How to make your resume stand out, according to a Harvard student who received internship offers from Microsoft and Goldman Sachs

Jessica Pointing

Get specific, says Harvard junior Jessica Pointing

If you want to snag a job or an internship at a top company, you'd better have a stellar résumé.

Jessica Pointing, a Harvard junior who won internship offers from companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, previously told Business Insider about how to keep your résumé from getting thrown out altogether.

Here, Pointing - who features educational and career advice for high school and college students on her website, the Optimize Guide - explained to Business Insider how to write a killer CV:

1. Get to the results

Don't treat your résumé as an opportunity to just list all your past work experiences.

"Include how you impacted the company or organization you worked for," Pointing says. "This is important because many people only describe their past jobs. What's more important is demonstrating how you contributed to that job."

2. Throw around numbers

"It's important to quantify your achievements when possible," she says. "For example, if you saved the company $10,000, include that number instead of saying, 'I was an exceptional employee.' Including something tangible, concrete, and quantifiable really helps."

3. Never, ever embellish

"Don't include anything that you are uncomfortable talking about during an interview," Pointing says. "In your résumé, you may want to embellish it and include, for example, all these languages that you speak and all these programming languages you understand. In an interview, the interviewer might ask about any of that."

Pointing says she once included list of classes she had taken on her résumé, including a biology course.

"My interviewer had a PhD. in biology, so he started asking me about the technical aspects of the course," she says. "I had taken it a year ago and I didn't remember all the details."