Your resume can be the FIRST impression to a dietetic internship or RD program director; make it count! Apply these essential tips to your resume before submitting DICAS.

Formatting

You want to make your resume look as professional as possible. DI directors have a lot of applications to go through, meaning you need your resume to be organized in a way where your content is concise and easy to read. They only have a few minutes and don’t have time to be searching back and forth to find more information about you.

Here are our basic tips to format your resume:

• – 1 page ONLY – nothing more, nothing less
• – Use a readable font with 10-12 point font size 
• – Make your margins an appropriate length; we suggest 0.5″ margins 
• – Use headers and bullet points (no periods in the end!)

Header

This includes your full name, address, email, and phone number

Here is additional information:

• – Don’t add unnecessary information such as age, height, weight 
• – Use a professional email. For example, use Jennifer.westerkamp@gmail.com, not jennyloveslife817@hotmail.com
• – Make sure your voicemail is professional
• – Use your current address
• – If you have one, add your online portfolio as well (some internships require you to make one)

Sections to include

Education

• – This section should be at the top of the resume
• – It’s not mandatory to add in your GPA, but if it’s >3.0, consider adding it
• – Include the anticipated graduation date

Experiences

• – Include experiences that are relevant to the internship, such as dietetics-related volunteer positions and unpaid internships
  • -Work experience such as being a waitress at a restaurant or a cashier at your local grocery store is worth noting, too as customer service is a great skill to have 
• – Use different action verbs at the beginning of each bullet point
• – Speak in the past tense in past experiences and present tense in present experiences
• – Quantify your descriptions when possible
  • For example, I developed and maintained a computerized system for tracking the production of six dietitians in a 550,000/year practice. 
• – Organize the experiences into chronological order; don’t forget to add dates
• – Do not add class projects or labs to the resume

Certification

• – Add certification or training that is nutrition-related, such as ServSafe Food Handler

Skills

• – Remove Microsoft Office skill; this is assumed
• – Focus on skills that relate to the internship you are applying to
  • Add skills that interns are taught that you have already been exposed to

Finalizing

Grammar

• – No periods at the end of bullet points
• – Remove abbreviations
• – None of the following: /, Etc., Ie. 
• – Spell dietitian correctly 
• – Don’tcapitalize general titles 
• – Do not capitalize nutrition or dietetics unless in a program name 

Editing

• – Ask someone to look over your resumes such as your peers, professor, or advisor
• – Use your college resources (look to see if there is an upcoming resume workshop!) 

Additional resume tools

Check out our other blogs for more tips:

Taking Your Resume from Average to AWESOME

The Resume Checklist You Must Use Before You Submit DICAS