Hello everyone,
Currently doing my Masters in France in English and next year I have to do an Internship to complete my studies. I am trying to improve my French, but I am also trying to have hope, rejection after rejection that there are companies out there that hire people that speak English, therefore any advice or companies to look for I would appreciate it a lot! Thank you.
Hello.
What are you studying? I work for a multinational company and English is the working language. My role is in IT, but pretty much everyone has to speak English to work there. When it’s just French colleagues and me then we’ll speak French but otherwise it’s all in English. I think it’s common within IT companies to require employees to speak English.
Same for the American company (Accenture) I worked at 25 years ago near Nice. To be able to communicate with colleagues around the world you had to speak very good English.
Incidentally 30 years ago I did my internship at Air France and at the time I hardly spoke any French… but that was fairly specific for the role I was doing.
Hi, your other skills are more likely to be important - in what are you actually doing your master’s degree and what other languages do you speak? If your French is poor and you just have English it may be a bit difficult, there’s a lot of competition because nowadays lots of people at your stage in their studies are expected to be competent in both English and French plus another language.
It’s also slightly harder in France than in the English speaking world because here stagiaires are paid properly unlike eg in the UK and consequently businesses expect value for money.
Hello,
It is Project Management for Environmental and Energy Engineering, it is a long name, but anything related to Renewables, HSE, Sustainability, Energy Transition that is basicaly my field.
You have a very cool resume and thank for your reply, it does help knowing that there is hope.
Well, my native language is Portuguese while I am trying to improve my French which becomes difficult as all my classes are in English.
You are very right in terms of opportunities in France but I have to keep trying. Thank you!
Unfortunately that’s not an industry I have any experience of 
Have you tried searching for stage in APEC, and narrowing it down to “énergie renouvelable” and “anglais”? There’s a bunch on there (lots from a company called Assystem) but I don’t know how relevant they are.
Perhaps you could also use LinkedIn to try and identify employees in HR at target companies you’d like to work for, and try sending them a speculative message asking if they have any internship positions.
Best of luck!
Hello,
I haven’t tried those options yet, so thank you for the advice, it does help a lot!