How do you describe a research internship on a resume?

You describe a research internship on a resume throughout each section - touching on it in the profile objective and work experience and demonstrating it further in core skills and achievements sections. As any good researcher knows, it's all about how you present the data.

Consider your research internship experience as key data about yourself that you're presenting to the hiring manager. You don't want to list the data in one place. Rather your entire resume should tell its story.

There are many ways to describe research internship experience on a resume. Common tasks related to working a research internship include:

• Assisting the research department with research tasks

• Gathering and delivering the information needed by the department

• Drafting documents

• Conducting survey

• Using various research tools to accomplish the research task

• Filing all data about the project and executing all other research work as assigned by their supervisors

Before you get started, we recommend that you read through a few internship descriptions from different desirable companies and take note of the skills they tend to ask for and the key terms and phrases they use to describe the role.

Throughout your resume, be sure to touch on those same key phrases and skills. You can also use your network to help you think about what your internship resume should include.

You can introduce your research internship experience in your profile objective. We recommend only mentioning it in the form of an achievement.

For example, "Received award for Outstanding Intern from the Society's President."

In the work experience section, you can detail your time as a research intern. Begin each bullet point with an action verb and, whenever possible, focus on an accomplishment rather than just listing your responsibilities.

For example, "Collaborated in a cross-functional team of 5 interns (incl. software engineers and program managers) to develop an educational online learning curriculum."

Finally, include a list of hard and soft skills related to your research internship experience. These skills should be touched on throughout the resume.

Skills for a research internship resume include:

• Microsoft Office Suite

  • Specifically, Microsoft Excel

• Data Entry

• Computer Skills