What are the transferable skills most needed across Europe?
Over the last four months of 2020, four workshops on transferable skills were held by DocEnhance partners for external stakeholders issued from various European countries. Each workshop focused on a specific career sector chosen to represent crucial challenges of the 21st century: industrial, technological, non-profit and data-driven sectors.
| Industry (Finland) | Technology (Spain) | Non-profit sector (Slovakia) | Data-driven sectors (Norway) |
| · Digital skills · Communication and presentation skills · Skills to identify own skills and communicate them to different audiences · Problem solving · Management & leadership skills · Contextual flexibility · Creativity · Adaptability, motivation, ethics · Teamwork and networking Language skills | · Adaptability/ flexibility · Collaboration/ team work · Motivation/ proactiveness · Language skills · Presentation skills · Permanent self‐learning · Ability to address different audiences · Understanding business culture/ organizational structures · Participation in non‐research activities · Time management | · Personal skills and abilities: empathy, motivation, resilience, adaptability, flexibility, ethics, social responsibility · Communication and presentation skills · Organisational and execution skills: project management, financial management, creativity · Management and entrepreneurial skills, leadership, problem solving, critical thinking · Teamwork · Language skills | · Understanding and analysing different types of data · Running statistics · Handling sensitive data · Metadata management · Text data mining Visualising and communicating data and statistics |
The recommended curricula and pilot courses will be designed based on the outcomes of these regional stakeholder meetings, to ensure that the end user needs are met.
Due to the pandemic situation, the workshops were organised as small scale physical meetings, hybrid meetings (both online and physical) or online.
The workshops were later evaluated by the participants, on their formal aspects, speakers, and content. Overall, they were well appreciated with a global evaluation of 4.41 out of 5. Participants generally found the workshop conclusions useful for their institution and sector. It was pointed out that the workshops could provide an interesting framework for further discussions on specific issues and on regular terms.
Participants welcomed discussions on the benefits and limitations in hiring PhDs, or the importance of a value-orientated approach towards future doctoral trainings in the EU. Ideas of topics for future stakeholder workshops included tips for PhDs interested in transitioning to the corporate world, training and skills development for supervisors, as well as joint university-company activities for doctoral students.
The outcomes, namely the transferable skills suggested by the participants, will be a subject of an in-depth analysis further to come in order to reflect differences across sectors and countries.
Discover the main teachings issued from each workshop here
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