Complete example: a business student seeking an internship
This is a fictional example. All people, institutions, employers and achievements below are invented for illustration. Replace every detail with your own experience.
Alex Morgan
Business student · Bristol
alex.morgan@example.com
Profile
Business management student seeking a marketing internship. Experience organising student events, analysing a course survey and helping customers in a part-time retail role. Comfortable turning research into clear spreadsheets and short presentations.
Education
BA Business Management · Westbridge University
September 2024–June 2027, expected
Relevant coursework: marketing research, business statistics and project management.
Course project
Campus café research · Marketing research module
January–March 2026
- Worked in a team of four to design a survey about students’ café choices and collected 62 voluntary responses.
- Cleaned the spreadsheet, grouped answers by visit frequency and produced three charts for the final presentation.
- Explained the limits of the small campus sample and proposed two ideas the café could test before changing its menu.
Volunteering
Events volunteer · Westbridge Business Society
October 2025–present
- Prepared room bookings, sign-up forms and reminder messages for three student speaker events.
- Maintained the attendance list and shared a short handover so another volunteer could run registration.
Employment
Retail assistant · Meadow Lane Books
June 2024–present · Part-time
- Help customers find books, check stock and place orders, explaining delivery estimates before payment.
- Record collection orders and follow up with a colleague when an item is delayed.
- Complete closing checklists and leave clear notes about unresolved customer requests for the next shift.
Skills
Excel: sorting, filters, basic formulas and charts. PowerPoint: concise presentation slides. Research: survey design and summary writing. Event administration: bookings, attendance lists and volunteer handovers.
What to learn from this example
The profile names a direction. “Seeking a marketing internship” helps the reader understand the selection of evidence. For an operations placement, Alex could foreground the booking process, checklists and spreadsheet work instead. The underlying facts would stay the same.
Education has useful detail. The expected graduation date makes the student’s availability clearer. Only relevant modules are listed; the CV does not reproduce the whole course catalogue. Add a grade only if it is accurate and appropriate to the application, and label predicted results clearly.
The project distinguishes team work from individual work. The survey belonged to a team, while cleaning the spreadsheet and making charts describe Alex’s contribution. The sample size gives context, and acknowledging its limits shows care without pretending it was a professional research study.
Part-time work earns its place. Customer conversations and shift handovers can support an internship application even when the shop’s industry differs from the target employer. The bullets explain the responsibilities rather than simply claiming “excellent communication.”
Adapt it to your own application
- Replace the sample course project with work you can explain, such as a lab assignment, group presentation, coding project or design brief.
- Use a heading that identifies the context: “Course projects,” “Volunteering” or “Employment.” An unpaid role is still useful evidence when it is labelled accurately.
- Remove the employment section if you have no paid work. Give more detail to a relevant project or responsibility instead.
- Choose skills you have used. If you list a tool, mention the task you completed with it rather than assigning yourself an unexplained percentage.
- Keep links and contact details current, then read the exported PDF at normal size to check spacing and line breaks.
A short, focused first CV is enough when it contains the evidence needed for the role. If you are struggling to find material, the no-experience CV guide has a practical evidence exercise. When the wording is ready, choose a CV template that leaves it easy to read.