Give the internship a standard experience entry
An internship is experience, whether it was paid or unpaid. List the organization, location, your internship title, and the month-and-year date range in the same clear format you use for other roles. That gives a reader an honest, easy-to-follow timeline.
Use an Experience section when the internship is central to your application, or a more specific heading such as Research Experience or Marketing Experience when that makes the relevant work easier to find. Do not hide a useful internship under a vague catch-all heading just because it was short-term.
Describe the work, not the program label
Write short bullets about your own contribution: a research task completed, a customer process you supported, a report prepared, an event coordinated, a feature tested, or an analysis delivered. Start with a direct action verb and include the tools, audience, scope, or result that makes the work understandable.
Choose accomplishments that fit the job you want, but keep every claim specific to what you actually did. Avoid filling the entry with the internship's general mission or a list of duties that could describe any intern.
Put the most relevant internship in the clearest place
List entries in reverse chronological order within a section, then use separate experience headings only when they help the reader see a useful pattern. For example, a student seeking a research role might place a research internship before unrelated part-time work while keeping dates and titles accurate.
Before applying, compare the internship bullets with the role's requirements and keep the two or three examples that give the best truthful evidence of your fit. You do not need to make an internship sound like a permanent job; a precise account of real work is more credible.
Sources consulted
This guide is an original synthesis of the following career guidance. Read the source material for its full context.