INTERLOCALITY - Increased Local Employability of International Degree Students

Background and goals

The INTERLOCALITY consortium is composed of partners from 5 different countries (Denmark, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Italy), including four HEI’s and a job- and international mobility agency whose common focus revolves around international students and their employability. International students are a vulnerable migrant group significantly affected by challenge of unemployment. Common for the local regions of the participating HEIs is a basic and increasing need for highly skilled and qualified workers within the fields of business administration and engineering. While companies experience a need for qualified workers, international degree students and graduates struggle to find their way into local companies despite the outspoken need. This calls for action to support both sides of this gap between the two groups ensuring continued growth and innovation within the companies and thereby local regions. While all partners have tried to solve these challenges by testing out different methods and initiatives within their own institutions and local environments, the need for joining forces around a common European, sustainable approach seems evident and has been reinforced by the realization of how similar both our challenges and environments are. Speaking to a European agenda of battling risen unemployment rates among the youth the importance and relevance of joining forces and creating transnational partnerships as the key to overcome challenges of the European labour market is definite.

Objectives and benefits

The objective of INTERLOCALITY is to increase local employability among international HE degree students within the fields of engineering and of business administration. International degree students often struggle to find internships and employment locally. Although these are crucial issues for HEIs’ student attraction and retention, it is not within the power of the HEIs to secure employment for their students. In this they rely completely on companies and organisations to hire students. There is a widely acknowledged gap between HE studies, and employment and INTERLOCALITY aims to bridge that gap by supporting 1) the international degree students, 2) staff at HEIs and 3) companies and 3rd sector staff taking upon a quadruple helix approach involving all four main actors that influence the local employability of international degree students, namely international degree students themselves, HEI staff, local companies and the surrounding society.

Results

The expected key project results are: INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI MONITORING TOOL (IAMT) The IAMT prototype to track and collect objective general data on the mobility and career steps of the international student, and subjective data on their perception of their participation on the labour market, their intentions to stay, and the factors that hinder or enable their international career and personal and professional development. The development manual will provide HEIs with information on the content elements of the IAMT, as well as guidelines on how to transfer and build a monitoring tool in another regional/national context.

INTERNATIONAL TALENT JOURNEY (ITJ) A structured qualification process for
international students, based on the identified needs, gaps, skills mismatch and lack of opportunities. The ITJ consists of two interconnected areas addressing the gap between the students and the local labour market from theoretical qualification point of view and opportunity to participate in low threshold contact formats with regional employers.

ONLINE STAFF TRAINING MODULES AND ASSESSMENT TOOL This entails development and testing of 3 online training modules addressed to staff at HEIs, companies and third sector organizations and associations, development and testing of a digital assessment tool and a user guide to adapt the open-source modules and digital assessment tools to the local needs of HEIs, companies and third sector actors. All key project results are crucial in the support of the overall objective of increasing local employability among international HE degree students within the fields of engineering and of business administration.

Societal impact

INTERLOCALITY aims to have a high impact and at all levels. The quadruple-helix approach is meant to have a clear and positive effect on all HEIs parties involved in the journey of an international degree student and his/her desire to stay and work locally upon graduation. With an independent focus on international degree students solely, the quadruple-helix approach in this particular context is new and innovative and is thought to bring all actors taking a part in increasing international degree students’ employability closer together in a sustainable eco-system bound to create a solid and well documented platform bridging the gap between international degree students and the LOCAL and REGIONAL labour markets The mobility of international degree students does not stop at graduation, but is a viable option for many throughout their lives. This means that the “local” will change over time, and INTERLOCALITY will become an established way of life for many HE students and graduates.

The desired impact in short:
- Incentives and models for building sustainable ecosystems for quadruple-helix cooperation locally, in any region globally towards attraction, retention and inclusion of international degree students and alumni. - Increased employability of international degree students, which will have a positive effect on the need for qualified workers in local regional labour markets supporting companies’ growth and innovation - Increased competence and understanding among relevant staff as well as society members more widely of issues related to the local employability of international degree students and the situation, they are facing
- Increased visibility for and recognition of the role of staff in enhancing the employability of students, as well as the need for staff competence development to meet the international degree students’ needs of support - Creating state of the art initiatives such as the ITJ and Pre-Internship for enhancing employability of international degree students easily adaptable for other HEI’s to implement
- New and innovative initiatives for international degree students that are even better aligned with the local labour market and the companies’ needs - Increased number of local companies engaging with HE students by attracting newcomers with none or very little first-hand engagement with international degree students - Increased number of local companies willing and able to hire international degree students for internships, project work and parttime jobs as well as alumni for full-time employment after graduation.
- Better and more personalised hiring and onboarding mechanisms within companies for including international talents in their work communities.
- System and outputs developed that can be adaptable to different context and needs thus making them easily to be exported at European level. In this way it is possible to have a positive impact on the retention and employability of international students also in other EU countries At local and national level the project output, in specific the staff training, can also be used in other contexts such as in School for Adults or in Shelter for migrants in order to train the staff that work mainly with foreign youngsters to increase their retention and employability, which is a great need in other EU program countries. Thereby, INTERLOCALITY, strongly combines the internationally aspect in a local/regional context which supports not only the inclusion of international degree students and lowering the miss-match gap for young people’s employability, it also contributes to the EU policies such as EEA 2025, Skills Agenda and the Digital Education Action Plan, and not least the freedom of movement and employment within EU.

Please visit https://www.interlocality.eu/ External link

Sustainable development goals