Our knowledge-intensive company depends on highly skilled employees. To spot and attract our next generation talents, we offer, among other things, internships to students and scholarships that allow foreign students to do a two-year master’s degree at one of the three Dutch technical universities. Both programs help create a pool of talented starters for ASML, our suppliers and the region. The internship and scholarship programs also give our managers an opportunity to develop their leadership and coaching skills.

Most interns are university level, and do an apprenticeship or graduation assignment at ASML. About 5% of interns are students at vocational level interested in gaining experience in assembling chip-making machines or making machine parts in our mechanical or electrical model shops. Internships last from three to 12 months.

We recruit interns worldwide through our network of affiliated educational institutes and research institutions, as well as directly through recruitment advertising. In 2011, we hosted 146 interns in Veldhoven, up from 105 in 2010. About half of them came from the Netherlands. Other countries strongly represented were Turkey, China, Japan and India, as well as Central and Eastern European countries such as Russia, Romania and Ukraine. An encouragingly large proportion of our interns, 29%, were women.

About 9,5% of our interns accepted a job at ASML immediately after their internship. Around 51% returned to university after their internship to finish their studies and 20% started a new study or PhD.

Our Henk Bodt Scholarship Program aims to attract talented foreign students. Named after a former chairman of our Supervisory Board, the program offers up to 20 scholarships each year in cooperation with the Technical University of Eindhoven, the University of Twente and the Technical University of Delft.

In 2011, we granted scholarships to six students, who started their programs in September 2011. Eighteen scholarship students who entered the program in 2010 continued into their second academic year in 2011 and the majority were doing internships at ASML. We hired four engineers whom we had previously granted scholarships, including one PhD scholarship in cooperation with the TU Eindhoven. Managers of our business departments act as mentors, supporting scholarship students in their technical, professional and personal development.

The majority of our 2011 interns and scholars were assigned to our Development and Engineering department.