Hello all,
There is a class named Smart Technologies and it is a DT ([Diplôme de technician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Luxembourg#Higher_education)). Well it is a four year class were you learn electricity, programming, circuit construction, renewable energy and automatization. In the last two years the schools take a different path and give you the opportunity to choose what do you want to do. For example Lenster Lycee is more focused to renewable energy or Lycee Guillaume Kroll to robotics etc. ([more info](https://www.lgk.lu/training/formation-professionnelle/smart-technologies/)).
In the third year some of the schools give you the opportunity to look for a two day apprenticeship each week depending the path you’ve chosen and the rest of the week you go to school. (except weekends of course). The idea is to work to get experience and learn at school.
The problem is that there is not much of an interest from the company which causes us to stay at home the two days that we were supposed work because we can’t find any place to work. If we don’t find anything until December they’ll kick us out.
The percentage of students that have found something is smaller than 50% and has nothing to do with our sector but it is accepted only because there is not much of an interest. The rest have sent more than 30 applications and some of them haven’t even gotten a single interview.
We tried to talk to the vice principal of our school, He said that there is nothing that he can do and that it was a choice from the education ministry and that we are in the mercy of a company’s decision.
They also said to us that it is not right to stay at home these two days that we were supposed to be at work and obligated us to join a class were they said that they will help us find work and the other day we obligated to do extra work. (the website is down)
They said to us that if we don’t find anything, there is an alternate solution that we need to find something similar which is to downgrade to DAP (Diplôme d’apptitude professionelle) and of course no one wishes that.
I cannot take this anymore I worked for two years to get where I am and it makes me really sad to see this going that way. I really don’t know what to do.
Thanks for taking time and reading this, sorry for any grammatical mistakes English is not my mother language.
11 comments
*You might have to be proactive and* [*reach*](https://www.careerlaunchpad.io/blog/how-to-cold-email-for-competitive-internships-step-by-step-guide) *out via email or phone to the CTO or CEO of a company you would like to intern/work for. I would suggest you avoid directly bad-mouthing your course even though it might be merited when contacting potential employers.*
*Simply and briefly.*
* *Introduce yourself **
* *State your current predicament*
* *What you bring to the table and how the company can benefit from having you intern with them.*
*^(*You can also state what you admire about the company – if it is the truth.)*
Contact your school’s Cellule d’orientation, and if they are no help, your Direction. If half of the student are in this case, they can’t just punish all of you.
Show a portfolio of projects that you’ve worked on.
You mentioned programming. Have you linked your Github on your CV?
Eg have you set up a [Home Assistant](http://Www.hass.io) and run smart home applications on it? (because your curriculum mentions Smart Home and IoT)
Lots of stuff to make yourself stand out of the crowd
Job hunting is merciless in some fields. Complaining is useful only for venting or to the people actually responsible to the system, so just, hold your head high and keep at it, you’ll get there if you don’t give up 🙂 Also don’t expect a positive answer from anyone, assume a no and keep looking until you get a yes.
And you can bitch actively at your school until they actually help, and bitch here if it makes you feel better
This sounds a lot like what the mechatronic classes were back in the days. Not sure if this is something else or if they have just changed the label.
Would not be surprised if they rebranded it as people from those classes had massive problems to find employment later.
The problem was that they knew a little bit about everything but at the end of the day did not know how to do anything.
Listen. Say goodbye to that school right now. Buy a hoodie with a golden “B” on it. Go to whoever’s been paying for your tuition fees, clothes and meals so far and tell them you need 12 months’ of that money up front.
Go to your room and learn to read RSI14, MACD and Bollinger Bands. Then put those 12 months’ of funds into SHIB, MATIC or SOL.
**Three years later tell your school to style the swimming pool you’re buying for them in your name.**
The world order is changing. Be part of tomorrow and let go of these archaic constructions.
(note: only take this 50% seriously)
It’s a symptom of the disconnected nature of the education ministry, and has always been an issue in all téchnicien paths since forever they had the obligatory apprenticeship. The school does nothing in terms of liaison with companies, and it’s up to you find something else as you said, you get fucked.
To people saying “be more proactive” and all that bullshit have no idea of the situation, companies couldn’t care less about wasting their time interning some 17-18 year old which has absolutely no clue of what they’re doing, when they could just hire for cheap some French border worker which would be productive and actually stick around after training.
These kids generally have no business in being in a professional environment as they’re just not ready. I know a lot of students who ended up with utterly useless apprenticeships and were doing absolutely nothing just because they had to find *anything* under threat of failing the course/year. The stage module doesn’t even count into the grades for the year, so that’s even more stupid. This was 13 years ago and it seems absolutely nothing has changed in that regard with these things.
Mandatory Internships/ apprenticeship serch suck in general, i‘m a psychology student and send over 170 applications and only got 4 responses.
Its a joke and especialy during corona it got a lot harder
Could you PM me some companies that you applied to? When did you apply and when is your internship period? If I understand correctly, you are in your third year? Id suggest you to also take part in the advanced maths and language class so you can apply for a university lateron if you really fear that the ST diploma is not going to fullfill your wishes. You also qualifiy for a B1 career instead of a C1 at gov jobs, which is quite a huge difference. Overall the field is very interessting and important but I see two issues: I think that you still lack alot of knowledge even after a 1TPST and ontop of that, since it is new, companies do not really know what they can expect from you. They prefer to hire someone with a BTS or BSc.
In lieu of apprenticeship/ interning maybe they’d accept a side project if it met certain parameters? Unless I’m wrong, this should fit into the spirit of what they’re trying to do. I’m sure they’d rather you did something as opposed to downgrading you. Just a thought
I’ll be honest, hiring kids is a liability for any company and I it literally brings no benefits to the employer.
Looks like a huge oversight from the ministry of education but I am more surprised than 50% of the people found a job rather than by the 50% that didn’t.
Hope you’ll find a solution…