Career · 2026-08-22 · 13 min read

Internship and grant CVs: what to put when you have no contract yet

Dissertation, internships, volunteering, and courses as bullets you can defend. How to rewrite the file you already have, not a blank template. ClarCV.

An internship CV is not won by inventing a job. It is won by turning what you already did — dissertation, credit-bearing internship, clubs, a summer in hospitality — into bullets with a verb, a tool, and scope. People searching “CV for a grant” often have a four-page Europass or a Canva file with a large photo and the degree in small type. A company posting internships on a job board uses the same ATS as everyone else. The file has to parse.

This guide is not “how to make a CV from scratch”. It is what to raise, what to lower, and what to cut in the document you already have. Siblings: first job and CV with no experience. The angle here is internships and grants (university and company programmes). ClarCV: upload the PDF, analysis flags density and structure, regenerate one A4 page with real text.

You will not dress a class assignment as “analyst at Deloitte”. You will title it honestly: “Marketing internship, Agency X (Feb–May 2026)”. Lying dies on the first call to your tutor.

Section order when there is no permanent contract

A 3-line summary (degree, focus, one fact). Then the experience closest to the role: internship, applied dissertation, project, volunteering with a clear function. Education with a grade only if it is a magnet (prize, ranking). Languages with CEFR: on international grants A1–C2 weighs more than a hobby. Skills: tools you used, not “Office and teamwork” with no proof.

• Internship: employer, month/year dates, 3–4 bullets (what you touched: CRM, Excel, warehouse, classroom).
• Dissertation: short title, your role, method or stack, outcome (grade, prototype, dataset).
• Course projects or hackathons: problem, your part, tool, delivery.
• Summer / extra jobs: yes, if they show shifts, till, languages, responsibility.
• Courses: only those you can defend in 30 seconds; the rest in online courses on a CV.

Before: “I collaborated on various department tasks and acquired transferable skills.” After: “Updated 80 product records in Prestashop and prepared the weekly stock report in Excel for the store manager.” Same three-month internship. Only one version survives an e-commerce grant screen.

Grants, Erasmus, and the long Europass

Some university calls still want Europass. If the spec requires it, use it. If the grant is at a private company, a three-page Europass usually loses. Guide: Europass or a modern CV. Extract achievements into one parseable page. Erasmus: the semester is language and autonomy; one bullet is enough, not a travel diary.

Motivation letter: if they ask, it is another file. The CV is not the letter. The sending email can be three paragraphs: emailing your CV.

What you must not inflate

Do not turn “I attended meetings” into “I led commercial strategy”. Do not list Python if you only ran the lecturer’s notebook. Do not list 15 Udemy courses. Grant screeners see hundreds of identical PDFs; the winner has two facts and a file that opens on a phone. Photo: depends on country; do not let the photo eat your name. National ID: off the PDF.

Regenerate the file, not a blank CV

If you already have a faculty Word file, use it as raw material. In ClarCV you upload it, see clarity and structure, apply an ATS template. Free: 3 analyses and 2 downloads / 30 days, no card. Pro €7/month. Keep real dates. The model must not invent an internship at Inditex.