COMPASS Best practices and lessons learned on transferable and complementary skills

This report offers a focused examination on the transferable skills researchers acquired and enhanced through their participation in selected activities within the COMPASS project.

In doing so, the primary emphasis is on the COMPASS Conference: Transferable Skills for Research & Innovation, hosted by Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki on October 4-5, 2023 – the reason for that being that that conference was specifically designed to equip researchers with and improve already existing transferable skills to unlock their potential for succeeding in their future careers.

The report consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1 first tries to answer the questions what transferable skills are and why they are important for researchers, before it gives an overview of the crucial role of transferable skills in the European Union.

Chapter 2 shortly discusses the Researcher Development Framework (RDF) and how it is used in the European Union because the investigation into the acquisition and improvement of transferable skills by researchers through their participation in selected COMPASS activities takes recourse to this framework.

Chapter 3 is the focal point of this report and provides a succinct description of the selected activities, followed by an exploration of how these activities helped the researchers gain and enhance transferable skills. Finally, a short conclusion to close up the key points of enhancing transferable and complementary skills of researchers.