Meeting The Modern Job Market’s Needs

In the past job-distinct skills and education were all you needed in order to advance professionally. Today’s job market however, has become more demanding. European citizens need to gear up on transversal skills such as digital and linguistic, but also heighten their ability of critical thinking. These skills are crucial in creating high quality entrepreneurs in order to lower the unemployment rate.

ICT professions have penetrated a great variety of professional sectors. According to the “Opening Up Education” Communication approximately 90% of jobs require IT skills today. Consequently, digital skills are transversal skills that employees need to acquire in order to be marketable and stand out in the job market. Nowadays employers do not only focus on one’s academic and professional background but also take into account candidates’ transversal skills. ICT professionals need to comprehend the importance of digital skills and attain them as per EU recommendation.

Moreover, the “Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs” was launched on 4 March 2013 in Brussels. The theme of the conference was “e-Skills and Education for Digital Jobs” and its main goal was to facilitate action towards enhanced digital skills at national, regional or local level in EU countries. The EU goals for the period 2014-2020 are the promotion of ICT professionalism and the generation of a larger talent pool of entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers and advanced users with a focus on the strategic use of new information and communication technologies.

Current analysis has shown that the level of career websites’ interoperability across Europe is very low. Although there is coverage of e-Skills development and career support, individual portals provide only partial information. Users have to shift from one service to another in order to seek an integrated pathway for career development. In an ideal scenario individuals interested in ICT skills and digital competence information should be connected to further related information such as certifications, qualifications, assessment services and educational guidance services.

Objectives

The project’s’ General Objective is to develop and demonstrate a European-wide learning technology demo platform, adapted in the ever changing demands in today’s job market classifications. In a nutshell, it supports training for acquiring the necessary e-Skills and digital competences to stay competitive and gain edge within the ICT sector.

The e-Skills Match platform classifies ICT skills and digital competences using the e-Cf and ESCO European frameworks. The identified skills are linked to the qualifications required for each occupation in the ICT sector. At the same time, the skills are matched with open learning and training providing courses that will help learner acquire missing skills and competences.

Its Specific Objectives are as follows:

To identify relevant Open Educational Resources (OER) and MOOCs for e-Skills training, assess their quality and define the knowledge and skills acquired through consultation with stakeholders.
To develop the e-Skills Match system prototype that supports each individual to make informed decisions regarding his/her learning path required for particular occupations.
To test and visualise the e-Skills Match platform at EU level, with specific focus on four EU countries (Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden).

e-Skills Match will allow individuals to create and manage their e-Portfolio, perform an e-Skills audit in order to analyse their e-Skills and digital competences, to self-assess their position in the labor environment and to plan learning routes for complementing occupational e-Skills, or in some cases to prepare for the validation through academic course providers.

The project will investigate the development and deployment of the e-Skills Match web-based multilingual platform for knowledge networking related to e-Skills and digital competences demand and supply in different sectors of the ICT field.

Target groups

e-Skills Match is addressed to:

ICT professionals and individuals who wish to:
- assess and visualize their skills;
- identify possible learning paths;
- enhance their ICT knowledge and fill some possible skill-gaps.
VET and higher education institutions interested in promoting courses that are linked to digital skills and ICT job profiles included in the e-Skills Match platform;
Certification providers, interested in certifying the registered ICT professionals' e-competences;
Anyone interested for information on the current e-competence offers, in terms of training, certifications available by registered coursed providers and "skilled labor” updates.

Services for users

The e-Skills Match demo platform will offer on-line services to European citizens in particular those who are faced with unemployment or seek new careers or new job direction within their career path. Interested individuals will have to register to the platform, create and manage their e-Skills profile by describing their current e-Skills and qualifications and provide evidence of such. Consequently registered users will be able to access the following services:

Detect e-Skills and digital competences required for different ICT occupations;

Create their individual e-Portfolio this is an electronic collection of evidence reflecting their professional and academic background that can serve as an electronic resume;

Knowledge elicitation and representation - Mapping of current e-Skills and levels of digital competences visualized on a Career Concept Map.

Perform e-Skills audits in order to identify the individual’s e-Skills gaps.

In a nutshell the project’s platform aims to integrate the following services:

e-Competences self-assessment with the related outcomes formalized by graphs;
e-Competence / job profile training resources available, including OER (Open Education Resources) and MOOCS (Massive Open On-line Courses), as well as market certifications;
e-Competence certifications through academic course providers based on validation procedures recognized at European level.

About

Background supporting the action

Transversal skills, including digital, entrepreneurship, and linguistic amongst others, are vitally important for the employability and adaptability of the European citizen. While job-distinct skills and competences are relevant for jobs in specific occupations or economic sectors transversal skills and competences can be applied in a large variety of jobs.

The penetration of ICT in a variety of economic activities is not only cutting across sectors, but also, across different types of jobs. The “Opening Up Education” Communication says that 90% jobs require IT skills today. Thus, the e-Skills and digital competence are clearly transversal skills and competences needed for any individual to be a marketable and attractive participant in the European workforce. Employers are not solely interested in a candidate’s academic or vocational qualification but also on additional transversal skills and competences. Individuals need to better comprehend the e-Skills and digital competences necessary for gaining that extra edge for employment security in the new economy while also enhancing their training when necessary.

There is broad consensus about the crucial importance of e-skills for Europe. The “Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs” launched on 4 March 2013 at the European conference on “e-Skills and Education for Digital Jobs” in Brussels is aimed to facilitate action towards enhanced digital skills at national, regional or local level in EU countries.The EU goals for the period 2014-2020 is the promotion of ICT professionalism and the generation of a larger talent pool of entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers and advanced users with a focus on the strategic use of new information and communication technologies.

Current analysis has shown that the level of career websites’ interoperability across Europe is very low. Although there is comprehensive coverage of e-Skills development and career support, individual portals provide only partial information. Users have to shift from one service to another in order to seek an integrated pathway for career development. In the ideal scenario individuals interested in ICT skills and digital competence information should be connected to further related information such as certifications/qualifications, assessment services, educational guidance services.

Objectives

The projects’ General Objective is to develop and demonstrate a European-wide learning technology system, dynamically adapted to changes occurring in job labor market classifications that will support (re)- training for acquiring the necessary e-Skills and digital competences to access the desirable jobs within the ICT sector.
The project will develop a system that classifies ICT skills and digital competences achieved through formal, non-formal and informal learning and enable them to be related to qualifications, occupation in the ICT sector and to open learning and training systems that provide these skills and competences.

Its specific objectives are the following:

O1. To identify relevant OER and MOCCs for e-Skills training, assess their quality and define the knowledge and skills acquired through consultation with stakeholders.

O2. To develop the e-Skills Match system prototype that supports each individual to make informed decisions regarding his/her learning path required for particular occupations and to validate the acquired knowledge.

O3. To test and visualise the e-Skills Match system prototype at EU level, with specific focus on four EU countries (Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden).

e-Skills Match will allow individuals to create and manage their e-Portofolio, perform an e-Skills audit in order to analyse their e-skills and digital competences, to self-assess their position in the labour environment and to plan learning pathways for complementing occupational e-skills, or in some cases to prepare for the validation through academic course providers of non-formal or informal learning outcomes.

Target groups

e-Skills Match addresses to:

ICT professionals or young people, to assess and visualize their skills, identify possible learning / training / qualification paths to enhance them or fill some skill-gaps;
VET and higher education institutions interested in promoting their offer relating it to the e-Competences and ICT job profiles included in the e-Skills Match platform;
The certification providers, interested in certifying the ICT professionals' e-competences;
Whoever intends to learn about the current e-competence offer, in terms of training, certifications and "skilled labour.

e-Skills Match will also foster the creation of an e-Skills Match community made of the Certified ICT professionals and the demand side. Some functionalities will concern the employers in different sectors of economic activity and the training and education providers, such as:

Employers will be able to submit their demand for ICT competences - occupational information related to the e-Skills and digital competences required for a specific occupation within the ICT sector;
Training and education providers will be able to submit their offers for ICT training, including OER.

Services for users

The e-Skills Match technological platform will offer online services to European citizens and in particular those who are faced with unemployment or seek new careers or new job direction within their career path. Interested individuals will be able to register to the platform, create and manage their e-Skills profile by describing their current e-Skills and qualifications and provide evidence of such. Consequently, registered users will have access to the following services:

Detect e-Skills and digital competences required in different ICT occupations;

Create their e-Portfolio - an electronic collection of evidence of learning gathered over time and reflecting learner journey that can serve as an electronic resume;

Knowledge elicitation and representation - Mapping of current e-Skills and levels of digital competences visualized on a Career Concept Map.

Perform e-Skills audits in order to identify the individual’s e-skills gaps.

In a nutshell the project’s platform will aim to integrate the following services:

e-Competences self-assessment with the related outcomes formalized by graphs;
e-Competence / job profile training resources available, including OER (Open Education Resources) and MOOCS (Massive Open On-line Courses), as well as market certifications;
e-Competence certifications through academic course providers based on validation procedures recognized at European level.

Coming soon

Content will soon be available!

STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET (SU)

At DSV, research on Design for learning has been conducted since the beginning of the 1970s and has been named a candidate for selection as a leading research area at Stockholm University, which is one of the largest universities in Sweden. SU’s Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) cooperates with more than thirty universities and has participated in a large number of projects funded by EU, NIH, the World Bank, and other international and national agencies. DSV is placed in the Stockholm suburb of Kista and is an integral part of Kista Science City, which is one of the most advanced and leading ICT clusters in the world. DSV is one of the oldest and largest academic departments of ICT in Sweden.

FONDAZIONE POLITECNICO DI MILANO (FPM)

Fondazione Politecnico di Milano was founded in 2003 through a joint effort between the Politecnico di Milano, major city and regional institutions and important corporations to support the university’s research projects and contribute to innovating and developing the economic, productive and administrative environment. Fondazione Politecnico is committed to building a more effective relationship between the university, industry and public administrations.

FPM started its work on European eSkills about ten years ago, participating in the European eSkills Forum, leading a survey on the Skills for eGovernment, and working at the European e-Competence framework (e-CF) in the CEN Workshop on ICT Skills since 2004, being the methodological leader of the several CWAs on the e-CF development.

UNIVERSIDAD DE ALCALÁ (UAH)

The department of Computer Science at UAH has a long tradition of working on software development through national and international R&D projects, specially working on software quality assurance and requirements and design. Further to the technical side in software development, the department also develops a line on the analysis of ICT skills for users and professionals related to employability and education, especially vocational training.

The department of Computer Science is associated to ATI (www.ati.es), the main leading association of IT professionals in Spain, and manages the ECDL exam centre of UAH for basic e-skills training.

ADFOR S.p.A (ADFOR)

Adfor is an independent Management Consulting, Technology Consulting and Training Company, headquartered in Milan and with a local office in Rome, Florence, Parma and Vicenza. Adfor has developed, since its foundation in 1986, a specific interest in the topics of IT governance and management. Adfor is supporting complex projects with high technological content and has developed comprehensive training programs on virtualizing all the issues involved in the application of IT technology.

GOVERNMENT TO YOU AISBL (GOV2U)

GOVERNMENT TO YOU (Gov2u) is an international non-profit association created by a group of visionary professionals from the fields of Legislative Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and community activism aiming to suggest and promote tools that facilitate the everyday work of elected officials and that offer citizens a greater stake in political discourse by enabling them to contribute their ideas, suggestions, and opinions. Gov2u has significant experience in various eVoting and eParticipation projects and is internationally recognized as a pioneer organization in the field of eDemocracy.