A CV for a work-study contract: winning over a company and a school

A work-study contract (alternance) means two applications in one: the school or training centre has to admit you, the company has to hire you, and the contract only exists if both say yes. Your CV serves both, but the company reads it more demandingly: it signs a real employment contract, pays you, and puts you in the hands of a mentor who will train you on their own time. This guide adds what is specific to work-study to the student CV.

What the company and the school look for

• The company asks itself three questions: will you keep up the rhythm until the end of the contract, does your school calendar fit its business, and will you be useful quickly? It looks for proof of reliability and a genuine choice of career, far more than grades.
• The school checks that your plan holds together: the qualification matches your level, the job matches what you have already done or learnt. It often reads the same CV, and many pass their admitted students' CVs on to partner companies.

The upshot: one CV can serve both, as long as your course is described as precisely as a job, and the practical details sit at the top.

Rhythm and dates, at the top of the CV

The first thing a recruiter of work-study students checks is when and how you will be there. Put this information under your headline, in one or two lines, not at the bottom of the Education section:

• The qualification and the school, with “work-study”: “BTS (two-year vocational diploma) in SME management, work-study, [name] training centre, [town]”.
• The rhythm, as the school sets it: “one week at school, three weeks at work”, or the days of class. This is what the company compares with its schedule.
• The start date and length of contract you are looking for: “from [month], for the whole course”. For an apprenticeship, the law sets a length of between six months and three years in the general case (see the sources).
• Where your admission stands: “admitted”, “admitted subject to finding a contract”, “admission interview on [date]”. A candidate who is already admitted is reassuring.
• Your area: the town where the school is and those where you can work, or “willing to relocate, can live near the company”.

If term starts before you have a contract, the French Labour Code lets you, subject to age conditions, begin an apprenticeship course without an employer, for three months at most, while you find one. Say so plainly: “course started in [month], available straight away on the rhythm's dates”.

Your training plan, in three lines

The personal statement of a work-study CV tells the story of a plan, not a search: the job you are learning, what led you to it, and what you already bring. The general method is in the guide to the headline and statement; here is what changes.

• The headline is the role: “Management control assistant, work-study”, not “Student looking for a work-study placement”.
• The trigger is concrete: an internship, a job, a project that made you choose this career. “My internship at an accountancy firm showed me that I enjoy controlling and management figures” beats “passionate about finance”.
• What you bring is proven: a tool you know well, a language, some first experience of the sector, a driving licence if the job involves travel.

Example: “HR assistant, work-study. On a vocational bachelor's degree in HR management from [month], three weeks at work and one week at school. An internship at a temping agency taught me hands-on recruitment: I now want to learn payroll and personnel administration.”

The experience the company wants to see

For a work-study contract, your jobs and commitments count as much as your internships, because they prove what the company fears it won't find: consistency. Describe them in terms that show you last the distance and that people trusted you.

The “[X]” are your real figures, to fill in or leave out. If you come from another career, work-study is also a route into a new one: your background then becomes your best argument, as the career-change CV explains.

Apprentice pay: know it, don't write it

Put no salary on the CV. But know what to expect: an apprentice's minimum pay is a percentage of the SMIC, France's minimum wage (sometimes of the collective agreement's minimum), set by law according to your age and the year of the contract, from 27% to 100% of the SMIC depending on the case. The professionalisation contract has its own grid, by age and level of education. The apprentice pay calculator gives the gross, the net and the full grid for your situation, and the guide to apprentice pay explains the rules (birthdays, increases).

Mistakes specific to work-study CVs

• No rhythm and no start date: the company can't tell whether you fit its schedule, and moves on.
• “Looking for work-study” as the headline instead of the target job: neither the recruiter nor their screening software searches for those words.
• A missing or vague school: its name, the exact qualification and your admission status should be readable at a glance.
• The same CV for every role: a communications placement and a sales placement don't want the same experience first.
• Applying far from the school without a word about travel: say that you can commute or find somewhere to live.

One version per company, in minutes

On Update your CV, “My structure” sorts your CV into sections: you ask in one sentence for the rhythm line to go under the headline, change the order of your experience for each company, and the site redraws the PDF in the original's look. The CV analysis then checks the headline, the dates and the job ad's keywords. For the letter that many companies and schools still ask for, follow the cover letter guide.