ECEPAA

The ESSENCE project intends to improve employability opportunities for High-Education students by stimulating soft-skills development.

The Project objective is to maximise their engagement in the labour market through offering professional development paths that go beyond formal HE trainings. In order to meet the expectations of entrepreneurs and recruiters connected with the most desirable soft-skills, the courses that the project offer are based on the demand-driven employers’ perspective.

Background

According to ground-breaking research published by World Economic Forum in 2016, in the era of digital automation and AI, career success factors are facing times of significant changes especially in industry sectors at high technological coefficient (but not exclusively!).

From 2020, at the very edge of the forth industrial revolution, strategic competitiveness relies more and more on intellectual capital assets – hence the needs to cultivate new managerial talents that are strongly empowered not only on technical knowledge but mostly on soft and intangible capabilities.

ESSENCE aims to nurture a complete set of new soft-skills on HE students and fresh graduates to complete, enhance and enrich their education and employability competitiveness beside the formal University training. During the project, the partners have developed trainings, courses, educational modules and contents that are in line with the CEDEFOP guidelines for Learning Outcome and fully aligned with the EQF from levels 3 to 5.

In addition, the project developed operational tools (i.e. self-assessment means) that systematically engage multiple organisational studies field and functions – communication, people management, HR, etc.

ESSENCE Project

On the website of the ESSENCE project you can find:

  • OER Platform: The ESSENCE project has created its own OER platform which has been translated into 7 languages to reach different international target groups
  • Mapping: Here it is intended to link soft skills with employability. Mapping the most desirable soft skills among employers within the EU countries.
  • Toolkit: Training content is available (short, easy to use for teachers and intuitive to manage for users) for each soft skill identified as relevant in the process of mapping.
  • Guidelines: They consists of two components: guidelines for the exploitation of the project results and a soft skills manifesto.