Resume Tips and Suggestions for Early-In-Career

Attention undergraduate and graduate/MBA students, it's that time of year! No, not the return to class but the time of year where major companies recruit and interview Early-In-Career roles -- internships and full-time roles -- for Summer 2025. This article is intended to provide resume tips and suggestions to those aspiring for internships and full-time roles. While this is not all-encompassing, it can be a good start or way to check your resume.

Building Your Resume

Contact Information

Have your name, email, and phone number on your resume. Don't worry, all companies have policies and practices to ensure the protection of your Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This information is needed for the recruiter to contact you to arrange screening. Be sure to regularly check your spam/junk mail filter as emails from recruiters can be filtered there.

In the digital and social media era, have your LinkedIn URL, GitHub (as needed), and related Portfolio URLs on your contact information that is clickable. Recruiters can and will click on those links.

School and Graduation Information

Have your major(s), minor(s), and relevant course work listed in your resume near the start of your resume as well. What is relevant course work? Often times the roles that are posted will state skills and classes required or preferred. Ensure those are listed!

A point I cannot emphasize enough is have your listed graduation month and year. This is needed to ensure you align to the graduation requirements for their Early-In-Career role. You don't want to have someone guess when you are graduating if they are looking at your resume.

Listing Your Experience

List any of your work experience and relevant experience to the role you're applying for. List and describe your previous internships, research projects, open-source projects, campus jobs, personal or class projects (especially if in a group, identify that), competitions, and awards & certifications.

Keep in mind how you describe the roles and try to align it to the role you are applying for. Are you applying for a customer-facing role that will consist of group work? This is your opportunity to identify and describe your experiences that have been customer facing and/or worked in group settings.

Skills, Interests, and More

Do you participate and/or have leadership experience with clubs and volunteering? List those! Include any relevant skills and tools you have used to communicate and collaborate. Do you speak other languages than the job requires? Additionally, list out other major interests you have. You'd be surprised how often those are asked about during an interview.

Resume Tips

• Education goes on top - include your expected graduation month and year. Yes, this needs to be repeated.
• Grade Point Average (GPA) matters less than you think. Include it if you want, but for some companies they look at much more besides that.
• List your experience in chronological order - include dates and use correct verb tense
• Keep it up to date - update your resume as things change. Especially as the school year goes on, you may have updates to your projects, research, and experiences.
• Keep it relevant - Convey the skills and experiences relevant to the job which you're applying for.
• Highlight your leadership skills - share details related to leadership, collaboration, drive, and personal passions. And interview tip: while leadership can be important employers may want to see how you can individually contribute as well
• Keep your resume design simple - avoid using multiple colors, complicated fonts, or column formatting. Make it as easy to read as possible.
• Have others review it - have your career advisor, friend, mentor, or career coach review your resume for typos and content recommendations. Additionally, have them see if they can see all your corrections and notes in there. You don't want to send that copy to employers.