ERA Mobility and Career Day

Specific Challenge

The European Research Area (ERA) priorities underline the importance of an open labour market for researchers. This includes the removal of barriers to researchers mobility, training, and attractive careers. Europe will need around 1 Mio more researchers in the coming years; students, and young researchers need to be better informed about European opportunities so that they continue their research career.

EURAXESS – Researchers in Motion” is an initiative of the European Research Area (ERA) strategy that addresses barriers to the mobility of researchers and seeks to enhance scientific collaboration between Europe and the world. The initiative strives to become the global support and career development tool for European and international researchers, not only for their mobility experience inside and outside Europe, but also for their social networking with researchers from all over the world. Designed as a comprehensive tool-set it provides access to a complete range of information and support services.

Scope

The ERA Mobility and Career Days, by building on the support of the members of the EURAXESS network, will help making a career in an European research institution more visible and hence attractive, both for researchers in Europe who are facing career decisions and for those who are currently outside Europe and might consider relocating to Europe to develop their research careers in Europe. This action aims at promoting jobs and growth by providing information on research careers, jobs and funding opportunities and support services to students and researchers on the ground. The career and mobility day will focus on countries where jobs and funding is scarce, in this respect information on European opportunities will be crucial for the young researchers’ generation. The event shall be open to researchers from all fields.

This action will support activities of the EURAXESS Service Network represented by EURAXESS Bridgehead organisations to organise in collaboration with research universities or institutions an information day/event that addresses mobility and career development of (young) researchers and students to maximize the career prospects. The ERA Mobility and Career Days are considered as opportunity for employers, recruiters and HR manager to have a customized on-campus event, matching then with students and researchers. Students and young researchers shall be given the opportunity to accelerate their knowledge and careers by talking to different specialists in the field. The programme shall include inter alia insightful presentations, practical workshop (for example on CV drafting and presentation skills) and one-to-one meetings with recruiters. Throughout the day/s networking opportunities shall be foreseen.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of the order of EUR 870 000 would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

This action allows for the provision of financial support to third parties in line with the conditions set out in Part K of the General Annexes.

Expected Impact

The proposed action aims at a better knowledge about European job and funding opportunities mainly published on the EURAXESS Jobs portal and personalised assistance tools such as EURAXESS. In the medium term, the action aims at supporting jobs and growth and will contribute directly to the Horizon 2020 objective of cross-national and international circulation of researchers; it will increase the number of researchers who have access to research infrastructures through Union support and the number of excellent researchers overall. An additional impact should be to convince young people to embark on research careers with mobility.