Here’s how to make your internships stand out on your resume

By Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster.com 

When you crush your internships in college, in addition to gaining important skills and experiences, you’re simultaneously creating content for a potentially valuable resume. In turn, your resume can help open the door to score a job interview and demonstrate to employers you have the ability to succeed. 

Whether your employer at the internship extends a full-time job offer or you land a job offer with another company, your resume needs to shine. Here’s how to get your resume noticed by employers.

Focus on the impact

Employers want to know your responsibilities as well as the result. If you created and scheduled 25 social media posts on a weekly basis, in addition to that bullet explaining your responsibility, indicate the result. Did engagement increase by a certain percentage over eight weeks? Mention it. Did something go viral? Include the most impressive number from your posts. 

From an employer’s perspective, the company will want to know the problem you helped solve and how your work positively made an impact on results. Employers like to see numbers. (The same rings true for full-time experience on resumes. If you managed a budget, what was the amount? If you worked on a sales campaign, what was the revenue?) 

Lean into ATS-friendly keywords

When you apply to a job, your application and resume are submitted to the employer’s applicant tracking system (ATS). This software is a database that recruiters in that company have access to search; meaning, when you apply to that job you’re connected to that job requisition. That said, you’re not only connected to that job—your resume becomes searchable for every job. 

Internal recruiters at that company can find your resume by using various criteria as well as keywords. As a former corporate recruiter, I relied on this to build a pipeline for jobs that weren’t even posted. 

Since you won’t know what words recruiters are using in their searches, review the job description as a guideline and then incorporate keywords. If your internship was in human resources and the prospective employer refers to HR as “human capital management,” then ensure your resume includes those same words at least once.  

Use action verbs

Instead of using words like “helped with,” “was responsible for,” and “supported,” flip the script by boosting your resume with action verbs. Positioning your work as action-oriented is more powerful than receptive verbs. Here are some examples of powerful verbs for internships: collaborated, contributed, facilitated, partnered with, and engaged.

Lean into transferable skills

When you apply to a full-time job, your internship experiences may not check all the boxes in the job you’re pursuing. That’s normal. The key to standing out to employers who are immediately asking, “Why should we interview you?” (which of course, lends itself to “Why should we hire you?” during the interviews), involves showing them you possess the skills.

I’ve seen many job seekers not give themselves enough credit. For instance, with the social media example, you probably brainstormed, multi-tasked, and got approvals. Highlight your transferable skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and time and project management. 

Here’s are two examples: Created five social media posts on a daily basis and collaborated with a five-person team on a weekly basis for approvals.  

Keep in mind it’s totally okay to have more than one resume. You may have one for marketing, one for sales, and one for finance. The common thread as you tailor each one for the role you’re pursuing involves transferable skills. Regardless of the role you’re pursuing, these soft skills show your versatility and ability to pivot.

Show growth

Your resume serves two purposes for the interview: to open the door and to outline talking points to springboard into questions. Since hiring managers will ask about your role, you can talk about how you learned quickly, adapted and then took initiative, and expanded your role. 

If you took ownership of a project, proposed a new idea or process to streamline efficiency, or learned a new program, include it in your resume. This shows employers you’re willing to learn, you’re curious, and ready to expand into a role.

Tailor your resume

It’s important to tweak your resume for each full-time job you’re pursuing. Shine a spotlight on specific skills and experiences that speak to each role. Leverage the job description as a cheat sheet. Companies typically list the most important responsibilities to least in descending order. That will show you what’s most coveted in their hiring “must haves.” You can change the order of your bullets to reflect that importance as well, especially focusing on the top three bullets of your resume. 

For instance, if you’re applying for a marketing role, you can highlight analytical skills and your experience in audience engagement working on campaigns, but if you’re applying to a finance or consulting role, you can lean into research and analysis. 

Include all of your internships

In case you’re wondering if you should omit an internship or two off your resume, include everything, even the shorter internships. And if you had a bad internship, whether it was a toxic workplace or boss or you didn’t learn as much as you hoped, include them, too.

You can leverage these experiences as talking points by saying something like, “In that internship, I learned the importance of clear guidelines and instructions. I was told to do tasks, but expectations weren’t clear, so I realized I needed to ask specific questions, so every week I asked questions to ensure I was on task.” 

While you shouldn’t throw employers under the bus and use the interview to vent about a negative internship, you can point out what you learned.

A stand out resume, especially based entirely on internships, should highlight your skills, growth, and the impact you made to the organization. By tailoring your resume to the role you’re pursuing, within a matter of seconds, the goal is for employers to instantly understand what you did, why you mattered, and why they absolutely  need to interview you.