This page is for students who have already applied for an internship and have been selected as the best candidate by IAESTE Belgium. If you are looking for info on how to apply, take a look here.
If you are selected for an internship, then you enter the nomination phase. This means that IAESTE Belgium considers you the best applicant for that internship, but that we still have to send your motivation letter, CV and other documents to the company abroad.
You should take the following steps to complete your nomination.
1. Accept your nomination
If you applied through the annual procedure, we will ask you to confirm your nomination after the selection results have been announced. Accepting means that you still want to do the internship and that you will not cancel it (unless unforeseen circumstances occur of course – info about our cancellation policy below). You will receive instructions on how to accept your nomination via email.
If you apply through the FCFS procedure, we implicitly assume that you will accept your nomination straight away. No extra confirmation is necessary.
2. Pay the administrative fee
Unfortunately an IAESTE internship is not free: we are a non-profit organization, but our operation still costs money. However, we believe the cost is quite small compared to the advantages you gain by doing an IAESTE internship.
The administrative fee is €125, or €60 if you are a scholarship student. We also ask for a warranty of €50 on top of this, which is reimbursed after your internship if you write a small text about your IAESTE experience. The amount of €175 (€110 for scholarship students) should be transferred by the deadline communicated to you by email to the following bank account:
- Name: IAESTE Belgium
- IBAN: BE28 7330 0289 9320
- BIC: KREDBEBB
- Message: IAESTEfee-YourLastName–YourFi
rstName.
Also send us a proof of payment via email once you paid it, e.g. a screenshot of your banking app after the payment has been confirmed. If you are a scholarship student, also send an official proof of your scholarship status.
Note: The proof of payment does not need to be uploaded on the Exchange Platform. Instead, send it in an email to belgium@iaeste.org.
Cancellation policy
After accepting your internship and paying the fee, you are bound to completing the internship. Cancelling now will result in losing the fee and warranty.
Only under the following circumstances, and with approval by IAESTE Belgium, the fee will be paid back:
- The student is not accepted by the employer.
- The employer cancels the internship.
- The employer changes the conditions of the internship (e.g. duration, topic, …), rendering the nominee unable to carry it out.
- Exams to redo during summer, if they concern a second semester subject and if you can prove you made a sufficient effort to change the dates of your exam and/or internship to prevent overlap.
- Serious illness or similar grave unforeseeable circumstances.
3. Create an account on the Exchange Platform
If you haven’t done this already, sign up on the international IAESTE Exchange Platform. After you’ve done this, we assign your internship to you, and then you can complete your nomination.
4. Complete your nomination
Complete your nomination on the Exchange Platform by entering all relevant information in your profile and uploading the required documents. These documents should be uploaded as one PDF and in the same order as they are mentioned below:
- Offer form.
This can be found on the Exchange Platform, under Offers, then the tab assigned. Click on the button with pdf on it to download the offer form. - Student Nominated Form:
You’ll be able to download this after you’ve completed the other info in your nomination and clicked the “Print Documents” button. Make sure all previous information is complete and correct! - Motivation Letter:
Adapt the motivation letter you used for your application so that it now addresses the company instead of IAESTE Belgium. The one page limit no longer holds, but we recommend a concise motivation letter. - Curriculum Vitae:
Adapt your CV so that it is tailored towards the internship you applied for. The one page limit no longer holds, but we recommend a concise CV. - Transcript of Records:
Of all years and in English. - Language Certificate:
More info below. - Certificate of Enrolment:
A scan or PDF of your certificate of enrolment, which proves you are a student. - Letter of Recommendation (if required):
Some countries require that a professor or previous employer writes a recommendation letter for you, and for some countries it is not required but highly recommended. More info below. - Scan of your passport:
A scan of your eID is fine if you don’t have a passport yet, or if a passport is not required to get into the country of your internship. - Photo of yourself:
Include a nice and professional-looking picture of yourself. - Any additional documents.
Make sure all the documents are of sufficient quality, especially if you make any scans of documents. All documents should be typed, handwritten documents will not be accepted. For architecture students, the portfolio can be uploaded separately.
Once your nomination is completed, our national secretary and/or exchange administrator(s) will check its completeness before sending it to the employer. Keep an eye on the Exchange Platform in case any modifications are requested!
Language certificate
You can download this document here.
The language certificate proves that you are capable of speaking and writing in English. Download the document, complete it and make sure it is signed. The person that signs it can be a professor that teaches/taught you a university course in English, an English teacher from high school, a previous employer if your work at that company was done in English, …, or in short: anyone who can “officially” vouch for your English skills in a professional or academic context. If you have supplementary language certificates, you can also include those.
Letter of Recommendation
For some internships, a recommendation letter is either required or highly recommended. You can get such a letter from a professor, a previous employer, or anyone else that can comment on your professional skills and attitude. The letter should explain how the person that’s writing it knows you and on why he/she thinks you would do a good job.
A list of countries where a recommendation letter is required or recommended can be found here under “Letter of recommendation required” (exchange season 2018).
5. Wait for acceptance
After your nomination is sent to the employer, the waiting for acceptance begins… It can take a while before an employer accepts you as an intern. Some countries/employers are fast to respond, others like to postpone. It is not unusual to get acceptance in May or even in June, a couple of weeks before the internship starts. Unfortunately, internships do get cancelled sometimes (not often) as well (e.g. the company doesn’t have the fund anymore, the project got cancelled, …).
IMPORTANT: you are not allowed to contact the employer before you get confirmation of your acceptance. Doing so will result in losing the internship position. Some companies however will contact you themselves and ask for a Skype interview.
Once the employer has confirmed your internship position, you can book your flights and really start getting excited! There are only three things left to do now:
- Sign the internship acceptance form and submit that on the Exchange Platform. This form contains the final information on your internship (duration, wage…) and is a contract between you and the employer.
- Arrange your insurance, visa, and other official documents.
- If you want to get your internship acknowledged for credits (depending on the regulations of your university/faculty), you should also start arranging that. More info on your university or faculty website.