Hey! This article is for the benefit of students pursuing Chemical Engineering and intending to apply for an internship in the core and research fields. By the end of this, you’ll have a solid idea as to what can be included in your CV and how to boost your chances of bagging the intern of your choice. For a wholesome picture on the CV making process, you should first read the General CV Article.
Chemical Engineering is one of the most versatile branches in engineering. This can be evidenced by the fact that all of the material sciences, process control, reaction engineering, modeling and simulation, numerical analysis and optimization are under its ambit. In fact, in most of the oil-manufacturing countries, chemical engineers are the highest paid engineers. So the decision to go for a core/ research internship is certainly not a bad one!
We begin with your introduction. You need to mention your name, department and your institute (that is, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi). Do not forget to mention contact details (which include your contact no. and email address). If you have a webpage of your own, mention it too.
The next tab is Academics, which is followed by Scholastic Achievements. In the latter, you should highlight all major academic achievements (JEE percentile, NTSE, KVPY, Olympiads, Merit Certificates).
If you were in the top 7% of your department at any point, mention it too. You can be sure that you’ll catch the recruiter’s eye if you use your bold and italics wisely in this section(Turn over to the General CV Article).
The next tab is Relevant Courses next (Numerical Methods, Transport Phenomena, Chemistry of Interfaces etc). For some internships, a particular course might be more relevant the others. Mention these first. For example, if your research internship(or core internship) involves coding, you should mention Numerical Methods in Chemical Engineering first. Most research internships are related to flows and thus, the most internship-relevant courses in the department are those of Transport Phenomena (Fluid Dynamics, Heat Transfer, and Mass Transfer). You have a sizeable advantage if you have any online courses in your kitty that are relevant to the internship. Do mention the source, if this is the case.
Next comes Projects. Second-year students generally don’t have a lot of departmental projects under their belt. The term-paper in CLL 113 comes in as a savior because it gives you a dose of the research world, and the professor you are applying to knows that you are acquainted with the functioning of the world of research. But to make an impact, it is vital that your term-paper is based on a Chemical related field, as this would convey to the reader that you are interested in pursuing a career in the core/research sector.
If you have done a DISA project, mention it. Remember to use boldface to draw attention to opposite skills. These can be followed by the CLN101 project(if any), MCP101 and ELL100 projects you did in the first year.
Then comes Laboratory Experiments. It might seem useless to write the experiments you have done in CML100 or any Lab course, but several of the reactions like hydrolysis of ester and spectrophotometry have many research and industrial applications and writing these emphasizes that you are well-equipped to understand the applications of the reactions. Especially because core internships in companies are often related to industrial applications of reactions and how they can be optimized.
However, do not write all the experiments, only the ones which are significant(Even ELL and PYL Lab experiments can be mentioned).
Technical Skills is the next section. In Chemical Engineering, Matlab and Fortran are the most commonly used programming softwares, because they allow ease of calculations involving matrices of huge orders. It is vital that you are aware familiar with one of these softwares. Mention them if you know how to code in them. For research internships, knowledge of LaTeX is also a plus point because much of the research world is reliant on LaTeX for publishing of research papers, so make sure you mention it.
Next comes Social Service/Internships. Many professors specifically look for this component in the CV, since they want to know whether the values of social service have been imbibed by the applicant. These vouch for your ethics and help in creating a good impression on the reader. Coming to Internships, a person with previous experience always stands a better chance than one without (in the case of core companies), since he is expected to be better adapted to a work environment than an applicant without any work experience.
Lastly, dedicate a small section to PORs and Extra-curricular activities. List only the major achievements/positions since these have little impact on core and research internships.
Keep your CV concise and to the point. The focus should be on details most valued for the internship (Use your bold and italics wisely). Prioritize your points (list your most important points first). The recruiters do not spend time reading each and every one of them till the very end. So, make sure you catch their eye early on. In most cases, it is your CV that will make the first impression, not you, so make your CV as perfect as possible.
We hope this article was useful. All the best for the internship season 🙂
Article by: Namrata Tripathi
Comments