Qualiopi indicator 29: apprentice job placement in CFAs — the evidence that passes the audit

An apprenticeship candidate with no employer on 1 September, left to fend for themselves with a job-offer list that is never updated: this is exactly the situation indicator 29 of the Qualiopi framework is designed to prevent. Attached to criterion 6 (positioning within the professional environment) and classified as a minor non-conformity, it applies specifically to CFAs and organisations delivering apprenticeship courses — a standard continuing-education organisation is not concerned.

What the framework requires

The obligation extends the legal missions given to CFAs under article L6231-2 of the French labour code: helping candidates find an employer, supporting those whose contract is terminated, and preparing job placement at the end of the course. Concretely, the framework expects a CFA to mobilise its network of socio-economic partners — host companies, professional branches, skills operators (OPCO), the public employment service (France Travail), local job-integration missions, chambers of commerce — to support the professional insertion of its apprentices, including those seeking a contract or facing termination.

The full indicator 29 page details the evidence expected point by point; this article focuses on the method for preparing it.

What the auditor reconstructs on audit day

The auditor examines three distinct stages of the apprentice’s journey, often by following the file of a randomly chosen candidate:

• Entry: how does the CFA help a candidate with no employer? CV and interview workshops, matching with partner companies, job dating events, active distribution of applications — the auditor wants to see a live mechanism, not a job-offer list pinned to a wall.
• During the course: if a contract is terminated, what is the process? The CFA must allow the apprentice to continue training for six months while helping them find a new employer; the auditor asks for concrete cases and their traceability, not a mere reference to the legal text.
• Exit: what does the CFA do to support job placement at the end of the course? Company fairs, partnerships with local stakeholders, tracking of outcomes and insertion surveys at 6 or 12 months.

A table of five genuinely active partner companies, with recent contact dates, reassures an auditor far more than a directory of fifty logos with no trace of any exchange.

Getting compliant, step by step

Map your network. A table of socio-economic partners — regular host companies, branches and OPCOs, France Travail, local job-integration missions, chambers of commerce — specifying the nature of the relationship (agreement, participation in juries, job offers passed on) and the date of the last contact.

Formalise support for finding a contract. Describe the journey of a candidate with no employer: an interview-preparation workshop, job offers passed on, application tracking in a named table, regular follow-ups. Keep the traces, anonymised if needed for the audit.

Write the contract-termination procedure. Who is alerted, what interview is held with the apprentice, how training continues during the six months, which companies are approached, with what weekly or monthly follow-up. Keep a log of terminations and their outcomes.

Track job-placement actions at the end of the course. Invitations to company fairs, event minutes, partnership agreements, insertion surveys at 6 or 12 months — they also feed indicator 3 and InserJeunes.

The mistakes that trigger a non-conformity

• A list of partner companies with no proof of a recent relationship: the auditor systematically checks how fresh the contacts are, not just their existence on paper.
• No written procedure for apprenticeship contract terminations, even though this is one of the most sensitive moments of an apprentice’s journey.
• Apprentices with no employer left to search on their own, with no mechanism or tracked follow-up — the most common gap found on this indicator.
• An inconsistency with indicator 3: published placement rates that match no action described here.
• No named trace of the support actually provided, which prevents the auditor from reconstructing a concrete case on audit day.

Scaling the requirement to the size of the CFA

The framework sets no fixed format or number of partners. For a small, recently created CFA, the auditor accepts a modest but genuine network: five genuinely active partner companies and an applied termination procedure are worth more than a directory of fifty logos with no proof of contact. What matters is the consistency between the size of the organisation, the number of apprentices supported and the scale of the mechanism described — a CFA with ten apprentices does not need a dedicated placement department, but must be able to show who, internally, owns this mission and how it is tracked.

Do not confuse this indicator with two close neighbours. Indicator 28 covers mobilising the network to organise the work-based training periods themselves — the pedagogical content of the alternating course. Indicator 29, by contrast, covers access to an employer and staying in the scheme: finding a contract, keeping it, or finding a new one after a termination. Both rely on the same network of companies, but with different objectives, and the same partner table can feed both evidence files if it is properly documented.

Why mobilising the network genuinely changes outcomes

This is not merely a documentation requirement. Labour-market sociology has long documented the decisive role networks play in accessing employment: in his foundational study on the strength of weak ties, Mark Granovetter shows that it is an individual’s peripheral contacts — beyond their close circle — that most often provide the information leading to a job, exactly the role a CFA’s partner network plays for an apprentice with no employer (Granovetter, American Journal of Sociology, 1973, study). On the active-support side, a controlled experiment run in France on more than 200,000 job seekers by Behaghel, Crépon and Gurgand found that intensive, personalised support — regular interviews, targeted matching with employers — raises the exit rate to employment by 15 to 35% compared with standard follow-up (Behaghel, Crépon & Gurgand, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2014, study). In other words: a tracked contract-search workshop and a genuinely mobilised network of companies are not Qualiopi paperwork — they are the very levers that make the difference between an apprentice who finds an employer and one who drops out for lack of a contract.

Take action

Indicator 29 is prepared with an up-to-date network map, a tracked mechanism to help apprentices find a contract, a written termination procedure, and insertion surveys that are actually used. The Complete Kit Certif (€297, 14-day guarantee, documents in French) provides ready-to-use templates for this indicator and all 32 indicators of the framework. To structure your whole CFA’s activity from day one, the kit + ebook pack (€347) remains the fastest route.