I need help to find an internship in OR

If you are one of my former student at Ecole de Ponts, and you would like to discover more about OR in your gap year / PFE / M2 internship, then this page will give you details on how to find an internship in OR and how I can help you.

OR in the industry

There are several kinds of OR jobs in the industry

  • Corporate department in a large firm. There are basically two kinds of jobs.
    • Internal consultant. Your job is to work in interaction with the rest of the firm and to build decision support tools for them. It is an excellent way to discover many aspects of a business and to prepare a career in management.
    • Internal expert.
  • Start-ups typically want to disrupt a market based on better algorithms. You will generally learn a lot about development in general.
  • Consulting. Several consulting firms are specialized in OR. You typically have missions of a few months build a decision support tool for a client.
  • Solver company. This is the most technical and mathematical job: your company sells an OR solver and your job is to implement new algorithms inside.

OR in academia

There are basically three kinds of internships in academia.

  • On an application. You are working on an application of OR. At first sight, it may look like a job in the industry (except solver company), but the focus is completely different. On most internships in the industry, the mathematical aspects are not the key: you spend at most 10% of your time doing math. If you work on applied problem from the industry in academia, it is because it has been identified as difficult in the industry, and you have to innovate on the math to make it work. Be prepared to do math 90% of your time.
  • Methodological. You want to prove theorems to build new algorithms that work well in practice, and implement these algorithms.
  • Theoretical. You want to prove theorems.

Where to find internship offers

Internship offers are available

  • On the forum of the Roadef, the French Operations Research society.
  • Posted on the mailing list of the GDR ROD

and on all the usual venues for finding a job.

How I can help you

I help at least 10 students a year finding an internship

  • in France or abroad in academia,
  • in France in the industry.

However, I will help you only if you did your job and worked hard on my lecture.

If this is the case, please write me an email structured as follows

  1. Where do you want to start your career? Even if you have not much idea, try to describe write concisely the different options you would be interested in
  2. What kind of internship do you want to do?. See above and try to be precise.
  3. Where do you want to do an internship?
    • If in the industry, you can find a list of the OR teams in France on the Roadef website. If you have no specific preference, I will send you to colleagues who do great work and told me they seek an intern.
    • If in academia, tell me where you would like to go. I generally send students to Italy, UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, US. But if you have a specific country in mind, tell me, I may have a contact.
  4. On which dates?
  5. Remind me everything that can motivate me to help you (good grades, ranking at the KIRO, etc.)

And then

  • come discussing with me at the pause of the next session of the course.
  • If you are not following a course at the moment, tell me on which days (Monday to Thursday) in the coming weeks I can call you between 18:00 and 18:20, and give me a phone number where I can join you.

I will answer you with a few opportunities. Respond me with the one you prefer. Then

  • Write an email with a letter of motivation (in the email) and a CV (attached) to the contact I give you, and put me in CC,
  • I will respond (without you in CC) to push your application.