Finance intern resume example

What recruiters look for

• GPA and school up top: finance recruiting still screens on GPA, often at 3.5 or higher for banking. Put it on the education line where nobody has to hunt for it.
• Technical basics: accounting, Excel and valuation. A student fund, a case competition or a modeling course proves you can do them.
• Real interest in finance: stock pitches, an investment club, an earlier internship or a market-facing job answer “why finance?” before the interview.
• Care with money and detail: cash handling, treasurer roles, reconciliations. Small numbers count at this stage.
• Clear dates: your expected graduation month and year, so recruiters know which internship class you belong to.

Writing the summary

Many finance students skip the summary, and that is fine. If you include one, keep it to three lines: school, year and majors, your strongest finance experience, and the internship you want with its season and year. Recruiters sort applicants by class year, so say it.

Bullet points that work

Strong lines for this role, beyond the ones in the example. Borrow the shape and put in your own numbers.

• Built a discounted cash flow model for a mid-cap retailer that the student fund used to size a $25,000 position.
• Prepared comparable company tables for 3 pitch books during a 10-week boutique advisory internship.
• Matched 400 vendor invoices to purchase orders for the finance team of a 200-person manufacturer, finding $8,300 in duplicate charges.
• Placed 2nd of 22 teams in a regional valuation case competition, presenting a buy recommendation to 4 bankers.
• Rebuilt a nonprofit’s weekly cash forecast in Excel, cutting preparation time from 3 hours to 45 minutes.
• Wrote 12 one-page market updates for the investment club newsletter, read by about 300 students.
• Researched 30 private companies in PitchBook to build the buyer list for a lower middle market sale.
• Tutored 15 students a semester in introductory financial accounting through the business school’s peer program.
• Closed the student association’s year $600 under its $9,000 budget as treasurer.

Skills to list

Certifications and licenses worth listing

• Securities Industry Essentials (SIE): the only FINRA exam you can take without a firm sponsoring you. Passing it before an internship shows commitment and saves your employer a step.
• Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC): a self-paced course many universities offer on campus terminals; a small but real signal of interest.
• Modeling course certificates: list a completed program only if you can walk an interviewer through a model you built.

Length and format

One page, always. Order: education (with GPA, expected graduation and relevant courses), experience including internships and part-time jobs, activities such as a student fund or case competitions, then skills, licenses and languages. Drop high school by your second year of college.

Common mistakes

• Leaving GPA off. Recruiters assume the worst; if it is 3.3 or above, show it, and add a major GPA if that is higher.
• Writing “Microsoft Office” as a skill. Say what you can do in Excel: build a DCF, use INDEX-MATCH, make a pivot table.
• Listing club membership without saying what you did. Name the stocks you pitched, the fund size and what happened.
• Dropping part-time jobs because they are not finance. Balancing drawers and training staff show reliability.
• A colorful, heavily designed layout for banking applications. Banks expect a plain, one-column page like this one.