Purpose: The aim of this paper is to report the motivations and perceived benefits of companies that collaborate with universities by offering student work-placement positions. Design/methodology/approach: The study follows a mixed methodology based on (1) a literature review on the topic, (2) a case study survey including companies that collaborate with one Spanish university in student work-placements and (3) meetings with collaborating companies in different countries and universities. Findings: The most important reasons for collaborating in student work-placements were related to social duty, the opportunity of training students in company needs and as a source of staff recruitment. Conversely, the less rated motivators were improving the company's position within the sector, benefitting from university services and saving time in the selection of personnel. Research limitations/implications: Future research should include a bigger corpus of the number of universities and companies, as well as the type of collaborations with universities, in order to identify any resulting differences. Practical implications: The conclusions highlight the need to define/improve the mechanisms that contribute to a win-win context. This is the only way that collaboration can advance towards a genuine partnership that will provide an effective framework for universities and companies to effectively share the same objectives in training future employees. Originality/value: These results are relevant because of the lack of quantitative and qualitative research on this topic.