The European Year of Skills offers a wide range of education and labour market actors exceptional opportunities to learn from one another and to translate evidence on skills and jobs into measures in support of economic and social ambitions. Over the past decade, many European countries have collected and analysed a wealth of data and evidence that help anticipate and match people’s skills to current and future jobs. But turning such skills intelligence into effective skills matching measures and practices for sectors, regions and communities can be challenging.
Cedefop’s fifth virtual get-together has welcomed policy officials and practitioners, social partners, representatives of civil society institutions, experts and other interested parties to learn about how best to design effective and targeted skills anticipation and matching initiatives. Cedefop recently released a collection of such practices via its revamped Matching skills online web tool.
The Matching skills web tool is designed for policy-makers working on education and training, skills, labour market policy and related policy areas. It covers the main policy initiatives used to detect labour market trends and anticipate skill needs in all EU Member States. It also includes vocational education and training (VET) measures that use such labour market information to inform and shape up- and reskilling, and skills matching practices and measures. The tool uses a harmonised and comparative methodology; national experts were consulted to collect the information included.
In this virtual get-together, Cedefop has showcased the main building blocks of several innovative skills anticipation and matching initiatives recently implemented in EU Member States. Panellists representing initiatives described in the Matching skills web tool have reflected on the factors driving the success of their national initiatives, and on potential constraints or future development opportunities. This virtual get-together aimed at sharing good practices in designing or reforming forward-looking skills matching policies and practices, and offered policy learning opportunities European countries and regions can benefit from.
Video recording
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Agenda
Times are indicated in CET.
| 11.30‑11.35 | Opening and welcome by Jasper van Loo, Cedefop |
| 11.35‑11.55 | Matching skills: from evidence to action
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| 11.55‑12.10 | Reflecting on good skills anticipation and matching policy
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| 12.10‑12.50 |
Getting inspired: learning how best to match skills to jobs
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| 12.50‑13.00 | Q&A |
Speakers
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In collaboration with the various Belgian public employment and training services ACTIRIS, ADG, Bruxelles Formation, Le Forem (united under the partnership SYNERJOB), VDAB developed and manages an occupational and competencies database, named Competent. View moreBoth input from experts from the sectors and data & AI insights, are used to determine the evolutions of the Competent database. Competent is used by the public employment and training service providers to develop services and is also available as an open data database (API’s) to all interested customers for the development of labour market tools. Veerle is an all-rounder when it comes to competence profiles, version management, database management, partnerships etc. Veerle is also specialised in the topic of soft skills. |
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Employee Development supports the development and implementation of the Further Education and Training (FET) policy framework on skills development for the employed, to enhance levels of employee participation in FET, in alignment with the National Skills Strategy. View moreShe has extensive experience working with learning networks and enterprise to upskill in priority skill areas to ensure competitiveness and skills development in industry. |
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View moreBetween 2016 and 2020, he was a Senior Adviser at Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (FGB), a not-for-profit research foundation based in Rome, where he led a programme of cross-national research on employment and skills. |
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He leads the Agency’s Skills and Work team and is principal research manager of its Digitalisation and Future of Work and Skill Mismatch projects. His proudest achievement is the development of two waves of the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey. View moreHe has been scientific advisor and author on skills anticipation and skill mismatch for the European Commission, the World Economic Forum, ILO and the Greek Ministry of Labour and is regular instructor for the ILO-ITC. He is currently a core member of the scientific committee of Greece’s National Skills Commission. Before joining Cedefop he held posts at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cyprus and worked for the Bank of Greece and HM Treasury. He has been invited Professor at the Universita Degli Studi Roma TRE and Visiting Research Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen Business School and IZA Research Fellow. He holds an M.Phil from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) and a D.Phil from the Scottish Graduate Program in Economics. He has published widely in peer-reviewed economics journals (e.g. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Oxford Review of Education, Economica, Journal of Economic Surveys, Research in Labor Economics, Education Economics, International Labour Review). |
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With over two decades of research experience in the fields of education, employment, and labour market, she currently holds the position of coordinator of the "Research Mechanism of the Small Enterprises’ Institute" (2016 – 2023) which aims to systematically discuss issues related to employment policies, social policy, educational policies (with a particular emphasis on vocational education and training), and social and educational inequality. View moreIn addition, she is the scientific supervisor of the action "Social Partners' interventions for Skills' Foresight in the framework of the Labour Market Diagnosis System" (2018 - 2023), which looking into the role of social partners in skills policies and practices in Greece. She had previously worked as a researcher at the Academy of Athens' Research Centre, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, and the National Centre for Social Research. Her studies are in the fields of Education and Sociology, and she has published numerous papers in Greek and international peer-reviewed journals, working papers, contributions in collective volumes, and international conferences. |
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He currently coordinates the labour market and skills analysis work of the agency. He is also part of the team investigating EU skills trends using online job vacancies. View moreHe has a master degree in quantitative and general economics and holds a Ph.d. in social sciences. As a researcher and project manager at the Dutch research centre for education and the labour market (ROA) Jasper led research projects on labour market issues, skills, employability and obsolescence of knowledge. He also worked on HRD and HRM, taking an economic perspective to human resources issues. Jasper started working for Cedefop in 2007. He led the centre’s early work on skill mismatch, coordinated the centre’s work on national VET systems and policies for several years, and led the centre’s skills governance work. |
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In collaboration with the various Belgian public employment and training services ACTIRIS, ADG, Bruxelles Formation, Le Forem (united under the partnership SYNERJOB), VDAB developed and manages an occupational and competencies database, named Competent. View moreBoth input from experts from the sectors and data & AI insights, are used to determine the evolutions of the Competent database. Competent is used by the public employment and training service providers to develop services and is also available as an open data database (API’s) to all interested customers for the development of tools. Leen is a real all-round when it comes to competence profiles, version management, database management, partnerships, etc. /details> |
Veerle De Keersmaecker is a policy advisor at VDAB (public employment service Flanders).
Noreen FitzPatrick is the Employee Development Manager in the Enterprise Employment and Skills unit in SOLAS, the Further Education Authority of Ireland.
Terence Hogarth is a professor in the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) where he leads a programme of research on vocational education and training (VET) - with a particular emphasis on apprenticeships – and its responsiveness to labour market demand for skills. His research is also concerned with identifying changing patterns of demand for skills with a particular focus on skill mismatches. This particular programme of research employs a range of methods including surveys, forecasting, foresight, and text mining techniques. He is currently involved in the Horizon study entitled Skills2Capabilities.
Konstantinos Pouliakas is an Expert on Skills and Labour Markets at Cedefop.
Despoina Valassi is social scientist and scientific associate in the Small Enterprises’ Institute of the Hellenic Confederation of Professionals, Craftsmen and Merchants (IME GSEVEE).
Jasper Van Loo is coordinator of Cedefop’s department for VET and Skills.
Leen Verachtert is policy advisor at VDAB (public employment service Flanders).
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