
For example, if you did a semester long research project on bridges and you are applying for an internship at a civil engineering company, you may want to highlight your project on your resume. Explaining that you’ve studied bridge design and development and have experience with the relevant calculations will show the potential employer that you are suited for the job. You may also want to mention this in your objective.
OBJECTIVE: Student with knowledge of bridge design and development seeking to help ABC Engineering inspect and repair the city’s bridges.
This objective it highlights how the applicant’s knowledge will help the company, not how the company will help the applicant. This is exactly the type of objective any resume writer wants to have.
Finally, the format of your resume will likely go as follows:
- Contact information
- Objective
- Education
- Experience
- Activities
- Honors
- Skills
Since your education is your most marketable skill when you are a student (most of the time, anyway), you want to highlight it by putting it before the other sections in the body of the resume.
For a sample student resume, please see the following:
