11 ways to revamp your resume with study abroad experience

It’s summer internship application season — time to get those resumes in order!

If you have spent time studying abroad, this is your chance to shine and highlight the skills and experiences that make you extra-special and set you apart from your competitors.

No matter where you are in your study abroad experience — just starting to think about it, already diving off the deep end or wrapping your experience up — here are some tasks you should undertake to polish up your resume.

Pre-studying abroad — setting yourself up for success

1. Plan to study abroad. (Yes, I know this one’s obvious, but still most important!)

2. List goals for what you would like to accomplish — skills you want to gained, other things you want to learn, etc.

3. Share those goals with your friends to keep yourself accountable.

4. Bribe yourself if you accomplish your goals. Treat yourself to a spa day or a night out. You deserve it after that hard, semester-long work.

While you're studying abroad—the real-life experience

5. Study the language (it’s the most marketable skill you can gain during your global adventure).

6. Get an internship to add some international spice to your work experience.

7. Broaden your horizons and meet new people you would otherwise never meet (who can help you get a job abroad).

Post-studying abroad — the actual 'putting it on your resume' part

8. Reflect on how this experience changed you as a person and gave you new skills. Use this opportunity to tweak your objective on your resume if your study abroad experience has altered your goals.

9. Create a separate sub-heading for your study abroad experience under the education section on your resume. It is different from your other educational experience and it deserves the spotlight in its own space.

10. Highlight your new skills. So, you just had an adventure for a semester abroad, out of your comfort zone. What did you learn? You just had a new life experience that lasted a decent amount of time; odds are you have some new skills that your future employers would love to hear about. Maybe you learned a language, or how to adapt, etc. Either way, add your newfound skills to your resume.

11. Most importantly, understand how your real experiences relate to those skills that you have gained. That way, when you make it to the next big step, you can articulate that connection in an interview!

Kylee Borger is a student at NYU Shanghai and is a spring 2015 Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.