Internship and work-study

There are many different ways to include professional experience in your training program, such as Internships, work-study apprenticeship contracts or professional qualification. LyonCampus aims to guide you toward understanding these differences and finding internships or work-study programs in Lyon Metropole!

Internships

Legal framework:

Internship may be mandatory for your training, to validate your course of study, or optional. In this case, you may be able to do it during the summer to acquire professional experience and learn more about a particular job.

In both instances, you must be studying to be eligible for an internship and have an internship mentor (a member of the teaching or supervisory staff of your establishment of higher education).

The following is legal information concerning internships in France:

• You must have a mandatory internship agreement,
• You have student status and are not employed by a company,
• You do not pay social contributions or receive an unemployment allowance, and your income is not taxable,
• You do not have a right to vacation days (unless your employer allows you to have them), but you have a right to authorized absences (unpaid vacation),
• You have a right to a 50% reimbursement of transportation costs and access to the company cafeteria or restaurant tickets,
• You can continue to receive a CROUS scholarship,
• The maximum duration of an internship is six months,
• There is no age limit for an internship.

Compensation:

Interns are not “paid” but receive compensation if the internship is for more than two months (or 44 working days over a year). The minimum legal compensation is €3.75 per hour. Your employer has the right to increase your compensation.

Internship in another country:

If you do an internship in another country, an internship agreement is still mandatory but internship conditions depend on laws in the host country (compensation, hours per week). If you want to do an internship in another country, you can request a scholarship; click here to find information on scholarships and financial assistance for leaving to work in another country.

Work-study training

Work-study training leads to professional qualification and enables discovering all aspects of a job. It aims to promote professional insertion.

There are two types of work-study programs:

• With an apprenticeship contract: In the context of your degree course, you alternate between weeks of work at a company and traditional study weeks.
• With a professional qualification contract: This contract lets you acquire specific skills and certificates of qualification.

For complete information on work-study programs, see the government’s work-study portal.

Legal framework:

The following is legal information concerning work-study in France:

• You have a mandatory work contract,
• Your status is student employed by a company,
• Since you pay social contributions, you have a right to an unemployment allowance after your work-study program is over. If you earn more than €17,982 per annum from the work-study program, you must pay an income tax,
• You have a right to vacation days: 2.5 days minimum per month.
• You have a right to a 50% reimbursement of transportation costs and access to the company cafeteria or restaurant tickets.
• You can no longer continue to receive a CROUS scholarship,
• Apprenticeship contracts last for a maximum of one year, and professional qualification contracts last for a maximum of three years.
• You cannot become an apprentice if you are over 29, but you can do professional qualification training whenever you like.

Pay:

Your salary is indexed on the SMIC (minimum wage). Depending on your age and years of study, you have a right to a mandatory minimum amount. You may, however, be paid more than the minimum wage.

In another country:

You can do a work-study program in another country. However, this can rapidly become complicated. Look for a country across the border or plan on budgeting for a number of round trips between the place where you train and your company. Salary conditions are those of the country where you carry out your work-study program.

If you are in a work-study program, several financial aids are available; here, you will find the financial assistance you have the right to as a work-study program participant and housing assistance that is available to you.

A few questions before starting to look

Before you start searching for an internship or work-study program, you should ask yourself several questions. Which missions are you interested in? Do you want to carry out this experience in the public sector or in the private sector? Do you want to target certain companies?

Mark off a geographical area: do you want to leave for a specific destination? Do you want to be close to your parents’ home or your place of study? Will you be able to easily find housing in the place where you want to go?

There are lots of other questions you can ask beforehand to make looking easier. For example, do you want to be paid the minimum wage?  Do you want to have major responsibilities?

Have an idea of the work-study program or internship that you want to do before you start looking so you can target offers more quickly.