Internship Resume Templates | Complete Guide and Examples

This complete guide will teach you how to craft an impressive resume you can use to apply to any internship. As an internship candidate, you’ll most likely be a student or recent graduate, meaning work experience might be limited. One of your advantages will be the new set of skills you’re ready to put into practice. Make sure you highlight these skills in your resume.

Let’s begin!

The three main resume formats are the chronological, functional and combination formats.

The chronological resume is the most widely known and used resume format. Its most important section is the work history, which is organized in reverse-chronological order. Only internship candidates who have had plenty of previous internships, fellowships or other professional experience should use this format.

If you lack traditional work experience, you should consider using the functional resume format. This format is especially ideal for internship candidates since it allows you to showcase all your valuable skills even if you didn’t learn them through a traditional job.

The combination resume format, as the name suggests, combines the strengths of both the chronological and functional formats. If you have a really impressive set of skills and some limited work experience, seriously consider this format. It balances out the focus between the two so you don’t feel like you’re disregarding one of those assets.

The skills section is an essential part of any resume, but particularly so for internship resumes. Skills are your main assets, and nothing is better than having diversified assets, which is why you should always include a mix of soft, hard and technical skills.

Soft skills are innate to you and describe how you work. For example, some soft skills that an intern should have are initiative, teamwork, and the ability to work under pressure

Hard skills consist of abilities you have acquired through education, training or practical experience. Most of your hard skills will pertain to your particular line of work, but a few examples are copywriting, sales skills, data visualization or market research. However, hard skills — like all types of skills — can be transferable

Technical skills have to do with technology and digital tools, for example, expertise in MS Office and proficiency in Adobe software programs. In today’s world, there is rarely a job that doesn’t require you to have some sort of technical skills, and young interns are expected to be savvier than more senior employers.

Transferable skills can be used across industries, no matter the type of job. You could have developed sales skills during a summer job at the mall, but you can transfer that knowledge to your new internship at a construction company when working with clients.

Some common skills an intern could include are:

When it comes to formatting your skills section, you’ll need to use your resume format as a guide. On chronological resumes, a bulleted list of skills will suffice.

On functional resumes, however, the skills section is expanded with three to four bullet points describing instances that show your skill expertise — much like how you would format a work history section.

Combination resumes showcase more than one skills section and these tend to be located primarily on the first half of the resume.

A straightforward way to write your expanded skills section in a functional or combination resume is to use this formula: Your action + Who benefitted + Measured result. For example, a legal intern could include problem-solving as one of their main skills, and format it as such:

The summary statement or resume objective is your first presentation to your potential employer. Both share a similar purpose but go about it in different ways.

The resume objective, which we recommend for entry-level or less experienced candidates, lets the employer know your career goals in a passive yet clear voice.

The summary statement, on the other hand, is written in an active voice and portrays the candidate’s skills as solutions to the company’s needs.

Although in most cases, we will recommend a summary statement, a career objective is a better tool if you want to convey how you view your career progressing.

A successful resume objective will show employers you have a clear vision and the game plan to achieve it — which is why you’re applying for an internship with them in the first place.

Here’s an example of a summary statement and a resume objective so you can decide which one works better for your particular case.

If your career history is not as strong as your skills, you can use the education section to give extra support to those skills. Just remember to keep it relevant and brief.

You should include the name and location of your university or educational institution, your major and the type of degree obtained. If you recently graduated, you can add your GPA if it is 3.5 or above.

Feel free to include relevant seminars, workshops and courses if they validate a skill.

Normally, you should include dates in this section, but it is not mandatory. You can leave them out if ageism is a concern.

Here’s an example of an education resume section:

Although it’s understandable for interns not to have any work experience in their field, that doesn’t mean you need to leave this section blank.

Generally, you should include only paid jobs in your work history. However, if you don’t have enough experience, you can add volunteer work or university internships. Adding unpaid work can also help if the activities relate to the job you want.

If you’re working with a functional or combination resume format, you can opt for a reduced work history section, which only includes your job title, company or institution, and the dates of employment. Your most important achievements can be moved to a relevant skills section instead.

However, in a chronological resume, the work history is expanded with bullet points that detail your duties and accomplishments in each experience.

Here’s how a simple work history section would look like for an architecture intern’s functional resume:

A modern contact information resume section should be brief and practical. Long gone are the days when you needed to include your full address. You just need to mention the city where you’re based, your phone number and a professional-sounding email address.

Depending on your industry, you can include your professional social media accounts, LinkedIn profile or your portfolio. Remember that you’ll be sending this resume through email, so as a PDF your recruiter will be able to browse your links without issue.

Here’s a contact information example:

As an intern, you’re expected to bring a fresh outlook to your work. You want your customizable resume template to convey that you’re a savvy professional that’s in on the current industry trends.

Besides style, your resume should also be practical, so pick a template that you can easily customize to your needs, for example, one where you can include extra sections for your relevant coursework, certifications, association memberships, and more.

If you want to see other templates than the ones on this page, check out our complete resume templates collection.