Professional bachelor's (licence pro, outside the BUT): making a success of your internship or work-study

One year to aim at a specific trade

The licence professionnelle, often shortened to licence pro, is a national bachelor's-level diploma (level 6) prepared in one year after two years of higher education. Applicants most often come from a BTS, a two-year BUT, a DEUST or the second year of a general bachelor's. Each track targets a trade or a sector: industrial maintenance, e-commerce, payroll management, building trades, banking and insurance, logistics, project coordination and so on.

This page covers licences pro prepared at university, outside the three-year BUT, which follows its own calendar. The short duration changes everything: there is no time to hesitate over the assignment and no room for an endless settling-in period. The internship or the work-study contract must therefore be thought through when you apply for the course, not in February.

Internship, apprenticeship or professionalisation contract: three ways into the workplace

Depending on the institution, the same course may be open as initial training with an internship, as an apprenticeship or as a professionalisation contract. The three routes do not have the same effects on daily life.

• The internship: you remain a student, sign an agreement between yourself, the university and the host organisation, and alternate classes with an internship period whose length depends on the track, often several months at the end of the year.
• The apprenticeship: you are an employee under an employment contract, split your time between the training centre and the company, and your pay follows a scale tied to the minimum wage (Smic) and your age.
• The professionalisation contract: another work-study employment contract, aimed at gaining a qualification, with pay that is also regulated.

For a student who needs to fund their living costs, work-study brings a salary and long experience. For someone who wants to test a sector or keep time free to prepare competitive exams or a project, an internship may be the better fit. Always check on the course sheet which routes are really open: not every licence pro offers all of them.

What the diploma expects from the experience in a company

A licence pro generally includes a supervised project, group or individual work carried out on a real case, and a period in a workplace assessed through a report and an oral defence. The hours and the length of the company period vary from one track to another: the programme director, whose name appears on the course sheet, is the person who settles the matter.

The jury is not only looking for a student who worked well. It checks that the assignment belongs to the specialism, that it draws on skills from the diploma's framework and that it leaves a trace that can be analysed. An internship made up only of data entry or handling, however conscientious, will pose a problem when it comes to writing a dissertation that has to show a method.

Defining an assignment that can be assessed

A good licence pro assignment fits in one sentence and produces a visible result. A comparative study of suppliers, writing a maintenance procedure, setting up an order-tracking tool, auditing a few workstations: each of these topics can be bounded and checked.

Before signing, put these questions to your future tutor:

1. What deliverable is expected at the end, and for whom?
2. What are the three or four intermediate stages, and by what deadlines?
3. What data, software and contacts will I have access to?
4. Who validates my work, and how often do we hold a progress meeting?
5. Which information will be confidential, and what will I be able to say about it in my report?

Put these points in writing and pass them to the programme director before the agreement or contract is signed. They can flag an assignment that is too vague or too far from the course.

Search timetable: act before you are admitted

The main difficulty is the rhythm. Applications to licences pro are spread over the spring, answers sometimes arrive late, and recruiters publish their work-study vacancies as early as autumn or winter. Many students wait for their admission before searching, then discover that the most attractive companies have already chosen.

It is better to move on two fronts at once: submit your course applications and, without waiting, contact companies, stating that your application depends on your admission. Some courses organise forums and meeting days, or share vacancies with their former students; ask the teaching secretariat about these arrangements. Vacancy platforms, alumni networks and firms in your local job market complete the picture.

Applying: a CV and a letter that speak the language of the trade

Your profile after two years of higher education is already technical. What will make the difference is your ability to link your background to the target trade. Place at the top of your CV the exact title of the licence pro you are preparing and the length of work-study you are seeking. Then detail your achievements rather than your duties: setting up a stock-tracking table used every week says more than stock management.

In the cover letter, answer three points: why this company, why this specialism, what you already know how to do. In an interview, be ready to describe a project from your BTS or BUT, to explain how you organise your week in work-study and to ask questions about supervision. An available tutor is often worth more than a prestigious brand.

Pay and legal framework: what must be in writing

For an internship, an agreement is compulsory. When presence in the organisation exceeds a threshold set by law, a stipend (gratification) is due; its minimum amount is set by regulation and changes every year, so check it when you sign. The length of an internship in a single organisation is also capped over an academic year.

For an apprenticeship or professionalisation, an employment contract applies: length, working time, leave, pay expressed as a percentage of the Smic according to age and year of the contract, and reference to the company's collective agreement. Hiring subsidies paid to employers change regularly: they do not concern you directly but can influence the vacancies available. Read the text before signing and keep a copy.

A worked example, for illustration only

Take a fictional student, Inès, who holds a BTS and has been admitted to a licence pro in production management. Assumption: the track includes about 14 weeks in a company, spread over the end of the year, and a supervised project of 150 hours.

Inès chooses an internship in a small firm of 80 employees. The agreed assignment is to cut the changeover time between production runs on one line. Stages: three weeks of observation, timing ten changeovers, proposing three options, trialling one option, and a figures-based review. If the times fall from, say, 60 to 45 minutes, she has a concrete result for her dissertation, and the management has a piece of work it can reuse.

In this purely illustrative scenario, a twelve-month work-study contract would have widened the scope, but would have required her to look for the company as early as winter. The figures are rounded and do not replace those of your own course.

Frequent mistakes and good habits for the defence

• Choosing the company before checking that the assignment belongs to the course.
• Accepting a topic whose deliverable is not defined, then discovering in May that there is not enough to analyse.
• Neglecting the supervised project, which counts as much as the company period in the assessment.
• Forgetting to ask the tutor for permission to publish figures or documents.
• Writing the report in one go, in the last week.
• Merely describing tasks instead of drawing an analysis and limits from them.

Plan an interim version of the report at the halfway point, read by the tutor, and prepare a fifteen-to-twenty-minute defence centred on three elements: the need, your method, the result. Keep the appendices for questions. Finally, think about what comes next: the licence pro is designed for quick entry into work, and your tutor may become your first recruiter or your reference.