Internship Resume Format for Indian Students

An internship resume should be one page, in plain text that a screening tool can read, with your education first and your best proof of ability second. If you have never worked anywhere, that proof is a project, a moot, a published piece or a society role, not an objective statement.

Most students lose a recruiter in the first ten seconds, not because they lack experience but because the page is hard to scan. Here is a layout that works on a phone screen and in a printout.

The order of sections

1. Header. Name, city, mobile number, a professional email address, and a LinkedIn link if the profile is complete. Skip the photo, date of birth, father’s name and religion. None of these helps your application, and some employers see them as a red flag for a student who has not read any guidance.
2. Education. Course, college, university, expected year of graduation, and your result to date. List the most recent first. Add Class 12 in one line only if you are in your first or second year and have little else.
3. Experience. Past internships, volunteering, part time work, a family business you helped with. Anything where you were responsible for something.
4. Projects, publications and activities. This is where first years win. A research paper, a case comment, a moot, a debate, an event you organised, a small app you built.
5. Skills. Real ones only: legal research platforms you have used, Excel, Word, a language you can draft in, basic coding if you have it.
6. Achievements. Ranks, scholarships, selections. Two or three lines.

How to write one line

Every bullet should say what you did, how, and what came of it. Compare these two:

• Weak: “Worked on research for a professor.”
• Better: “Researched case law on anticipatory bail for a faculty article; compiled 25 judgments into a table that was cited in the final draft.”

The second one is checkable. A recruiter can ask about it in an interview, and you can answer. Never write a number you cannot defend. If you do not know how many judgments you read, say “a set of judgments” or leave the figure out.

Start each bullet with a verb in the past tense for finished work and the present tense for current roles. Keep each bullet to one or two lines. If a bullet runs to three lines, it is probably two points.

If you have no experience at all

You still have material. Think about the last two years and write down every time you produced something or ran something:

• A project submission that got good feedback.
• A class presentation you led.
• A club, society or NSS role.
• A blog post, article or social media page where you explained something.
• A course with an assessment, with the platform and the date.

Put three or four of these under “Projects and activities”. That is a legitimate resume for a first year. What matters is that each entry shows an action and an outcome.

Formatting that survives screening

Many companies and some larger firms use software that parses a resume before a person sees it. Tables, text boxes, columns, icons and graphics can break that parsing and scramble your content. Use a single column, standard headings such as “Education” and “Experience”, one common font at a readable size, and save as PDF unless the posting asks for Word. Name the file sensibly, for example “Firstname_Lastname_Resume.pdf”, not “Resume final 2 new.pdf”.

Keep margins reasonable and leave white space. A dense page with tiny font is harder to read than a page that leaves some of the bottom empty.

Tailor it, lightly

You do not need a different resume for every application, but you do need to change a few lines. If you are applying to a litigation chamber, lead with moots, drafting and any court visits. If you are applying to a corporate team, lead with the company law course, a deal summary, or a commercial law project. Mirror the language of the posting where it is honest to do so. If the ad says “legal research and drafting”, and you did both, use those words.

Mistakes that cost you the shortlist

• An objective statement that says nothing. “Seeking a challenging position to grow” tells the reader nothing. Delete it, or replace it with a two line summary that names your course, year and the kind of work you want.
• Typos. Read it aloud, then ask someone else to read it. A drafting internship rejects a resume with spelling mistakes quickly.
• Inflated claims. Interviewers ask follow-up questions. If you list “drafted a writ petition”, be ready to explain who the parties were and what the relief was.
• Skills lists with ratings. Five stars for “MS Word” help no one.
• Two pages with one page of content. Cut until it fits.
• An unprofessional email address. Create a simple one based on your name.

A short template you can copy

Header: your name in larger text, then city, phone, email, LinkedIn on one line.

Education: “BA LL.B. (Hons), Second Year, [College], [University], expected 20XX. Result so far: [CGPA or percentage].”

Projects: three bullets, each starting with a verb and ending with an outcome.

Activities: two bullets, with your role and the dates.

Skills: one line, grouped, such as “Research: SCC Online, Manupatra. Software: Word, Excel. Languages: English, Hindi.”

Check before you send

Read the posting once more and confirm the resume answers what it asks for. Confirm the file opens on a phone. Confirm the email you are sending from is the one on the resume. Send a short cover note in the body of the email, not just an attachment with no text. If you want a practice piece to add to the “Projects” section, Lexfolio’s free virtual internship produces published writing you can list, though you should only list it once it has actually been published.

One honest limit: formats vary by employer and by country, and there is no single template that every recruiter prefers. When a firm gives its own format, follow it exactly.