Over the course of your college career, you’ve learned new concepts, developed marketable skills, and planted the first seeds of a thriving professional network. While you may be ready to contribute to a workplace, you need eye-catching ways to differentiate yourself from the competition and stand out to potential employers.
That’s where Stukent Simternships™ come in — if you’ve done a Simternship, you can use your experiences to have conversations with employers that other candidates can’t. Not only do Simternships provide robust, hands-on experience in your chosen field (and beyond), but they also prove that you’ve put your knowledge to work. A Simternship experience on your resume shows employers that you can bring real, actionable skills and insights to their teams from day one.
Want to know how you can highlight your Simternship experience and stand out from the crowd? Read on for some great tips and tricks from the Stukent team!
1. Start with a List
A Stukent Simternship asks you to step into real-world workplaces and situations, which means you’ve done many of the day-to-day tasks that appear on entry-level job descriptions. Take a moment to list all the activities you did in the Simternship, whether large or small.
Hint: You can find bulleted lists of your Simternship’s activities (or learning objectives) on the Scenario pages at the beginning of each round.
For example, if you participated in the Intro to Business Simternship, you’ve gotten a holistic look at the different departments that drive a business. You can highlight tasks like selecting recruitment strategies for HR, addressing buyer objections in sales, and recommending buyer personas in marketing.
Human Resources
- Select recruitment strategies to increase the number of high-quality applicants
- Select employee benefits to improve employee satisfaction
- Identify ideal candidates for open positions
Sales
- Choose on-brand retailers to maximize profit
- Create value propositions and record elevator pitches
- Provide constructive feedback for elevator pitches
- Address buyer objections
Marketing
- Recommend buyer personas that align with marketing strategies
- Recommend marketing concepts to target buyer personas
- Create positioning statements that target buyer personas
- Allocate ad spend for marketing campaigns
Not only does this give you a list of tasks and responsibilities to add to your resume, but it can also help you analyze job postings for the perfect fit, too. As you review job descriptions, look for advertisements where your Simternship experience (and real-world experience!) matches the position’s duties and responsibilities.
Next, you can use your Simternship to show potential employers what you’ve done and to demonstrate the impact you can have on their organization!
2. Collect Key Metrics and KPIs
Document the key performance indicators (KPIs) that showcase the impact of your work during the Simternship. All Stukent Simternships are auto-graded and provide you with feedback at the end of each round, so you can easily show future employers the impact that your work had, even in the context of a simulated work environment.
Show off the reach of your social media campaign in the Social Media Simternship …
Display how you’ve learned to clean, transform, and visualize data in the Marketing Simternship or Business Analytics Simternship …
Or illustrate how you’ve developed workplace communication skills with the Business Communication Simternship!
With your Simternship, you have a unique opportunity to show future employers that you know how to apply classroom concepts to real-life situations in an effective, impactful way.
Now that you’ve collected your KPIs and Simternship tasks, you’re ready to add these items to your resume!
3. Add Your Simternship to Your Resume
A Stukent Simternship is a powerful differentiator for a new graduate’s resume — not only does it help round out your experience, but it gives you unique talking points for interviews, too.
List your Simternship under the Education section of your resume. Format the entry for your Simternship like you would an entry for your Work Experience section: include the name of the Simternship, the dates you started and completed the simulation, the tasks you completed, and any KPIs you would like potential employers to see. If your Simternship included a professional certification, be sure to list that as well.
Once you’ve completed your resume, don’t forget to add your Simternship experience to your LinkedIn profile!
4. Share Your Simternship Experience on LinkedIn
LinkedIn gives you a great platform to showcase the highlights of your professional education, including your Simternship.
Some Stukent Simternships include professional certifications. To add a certification to your LinkedIn profile, navigate to “Add profile section” and “Recommended,” where you’ll find an option to “Add licenses & certifications.” Even if your Simternship did not include professional certification, you may add it as an entry under the “Education” section, just like you would a degree or diploma.
You may also choose to highlight specific projects in your Simternship under the “Add projects” section, which allows you to discuss your goals, strategies, and achievements in more depth and detail.
With your finished resume and updated LinkedIn profile, it’s time to start applying for your first job out of college!
5. Talk About Your Simternship in Your Interview
Your Simternship allows you to have conversations with hiring managers that other graduates can’t because it provides you with realistic, hands-on experience. Your Simternship doesn’t ask you to make coffee or do other menial tasks — you’ll be able to speak confidently and authoritatively about the real-world work you’ve done.
To have the best chance at impressing an employer, you’ll need to spend some time preparing for your interview. Research the company to see if you would be a good cultural fit — at the very least, you’ll want to know about its history, mission, and products or services. Next, review the job description and identify how your skills align with the job requirements. Consider how you can use your Simternship experience to illustrate your aptitude for each requirement.
For example, if you’re applying for a position as a social media manager, you may see a job requirement such as, “Manage and curate content across various social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.” That one’s easy — you created lots of content and posts in your Social Media Simternship, right?
But what about “Track and analyze social media metrics to assess the success of campaigns and adjust strategies accordingly”? Well, you’ve done that, too! At the end of each round of your Social Media Simternship, you received a detailed, in-depth report of your campaign’s performance. Next, you took those metrics and used them to improve your social media strategies. Your experience in these areas is authentic, allowing you to have engaging conversations with potential employers.
BONUS! Do a Simternship in Another Subject
Unlike a standard internship, you don’t need to apply for a Simternship. Whether you’re a marketing major, a business major, or an accounting major, you can get hands-on experience in more than 30 different subjects and specialties.
Perhaps you’ll do the Supply Chain Simternship as a marketing major, the Entrepreneurship Simternship as a communications major, or the Crisis Communication Simternship as an accounting major. By doing a Simternship in a different subject, you can give yourself a more holistic perspective on how different departments within an organization interact with and affect one another. Additionally, you’ll develop the soft skills employers want, such as critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, adaptability, and more.
Talk to your professors about getting more Simternships incorporated into your courses! It’s easy to get started with the help of a Stukent course consultant.
But Don’t Just Take It From Us …
Here’s what a few of our former students have said about their Simternship experience!
“I love that I was given the opportunity to put my knowledge into practice and challenge myself. It was an awesome experience to be able to analyze a new target market and launch a product.” — Dayana C. | Student
“Simternships in the classroom are the way to go! The best activities [in Mimic Professional Selling] were the videos we had to create — it felt very ‘real world’ and applicable!” — Gabriel E. | Student
“The Simternship provides great real-world experience in running ad campaigns and optimizing them for SEO. I am looking forward to continuing work with the simulation throughout this class!” — Brad D. | Student
“The best thing about the Simternship is being able to try things … and make mistakes now before I do it in real life with real money.” — Juan C. | Student
“I loved how it was closer to real-life marketing and not just learning principles out of a textbook!” — Nate B. | Student
At Stukent®, we give you the engaging, easy-to-use educational tools you need to prepare for the 21st-century workforce. We hope our simulations and courseware don’t just help you build the skills you need for success, but also help you stand out and land your dream job. We wish you the best of luck in your academic journey and look forward to hearing about your successes in the future!
Stukent is here to help educators help students help the world. To learn more about our first-in-the-world Simternships and courseware, or to get FREE instructor access to our products, visit our website.
