According to an eye tracking research study done by The Ladders, the average time spent by a recruiter on each resume is six seconds. Which means – six seconds is all the time you have to impress the professor/company under whom you wish to intern. Thus, an effective resume is the one that gets you the internship. But how easy is it to write such an impressive resume when you hardly have any experience at all? While you may feel that your resume lacks in experience, you do need to remember that you are competing against other fellow students, who would be in the same boat as you.
Here are the nine sections that you need to include in your resume to win over your employee:
- Personal details: This includes your name, address, email id and contact number. These should be listed on the top of your resume – you can either align them towards the right or the left – that is entirely your choice. Write your name in big letters – 16 point should be fine. This will make your name stand out and get you noticed. If you have a LinkedIn profile or a personal blog page which you feel is relevant to the internship position, you can include that too.
- Objective: This is something that you ideally need to think about before you start writing your resume. What are you trying to achieve through this particular internship – what is your goal. What is it that you bring to the table – how will your internship help the professor/company? Don’t be vague here – make it as relevant to the position as possible. Tailor your statement to the internship position you are applying to. For eg, 2nd year Automobile Engineering student looking for internship opportunities in Rolls Royce.
- Educational qualifications: Thisis where you list all your educational qualifications in detail. This should ideally start with your most recent one and go on in reverse chronological order, listing all your minor and major subjects, institution name, year of joining and graduation, and city.
- Skills, certifications, awards, scholarships: List all certification or training courses you have done, andany awards or scholarships you have won.
- Work Experience: Try to include as much as possible. This should be in the ‘Job Title, Organization Name, Location and Date of Employment; format. Use as many action words as possible here – implemented, strategized, developed, monitored, presented – are all words that you can add. Even if you have not worked anywhere else, add any internships you have done, or any volunteering or other project work details which are relevant that you can add to this section. This is where doing project work under professors at your own college during the 1st and 2nd years adds to your resume.
- Skills: Add your computer skills – languages that you know, software packages that you are well versed with.Recruiters are also looking for people with the following skills:
- Communication skills
- Ability to multitask
- Time management
- Creativity
- Problem solving skills
- Leadership skills
Use instances that depict where you have been able to showcase these skills.
- Languages: This can be languages that you have learned, apart from your native one. List these in order of proficiency and mention how proficient you are with them
- Extracurricular activities: Rather than just mentioning random things, specify hobbies that are relevant to your field. If you have been part of any college clubs, mention that – these activities can highlight your personality traits, leadership qualities and willingness to work as a team.
- References: You can either list your references here with their names, qualifications and contact details or simple mention ‘References provided on request’.
About the author:
Aniket Singh works for Apple Inc. in California, United States. He is also the author of “Intern Abroad This Summer”.
Aniket holds a BTech degree in Electrical Engineering from the IIT, Madras, Chennai, and a Master’s degree in Wireless Systems from Politecnico Di Torino in Torino, Italy. He has interned at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland during this studies.
Visit him at www.aniketsingh.com
Check out his book at www.internabroadthissummer.com