How to Include an Externship on a Resume — Top Tips

Sharing is caring!

Externships are work experiences that are similar to internships or apprenticeships.

They last for only a day to two months and are focused on observing or reviewing company culture and policies.

Including an externship on your resume requires some adjustments because of these differences. Let’s discuss whether it is necessary to include it in the first place.

 

Should an externship be added to a resume?

An externship should be added to a resume, when you are applying to the same company where you did it. Apart from that, there are only two cases when it should be added. Firstly, if your role during the externship matches the job description. Secondly, if you have little work experience.

Now onto the 4 best ways of including an externship on your resume to show the hiring manager what you achieved through exploring a typical week on the job and applying your academics practically. 

 

How to include an externship experience on a resume – best ways revealed!

 

Use the same format as when listing any other job

When listing work experience, you list your employer, the starting and ending date of your employment, then your role followed by your responsibilities and achievements.

An externship experience is listed in the same format. 

It can be included under the ‘Professional Experience’ section or its own ‘Externship’ section if you did multiple relevant externships and would like to show them all. 

 

Examples:

 

Work Experience

Massachusetts General Hospital | Jan 2018 – Feb 2018

Nurse Extern

• Recorded over 200 patients’ medical history and laboratory blood test results.

• Verified over 30 patients’ health insurance daily. 

 

Hair Club for Men & Women | Sep 2020 – Sep 2020

Hairstylist Extern

• Trained on how to assess which beauty treatments to offer clients based on their hair types by a senior hairstylist.

• Observed a senior hairstylist work with each client in the haircutting, hair coloring and hairstyling processes.

• Cleaned workstations after each client.

Don’t just write ‘Extern’ as your role – be specific!

When mentioning your role as an extern in a particular company, specify what kind of extern you were. 

If you are not sure, call the company and ask what title they used for your position.

It helps the recruiter get an idea of what responsibilities were involved in your role and how you fit in the organization without having to mention it all in the bullet points underneath, especially when you are running out of space on your resume.

It also makes your position look more valuable to the operation of the organization, whereas if it were vague, it would not seem as significant.

 

The most common externs are:

• Medical Assistant Extern
• Dental Clinic Extern
• Nurse Extern 
• Research Extern
• Consultant Extern
• Legal Extern

 

List the relevant and specific responsibilities assigned to you

It is important to use details when describing your tasks and responsibilities.

This gives a clearer picture to the recruiter of what duties you gained experience in and how they relate to what is expected from you based on their job description.

It also demonstrates how well you can handle similar responsibilities and under what circumstances you can succeed. 

Also, it is important to remember when listing your externship duties that you only list the ones relevant to the job description – this goes for work and internship experience, too.

A lot of times, people include all the responsibilities from each of their positions on their resume and end up with more pages than the maximum two-page standard.

Only including what the hiring manager will find valuable will also save you from the risk of them missing or later forgetting something that makes you a good candidate for the job while selecting which ones to call for an interview.

 

Examples:

 

Externships:

 

North End Family | Newark, NJ, USA | Nov 2020 – Dec 2020

Medical Assistant Extern

• Performed front desk duties during the days’ busiest hours.
• Collected ER patients’ information and insurance details.
• Performed ER insurance verification.
• Matched laboratory requisition forms to specimen tubes.

 

Intermountain HealthCare | Layton, Ut, USA | July 2020 – Aug 2020

Medical Assistant Extern

• Cleaned and sterilized medical equipment in the ER rooms.
• Assisted in routine laboratory tests and sample analyses.
• Administered medication as directed by physicians. 
• Transported specimens or fluid samples from assessment rooms to the laboratory.

 

Give examples of the achievements and relevant skills you gained

After listing your externship responsibilities, demonstrate what transferrable skills you gained with the achievements you accomplished in that short amount of time. 

This way, even if your externship was tailored to observing the procedures of one specific organization, you can show the recruiter that you can bring some of that useful knowledge into their company.

When writing examples, be exact with what your achievements resulted in for the company and try to give numerical values.

 

Examples:

 

Work Experience

Private Practice| New York, NY, USA | Jan 2021 – Feb 2021

Winter Consulting Extern

• Practiced client onboarding techniques and successfully made agreements with 5 clients.
• Assisted in the strategy development of 3 important technical plans.
• Prepared 10 financial statements individually.

 

ABC Consulting | Colombus, OH, USA | Nov 2020 – Jan 2021

Management Consulting Extern

• Supported a team of 6 members with developing new revenue stream strategies.
• Conducted citywide market research and competitor analysis.
• Moved 4 patents along to the next clinical trial stage.

 

With these 4 tips in mind, you will be able to sell that externship experience as something valuable to your target company.