Intern opportunity @ CERN: call for Administrative Students

Do you study business administration, finance, foreign languages and many more interesting subjects? You may definitely want to kickstart your career in the most renowned scientific hub worldwide: the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), located in Switzerland, which is responsible for scientific breakthroughs. We feel its effects directly and indirectly (World Wide Web anyone? But also, perhaps less known, how their studies on antimatter may help to fight cancer) and it is arguably a thriving environment with lots of after-work activities and thousands of bright people employed. You can be one of them!

In a nutshell:

1. Deadline: 21st March 2022 (at noon: 12pm CET)
2. You can stay for at least 2 and at most 12 months while remaining registered as a full-time student.
3. You have a good knowledge of English OR French.
4. Many other perks beyond the allowance of 3319 Swiss Francs per month (net of tax).

A borderline situation might be when you are finishing up a Bachelor of Science programme but you already secured a spot in a Master of Science. I remember having sent an email a couple of years ago but I cannot find it anymore. My gut feeling would be that it would not be a huge problem but, if you find yourself in that situation, the best way would be to get in touch with them directly.

What you need to apply:

• CV
• A copy of your most recent academic transcript giving an overview of your marks
• Motivation letter – max 1440 characters, including spaces (not words!)
• A reference letter from your University Professor is mandatory. Should you have one from a previous internship you may add this as a second reference.

The process

I have applied three times and I promise you that the process is standardised and straightforward. The piece of advice that I can give right off the bat is to present your brightest side, they review your application thoroughly and they really want to get to know you. At the end of the article you will find all the relevant links.

Remember to review thoroughly the job offer, the requirements and what is in for you. Then, the process consists of the following steps:

• First and foremost, check your eligibility. You need to be a national CERN Member or Associate Member State and you need to be registered as a student throughout your experience. You can decide to work for 2 to 12 months.
• Decide whether you want to send your application in English OR French
• Click on “I’m interested” and work on your application. There are two pages, you can quickly fill the mandatory fields on the first page to access the second page, so you can have a complete point of view of what’s required from you. You may note that there are two seemingly similar sections: “Message to Hiring Manager” and “What is your motivation for applying for this job”. I don’t have a particular advice here, but in my experience I kept the first field very simple, whereby I greeted and presented myself in a couple of lines, so that I could fully devote the second field to my motivations (remember, you only have 1440 characters for this section).
• Once you send the application, you have the possibility to take a video interview. This part is optional and is used purely to get to know you better. By doing it you could increase the chances to be hired. From what I’ve seen, the questions are somewhat always the same: they ask to present yourself, they ask you why CERN and why you are a fit, and so on. It is an asynchronous interview: that means that you get the questions on the screen and you have one minute to read them and prepare your answer. You will have between 1 and 2 minutes to answer, depending on the question. You can’t exceed the given time, as when time is over the screen projects the next question.

NOTE: if you stated that you are good in French and in English, you are expected to answer the questions in English AND French (you would normally have half the questions in English and half in French, for a total of 4-5).

• Once the question time is over, you have two additional minutes if you want to add anything else (related to the previous questions, e.g. you did not have the time to explain something and you were cut off)
• You will receive an email directly from the recruiter in case you are considered for a position. You will receive a schema with the activities you are expected to perform and all the information related to them, and you will be asked for a live interview.
• The interview lasts up to 30 minutes and it is very informal. At this point you are considered as a potential fit, so be sure that you discuss what you will be doing (what you like, what you don’t like, where you think you could bring an added value, on which related activities you are more experienced and can provide additional value, and so on). This is the moment you want to address matters related to your availability (start and end dates), potential conflicting issues (e.g. university exams, quitting from the current employer,..), and, in general, ask more about the contract, the expectations, the life at CERN, and so on.

Some additional tips:

• Talk to people who worked or are currently working there thanks to this program. I advise using LinkedIn. The key is to be polite, ask clear questions and prepare your application well in advance to increase the chances that you get an answer. Understanding what are the positions that you could fill and the working culture could be key to sending a tailored application. These pieces of advice are in fact best practices, so I did not invent anything there, but it is still important to reinforce those concepts. You can reuse them also for other applications.

• You can send the application asking to work for as little as 2 months (e.g. summertime). However, I talked to many people and I promise you that they primarily look for students who have an availability of 12 months (which could be extended to 14 if you “click”). This does not mean that you are not considered, that’s not my point, but the more time you are willing to commit, the have higher your chances to be selected.
• Be specific, accurate, and spend the right amount of time to fill the fields “Education” and “Experience”.
• Be open: once they review your application, they may not consider you for the position you were seeking, but they can still be interested in your profile and invite you to an interview to discuss another position in which you can be a good fit.
• When you get invited to the interview read carefully the email with the proposed activities and feel free to ask questions if you don’t understand. I received a schema with a lot of acronyms that I was not aware of, so I was not sure what it was asked. At any rate, you can go more in-depth during the interview.
• During yourself don’t try to impress the recruiter, there’s no need to. Just be yourself and focus on how much you can contribute to the tasks that you are proposed to perform when hired.

Last but not least: they open hiring rounds each spring and fall, so don’t get discouraged if your application is discarded. As you can imagine, there are thousands of students who send their applications, so, even if you are a good fit they might prefer to move on with another candidate. That is why you need to communicate who you are and your experiences thoroughly. As written previously, I have applied three times to get to the final interview.

APPLY TO THIS OPPORTUNITY BY FOLLOWING THE LINK BELOW:

https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CERN/743999792828171-administrative-student-programme-2022-1

Before you go!

So now you know that I applied multiple times, but you don’t know if I managed to be hired.

Well, did you know that CERN has an entrepreneurial division? Now you know. Personally speaking, I truly believe that this is a great experience to make because of the culture at CERN and its standing. Absolutely no doubts about it. However, the last time that I applied I had a situation in my life for which my professional interest in applying to CERN was only related to such a division. When I got to the interview stage, I was so happy. Then, I discovered that I have not been selected from that division but from another one. During the interview, the tasks that I would have had to do were more clear, which were not hard for me to take care of, but since I already started to make exciting professional experiences, I knew that they would be only one thing for me: out of scope BORING.

In retrospect, it has been the right decision to take. Of course, I had a huge sense of bitterness and this article is also the result of the “what ifs” that came to my mind. I asked the recruiter not to consider my application anymore.

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~ Andrea Valeri