Whoever hires you for your first job in a dining room, a kitchen, at reception or in a shop wants to understand one thing: what you can actually do. Your diploma says you finished the programme. The evidence of what you can do builds up over your school years, placements and seasons, but it is easily lost. Here is how to keep it.
Keep count of your hours
If you attend an Italian istituto professionale (vocational school), in the final three years you do at least 210 hours of formazione scuola-lavoro (school-to-work training), formerly called PCTO (Law 145/2018, Art. 1(784)). Regional vocational training courses (IeFP) follow other rules, but the advice is the same. For every placement, write down straight away:
- company name, department, dates and hours;
- what you did, concretely: not "kitchen help", but which preparations you handled, for how many covers, on which shift;
- the name of your company tutor.
If you are at a state or paritaria (state-recognised private) school, these placements also go into the Student Curriculum (Curriculum della studentessa e dello studente), the document attached to your diploma, with year, type of activity, host organisation and hours. The school-leaving exam (esame di maturità) takes them into account.
Ask for a written evaluation
During the placement your company tutor gives the school the elements needed to assess you, and at the end of the programme the school issues a certification of the skills you gained through work experience (Legislative Decree 77/2005, Arts. 5 and 6). Ask to see it and keep a copy.
On the last day of the placement, also ask your tutor for a few written, signed lines: what you did, how you did it, what they would trust you with again. Ask while they still remember you well. An assessment from someone who watched you work says more than any adjective in a CV.
Seasons count
Summer work in a hotel, a restaurant or a beach resort is real experience. On the Ministry's Unica platform you can add it to your E-Portfolio with the "Add activity or certification" function (Aggiungi attività o certificazione): work other than school-to-work training appears in the part of the Curriculum reserved for extracurricular activities. Keep a copy of your contract too: it proves the dates.
Certificates
Anyone who handles food must be supervised or trained in food hygiene in line with their work, and it is the employer's job to ensure this (Regulation (EC) 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter XII). If you already have a food handler's certificate, the one many people call HACCP, keep it ready along with the date you obtained it. The same goes for language certificates: the Curriculum has a dedicated section and you can add them yourself from the E-Portfolio.
Show the work
Photos of dishes you prepared in the school kitchen, a menu you designed, your end-of-placement report: collect them in a portfolio. For each piece add two lines: what you did yourself, with which tools, in how much time. If a photo was taken at a company, ask for permission first.
Also ask your school whether it runs a job placement service. A school authorised to act as a job intermediary must publish its final-year students' CVs on its website until at least twelve months after the diploma, and cannot charge you for this service (Legislative Decree 276/2003, Arts. 6 and 11).
The contract you may be offered
Between 18 and 29, or from 17 if you hold an IeFP vocational qualification, you can be hired on a vocational apprenticeship (apprendistato professionalizzante): an employment contract that includes training (Legislative Decree 81/2015, Arts. 41 and 44). If you are still at school, from the second year of upper secondary school there is also the first-level apprenticeship: the company signs a protocol with your school and you work while studying for your diploma (Art. 43). The same contract is used in IeFP courses, for the vocational qualification and diploma.
Where InTransparency can help
InTransparency is free for students. You upload your work, such as projects, reports or a written assignment, and skills are extracted from it, each linked to the part of the work it comes from; a skill counts as verified only when a teacher or the school confirms it. If your school uses it, you get a weekly reminder to log your placement hours and a journal to note what you do. On the job board every ad says who is hiring, and you apply yourself.