Engineering Traineeships in Rome for French University Students
"Piktalent understood that university traineeships require a different approach — professional placements with real engineering projects, not internships-lite."
1The Challenge
Université de Bordeaux needed to place 18 engineering students in professional traineeships in Italy for a full academic semester. The university required host companies that could offer genuine engineering projects, not administrative tasks, with formal mentoring and evaluation aligned to academic learning outcomes.
2The Solution
Piktalent's Italy team sourced mid-size engineering and technology firms in Rome willing to offer supervised project-based traineeships. Each student was matched based on their engineering specialisation. Piktalent managed housing, provided Italian language orientation sessions, and tracked progress through monthly evaluation meetings.
3Key Results
The Full Story
The international mobility office at Université de Bordeaux had ambitious goals: place a cohort of 18 engineering students in quality traineeships in Rome that would genuinely contribute to their professional development and academic credits.
Piktalent worked closely with the university's academic coordinators to understand the specific learning outcomes required for each student. Over a two-month preparation period, the team identified and screened engineering firms, construction companies, and technology startups across Rome that could offer project-based work.
Each student was assigned a workplace mentor and received monthly evaluations from both the host company and Piktalent's local coordinator. Italian language sessions helped students navigate daily life, while a shared WhatsApp group with Piktalent's team provided immediate support for any issues.
The programme exceeded expectations: 92% of students rated their experience as 'excellent' or 'very good', three students received job offers from their host companies, and the university immediately renewed the partnership for the next academic year.
On the academic side, the alignment work paid off at credit-transfer time: every Learning Agreement listed concrete project deliverables (CAD revisions, finite-element analyses, site-supervision logs) that the Bordeaux academic board recognised as equivalent to a full semester of supervised project work. Piktalent's monthly tripartite reports — host engineer, intern, local coordinator — provided the evidence trail needed for ECTS validation, removing the usual end-of-mobility scramble for documentation that universities know well.
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