Accounting Intern Resume for Internship [Example]

As you sit down to write your accounting internship resume with next to no experience, it might feel as if you have zero assets to allocate—

But that’s not true, is it? What about all of your skills and your education? Here’s how to turn what you do have into an accounting intern resume that accrues every recruiter’s interest. 

In this guide:

• An accounting intern resume sample better than most.
• How to make the perfect accounting intern job description for resumes.
• How to write a resume for accounting internships that stands out.
• Expert tips and examples to boost your chances of landing an accounting internship.

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Accounting Intern Resume Example

Accounting interns are students or recent graduates who take on an entry-level role in the accounting department of a company. An accounting internship resume should show you have the basic accounting skills and knowledge to succeed in the role. 

Here’s how to write an accounting intern resume that’s balanced perfectly: 

1. Format Your Accounting Intern Resume Correctly

When you browse invoices or balance sheets, you know where to look for specific types of information. It makes sense to you that the total amount is on the bottom right, and the customer’s details are somewhere near the top, for instance. 

You want to provide the recruiter with the same level of convenience. If they have to search too long for the information they need on your resume, they likely won’t bother—keep in mind, recruiters often have dozens of resumes to go through every day. 

So, here’s how to format your resume in a way that’s predictable and easy to navigate for the hiring professional: 

Accounting Internship Resume Format

• Use the reverse-chronological layout on your resume—start with most recent experience and move on to older entries. 
• Pick a resume font that’s not distracting and easy to read at 10–12 points. Arial or Georgia will be great choices. Go with a broader font like Verdana if you’re looking to fill more space with your text. 
• Set one-inch margins on your resume to add some white space to the page. Keep line spacing at 1–1.15 for easy reading. 
• Make a resume header for your contact information. You can also use a sidebar or choose a modern resume template that comes with a ready-made format. 
• Include the expected resume sections: objective paragraph, work experience (if you have any), education, key skills, and additional information. If you don’t have any work experience at all, or it’s irrelevant to accounting, you can put your education section above the work experience section, since it’s more important. 

• Avoid including images, tables, or complex graphics—your resume should be 99–100% plain text. 

• Stick to the right resume length for internship applications: one page. 

Unless the job ad asks for a different format, save your resume as a PDF—it’ll look the same on every device and keep your layout looking as intended. 

2. Write an Accounting Internship Resume Objective That Highlights Your Strengths

Rather than delving straight into your experience or details of your education, start your resume with an objective statement that sums up your offer to the employer. 

Yep, that’s right—despite the name (and popular opinion), a resume objective statement is not about what you want to achieve in your career: it’s about what you want to achieve for the employer. 

Here’s how to structure yours to get your key points across: 

1. Start with an adjective that describes you (efficient, reliable, detail-oriented, self-motivated, fast-learning)
2. Add your job title (accounting intern, accounting student, accounting graduate, final-year accounting student)
3. Say how you’ll help the employer if hired (eager to apply my skills and knowledge towards supporting XYZ Company’s accounting department in an efficient, accurate manner)
4. Mention a few of your best achievements—they can come from your education, previous internships, other jobs, volunteering, or projects (maintaining a 3.85 GPA, made the Dean’s List X times, during a previous internship, received 100% positive feedback from supervisors and colleagues)

If writing your resume profile is starting to look like a major time-sink, skip it for now and come back to it at the end. It’ll be easier to identify your strengths once you’ve put them all down on paper in the other sections of your application. 

3. Describe Your Existing Work Experience and Pick the Right Accounting Intern Skills

Alright, don’t worry—

If you have no experience at all, that’s fine too. Employers hiring interns know that applicants are unlikely to have work experience, that’s kind of part of the deal. 

With zero experience, you’ll obviously skip this section altogether. 

If 100% of your limited experience is unrelated, it makes sense to put your education first and talk about your accounting knowledge before you discuss non-accounting jobs. 

The rule of thumb for the order of sections on your resume is simple: the more relevant it is, the higher up it goes. What qualifies you more for the internship: 3 years of studying accounting, or 2 years of working as a barista? 

But if you do have relevant work experience, here’s how to present it on your resume—

First of all, at this stage in your career, anything that involved working—paid or unpaid—can go in your resume’s work experience section. That means previous internships, volunteer experience, and unrelated jobs—treat all of them as part of your job history. Just make it clear what type of experience each entry was (e.g., if you volunteered, use the word ‘volunteer’ as part of the job title). 

So, in your work experience section, you could have your previous internship, a couple of years of volunteering at a local shelter, and your part-time job in a grocery store. All fair game. 

Now, for each of these experiences, you’ll need to write a job description. For best results, target your resume to the job ad—you want to make your experience as relevant and useful for the position as possible. 

Here’s how: 

1. Read the job ad again and look for specific skills and tasks that it mentions. Those will be your resume keywords. 
2. Brainstorm examples of when you used these skills to complete tasks or achieve objectives in previous jobs. This way, you can make even unrelated jobs seem relevant. For example, if the internship requires teamwork skills, and you can provide an example of when you worked as part of a team in, say, a retail job, you’re proving you have the required skills already. 
3. Turn each example into an achievement statement to put on your resume, aiming for up to 6 bullets per role. Start each bullet with a verb and try to include plenty of numbers to quantify your accomplishments. 

By the way, keywords are important for another reason, beyond impressing the recruiter: 

Most companies nowadays use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) software to parse resumes and score their relevance. By including more keywords from the ad, you’re effectively making your resume appear more relevant to the software that decides whether to pass it on to a recruiter. Pretty important, right? 

So, squeeze in a few more of those keywords in your resume’s skills section. Pick up to 10 most relevant ones—and if you need inspiration, check out this list: 

Accounting Intern Resume Skills

• Analytical thinking
• Data analysis
• Preparing financial reports
• Creating invoices
• Communication skills
• Data entry
• Filing
• Maintaining financial records
• Record-keeping
• Computer skills
• Bookkeeping software
• QuickBooks
• FreshBooks
• Xero
• Wave
• Melio
• Sage
• ZipBooks
• OneUp
• Payroll processing
• Inventory processing
• Stock adjustment
• AP/AR
• Confidentiality
• Attention to detail
• GAAP
• Teamwork
• Following instructions
• Critical thinking skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Time management skills

Expert hint: Keywords are just one aspect of making your resume ATS-friendly—the template/formatting you use is also important. This is why one of the first steps in this guide involved sticking to plain text rather than tables and graphics—ATS needs to be able to read your resume in full, and many ATS solutions can’t handle images or advanced formatting. 

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4. Make the Most of Your Education

Your education is among your top assets right now, so it makes sense to invest some time into perfecting the way you describe it on your resume. 

A resume education section for entry-level candidates will include two key parts: 1. basic details of your studies, and 2. bullet points describing your achievements and activities. 

For the first part, state the name and level of your degree, along with the name of the college and your expected graduation date. This makes it clear that you’re still studying. You can also put ‘in progress’ next to the program name if you want. 

The second step offers more flexibility: it depends on your academic strengths. You can list some of the following: 

• Relevant coursework (Psst… it’s a good way to smuggle in some resume keywords. Just saying.)
• Academic achievements, like a high (3.7+) GPA, getting a scholarship, winning an award, making the Dean’s List, or graduating with honors
• Extracurricular activities and/or memberships—belonging to an accounting- or finance-related club or student organization shows you’re serious about your chosen career path
• Projects and any other activities you feel are worth mentioning

The idea is to show your skills and your potential to succeed. If you have lots of information you could include, consult the job ad once more for the most relevant skills and knowledge. 

Finally, if you’re still in the process of obtaining your first degree, mention your high school diploma, too—you only need to state where and when you graduated. 

5. Complete Your Resume for Accounting Interns With Optional Sections

Approaching the bottom line—

Here are a few more things you can include on your resume—they’re optional, but it’s worth adding at least one or two if you can: 

• Licenses and certifications relevant to accounting
• Foreign language proficiencies
• Memberships in professional associations
• Projects, publications, conferences, and public appearances
• Hobbies and interests, ideally relevant to the job in some way

One more thing—Make sure to write a cover letter to send with your resume. It’s another opportunity to show your skills to the recruiter, plus it shows you care—which is way more important (and rarer) than you might think! 

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Key Points

Let’s see what it all adds up to—Here’s how to write a resume for accounting interns: 

• Apply the standard formatting to your resume to ensure it immediately makes sense to the recruiter. 
• Open with an accounting intern resume objective statement that proves you have the right skills for the job. 
• Build your work experience section around relevant skills and achievements. If you have no experience or it has nothing to do with accounting, list your education first. 
• For your education section, add a few bullet points detailing your college achievements and activities. 
• Write a cover letter that highlights your strengths and shows you care about landing this particular internship. 

Thanks for reading! Do you have any lingering questions about how to write an accounting intern resume? Perhaps you’re not sure where or how to list your experience? Let us know in the comments section below! 

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