EURAXIND: project background

“Although the number of researchers in the EU has been increasing since 2000 at a faster rate than in the United States and Japan, we still lag behind when it comes to the share of researchers in the workforce.” Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn 

Typically, less than half of doctoral graduates will be employed in academia immediately after graduation. It is estimated that less than 10%-15% will achieve a long-term academic career. Despite this few researchers, especially postdoctoral researchers, have access to good career development information and advice, particularly for jobs outside academia. Furthermore, many academics perceive careers in other employment sectors as second-rate or a ‘failure’, thereby discouraging researchers from considering these career paths.

Conversely, many employers who seek highly skilled and qualified employees do not value researchers. They often see them as ‘too academic’ and lacking in commercial awareness or business acumen. This mismatch of understanding and preconceptions means that across Europe we are not achieving the best level of recruitment of researchers into all employment sectors.

Established by the European Commission, the EURAXESS Service Centres were originally set up to facilitate individual researcher mobility across Europe and are a successful model of providing practical career information and access to job opportunities across Europe through the EURAXESS job portal.

Next step for the European Commission is to develop an industry-interface to encourage more businesses to engage with the EURAXESS portal and post more job opportunities, and an understanding of industry’s needs with respect to researcher recruitment.

EURAXIND is a new project aimed to bring together seven partners and seven third parties from the EURAXESS Service Network in Europe with the aim of increasing industry participation in EURAXESS services by developing resources to support researchers and institutions to increase industry and research collaboration opportunities and for institutions and industry to promote these opportunities. The overall objective of the project is therefore to develop key resources to support industry, institutions and researchers in this endeavour. A key part of this will be identifying specific stakeholder needs, and develop the resources accordingly. These will be promoted through the EURAXESS Service Centres as well as through fourteen project-specific workshops, seven targeted at industry and seven at institutions.

EURAXIND is divided into Work Packages, led by CRAC, FECYT, FFG and BZN:

  • Institutional case studies and Employer Engagement Toolkit 
  • Employers’ needs and demand for researchers
  • Researchers’ views and experiences
  • Industry engagement, communication and dissemination

EURAXIND's objectives:
  • Identify employers' and researchers' needs to support intersectoral mobility and collaboration.
  • Provide the EURAXESS network with online resources to support institutional outreach and engagement with employers.
  • Encourage researchers to consider career and research opportunities within industry.
  • Attract more industry employers to use EURAXESS services.

EURAXIND'S core activities:

  • Three literature reviews from employer, institution and researcher perspectives
  • Four surveys from employer, institution and differing researcher perspective
  • Employer engagement strategy
  • Seven workshops in seven countries for the EURAXESS network
  • Seven workshops in seven countries for employers
  • Development of a toolkit for EURAXESS network
  • Development of a toolkit for researchers

 for more information. 

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