Abstract:

International placements for graduates is a key factor for the development of linguistic and soft skills of grant holders, increasing their employability and enhancing awareness about themselves and cultural differences in the workplace. At this moment, Erasmus + is the new generation of mobility programmes launched, but there is a great concern with the diffusion and exploitation on the results of previous projects financed by European Commission.
In final reports for the National Agency in charge of the management of the programmes in Spain (OAPEE) for every project, we analyse the profiles of participants each year, but never has done before the macro analysis for the comprehensive knowledge of variables related with the mobility for placement results.

In a previous study, we explored the impact in short and medium time of international placements, both examined through qualitative and quantitative methodology but for a small sample.

The population of the study was 237 graduates from UJI in Castellon who participated in the seven Leonardo projects launched during Life Long Learning Programmes generation: “International Workplacement for Recent Graduates in Europe” projects starting from 2007 to 2013 Leonardo for People in the Labour Market.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the central features which characterizes participants from Jaume I University in Leonardo projects and also the major aspects of their mobility: sociodemographic variables (gender, age, disability, fields of studies), variables related with pre-mobility phase (soft skills and also variables related to previous job search (length of unemployment, attitude to job search; initiatives for training, job search behaviour, job search self-efficacy, level of working foreign language, labour experience, job search satisfaction) management of the project (how they have get information about the project at UJI) and variables related with the mobility phase: professional self-efficacy, country of destination and type of company.

The results for all the population studied, show different patterns depending on the participants’ profiles and taking into account the different variables as participants in international mobility for placements: There are more women than men (64,1%) participating in human and social sciences and also technical and experimental sciences, bachelor (95,7%) . Also recommendations to improve and enhance the scope of participants in future international placements programmes arise.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects only the views of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Keywords:

International placements, mobility, participants, employability, soft skills.