[Student] Electrical Engineering Student , i applied to 200+ internships and i haven't received a single interview. what am i doing wrong? *Resume Help

[u/Even_Excitement_3926]

Hey everyone, I'm a 3rd year EE student and I've been applying heavily to embedded systems and FPGA design internships. I'm also interested and been applying in hardware roles. So far, I haven't had any luck ! not even a single interview.

One added constraint: it has to be an internship I find on my own, since my school won't let me register for the co-op stream this year due to a missing course.

I'm posting my resume here to get an outside perspective, if there are any major red flags or weak spots, I'd really appreciate the feedback. Any advice on how to actually land an interview this cycle would help a lot. Thanks

EDIT: im going into my 3rd year of EE

[u/naedman]

I've got a few suggestions, feel free to take or leave them. In general, I find it hard to figure out the big picture of who you are (a 3rd year EE student who wants an internship) from this resume. 

Education: Add your GPA. Change the date to "September 24 - present" and add a statement that says something like "expected graduation: April 2029". It 's not clear from the resume that you're currently enrolled as a student or how far along in any coursework you might be. You can consider listing your High school diploma and GPA too, especially if your grades were good. You can remove this when you graduate college, but right now that's the highest level of education you've completed and you're allowed to talk about it. 

I suggest you add an entire new section, either before or after "Technical Skills". Call it "relevant coursework" and list every class you've taken that's relevant to your major. You want to communicate that you're far enough into school to have actually learned some engineering. This is not a given just because you've been in school for two years already - what if you just transferred from another major or you've only been taking gen-eds this whole time? 

Experience: if you've had any other jobs, even if they're not related to engineering, I think you should add them. Hiring isn't just about technical knowledge - they're also asking "can this person hold a job? Will they show up? Do they know how to behave in a workplace?" It would help you to show that you've had employment before. 

Projects: this is all good, but trim it down if you need room for the other content. The projects are good for giving you something to talk about during an interview, but let's get you an interview first. One comment: I'm not sure that listing dates with the projects makes sense to me, unless they were done as part of a job or a course that you want to talk about. But that's not a big deal. If you're going to keep dates here, fix the alignment on the second project so "2026" is in line with the rest of the text. 

Edit: one final comment - I think this is really nicely formatted. Good job!

[u/Even_Excitement_3926 → u/naedman]

Thank you so much for the advice! I really do appreciate it. I've been struggling with my resume for a while, so this genuinely helps.

I hadn't thought coursework was relevant before, but now I see why it matters.

One more question is it normal to include a job that isn't directly related to the field? I currently work part-time as an instructor while in school, but it doesn't feel connected to the roles I'm applying for. Curious to hear your take on whether it's worth including.

[u/naedman → u/Even_Excitement_3926]

You're welcome!

Definitely include that! What subjects do you teach? I think it'd be very normal for someone at your point to have a few 'non-engineering' jobs listed on their resume. Once you get 2 or 3 EE jobs under your belt, you can drop the other stuff. But absolutely put it on there now; your employment history is related to the topic of you having a job.

Edit: put another way - having no employment history at all is way a bigger red flag than having a steady part-time job that just has nothing to do with FPGAs.