How to Put Internships on a Resume (Guide + Examples)

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Table of contents

Why List Internship Experience on a Resume
How to Put Internships on a Resume (With Examples)
Sample Resume With Internships
How to Discuss Internships in Your Cover Letter
Key Takeaways
Resources to Help With Your Job Search

From college students to fresh graduates to career changers, internships offer opportunities to enter competitive fields with valuable on-the-job experience. In a tough job market where even supposedly "entry-level" roles often demand concrete experience, internships are a valuable resource. But how do you go from internship experience to interviewing for your dream role? Our guide will walk you through how to put internships on a resume to show off what you've learned and impress employers.

Our guide will cover:

Why you should list internship experience on your resume
How to put internship experience on a resume with examples to help you get started
A sample resume featuring internship experience

Need a resume to showcase your internships quickly? Our AI Resume Builder will help you build a unique resume using AI-powered content suggestions and stylish templates. Try our resume builder to achieve a polished resume in just a few minutes.

Why List Internship Experience on a Resume

Internships give you the chance to learn professional skills as an early career professional. Whether it's something you do as a student, a fresh graduate, or a career changer, internships are a huge boost to an inexperienced resume because they show employers that you not only have on-the-job experience but you're also motivated and focused on learning about your industry.

There are many reasons to put internships on a resume, but the most common ones are:

You don't have extensive work experience. This usually applies to student resumes and recent graduates breaking into their field for the first time. Many early career workers begin with internships as they acquire experience in their fields.
The internship is relevant to the role you're seeking. Even if you do have more recent experience as a fully fledged professional, if your internship experience includes relevant skills and technical knowledge that match the job description of the role you're targeting, include it! Resumes are all about highlighting the aspects of your career that are most relevant to the role.
You've changed careers. If you've made a big career pivot, the bulk of your work experience might not match up with the role you're seeking. In this case, an internship that aligns with your new career path shows the effort and commitment level that you've dedicated to this change.

Now that we've covered why you should list internships on your resume, is there ever a time when you shouldn't list one? Of course! A resume is a document that evolves with your career. As you gain more experience in your field, change specialties, or even change career paths, older experience may become less and less relevant. Also, since resumes should never be longer than two pages, as your career grows, it's important to make the most of your resume's limited space.

That political science internship that you completed in college doesn't need to be on your marketing director's resume twelve years after the fact unless you can think of a really convincing reason why it's still relevant. Instead, focus on the impressive career moves that you've been making lately.

Pro tip

A good rule of thumb is to omit your internship experience after 10 years of work experience, but if your resume is getting long before that, then there's no reason to hang on to it. Only include details on your resume if you truly expect them to add value for the employer. Your resume's length is allowed to reach two pages, but you shouldn't include anything on your resume that isn't relevant to the role and valuable to the employer.

How to Put Internships on a Resume (With Examples)

Now that we've answered whether your internship experience belongs on your resume, let's discuss where and how to include it.

Include internships in your experience section

Most resumes use the chronological format, which focuses on showcasing your experience in reverse-chronological order. The more experience you have, the easier it is to fill a chronological resume with relevant details. But what should you do as a student or recent graduate? You may try an alternative resume format, or you may fill your experience section with internship experience. Even an unpaid internship is at home under your work history section.

Sample experience section featuring internships

Product Manager
NextGen Tech | Seattle, WA | August 2023 – Present

Own the end-to-end product life cycle for a key platform feature, from ideation to launch.
Define the roadmap and prioritize features based on user feedback, data insights, and business objectives.
Partner with engineering, design, and marketing teams to drive seamless product releases.
Implemented a data-driven decision-making approach, leading to a 25% increase in user engagement.

Lead Product Manager Intern
Innovate Solutions | New York, NY | Spring 2023

Led A/B testing for a new checkout experience, increasing conversion rates by 12%.
Collaborated with senior PMs to create detailed user stories and acceptance criteria for upcoming releases.
Spearheaded a cross-functional initiative to improve feature adoption, resulting in a 20% increase in engagement.

Product Management Intern
TechStart Inc. | San Francisco, CA | Summer 2022

Conducted user research and competitor analysis to identify key feature gaps.
Assisted in defining product requirements, leading to the successful launch of a new onboarding flow that improved user retention by 15%.
Worked closely with engineering and design teams to develop wireframes and prioritize the product backlog.

Include internships in their own section

If you have a lot of internship experience to discuss or if you want to have the opportunity to place your internships ahead of your experience, creating a separate internships section is a great alternative. Career changers, especially, may benefit from this because highlighting internships at the top of your resume shows how you've pivoted your focus to learning your new field.

An internship section is an optional resume section, so feel free to ignore convention and restructure your resume to show off your best points. Place it before or after whatever parts of your resume you want. As long as you start with your header and resume profile, what comes next is up to you.

How to put an internship section on your resume

Internships

Data Analyst Intern
Insight Analytics Co. | New York, NY | Summer 2023

Conducted data cleaning and preprocessing on large datasets, improving analysis efficiency by 30%.
Developed interactive dashboards using SQL and Tableau to visualize key business metrics.
Assisted in A/B testing and trend analysis to optimize marketing campaign performance.

Business Intelligence Intern
Strategic Solutions Inc. | Chicago, IL | Spring 2022

Created data pipelines and automated reports to track customer behavior insights.
Conducted exploratory data analysis using Python and SQL to support strategic decision-making.
Collaborated with cross-functional teams to define KPIs and enhance data-driven decision-making.

Pro tip

Make your internships pop off the page by using action words to describe your responsibilities and using numbers to quantify your achievements. Active language makes your role sound exciting and innovative while also showing how energetic you are as a candidate. Numerical data shows the real-world impact of your experience and proves that you understand the key performance indicators that are crucial to success in your role.

Sample Resume With Internships

Need help visualizing the role of internships on a resume? Check out this sample resume featuring internships for inspiration.

resume-entry-level-example-marketing (1)

Use this template

Pro tip

An entry-level resume should be just as polished and stylish as an experienced one. Try using a premade resume template to create your resume. Templates designed by professionals allow you to create an eye-catching resume without requiring graphic design chops or Word doc wizardry.

How to Discuss Internships in Your Cover Letter

Your resume allows you to display your internship experience and highlight your most important skills and achievements as an intern, but your cover letter is a valuable opportunity to take it a step further. Internships are all about career growth, so use your cover letter to demonstrate how your internship has developed your skills and prepared you for a bright professional future in your industry.

Here are some tips for discussing internship experience in your cover letter:

Focus on growth: When discussing your internship experience, employers will want to see how this learning environment prepared you for a role in your field. Focus on discussing the skills you developed during this time, as well as the achievements you contributed to and the mentorship you received.
Networking is key: Internships are a major opportunity to hone your networking skills and forge lasting connections with professionals in your field. If your connections have taught you important skills or connected you to the role you're applying for, discuss this in your cover letter to demonstrate how your professional network has contributed to your growth.
Be confident: As an intern, you're likely an entry-level applicant and may not have extensive experience in your field. That's OK! Everyone was entry-level once. Don't shrink away from your inexperience as you write your cover letter. Instead, focus on describing your growth while emphasizing your readiness to take on more responsibility.

Key Takeaways

Use internships to show your experience in your field
Including internships on your resume can help make up for a lack of relevant work experience and show employers your career progression and commitment to professional development.
Leave off internships that aren't relevant
If your internship experience is older or may be taking resume space away from more relevant and fresh industry experience, feel free to exclude it.
Place internships under your experience section
Use internships to fill out your experience section in the early days of your career. Your internships should be listed in reverse-chronological order along with your other work history.
Create an internships section
If you want to have the freedom to reorder your resume and display your internships wherever they fit best, creating a distinct internships section is a strong strategy.