What Is the Private Sector Looking for in Early-Career Researchers — First Insights from CROSS Interviews

Within the CROSS project, we are currently conducting a series of interviews with representatives of the private sector across Europe as part of Work Package 3. The aim of these interviews is to better understand the employability of early-career researchers outside academia and to identify which soft skills employers consider significant.

The first interviews are already underway in the Czech Republic and convey a clear and consistent message:

Communication as a key competence

Companies clearly emphasize communication skills — both self-presentation and the ability to clearly articulate one’s ideas and positions and to explain them in an understandable way.

Practical problem-solving

The ability to independently address a problem, describe the process of its solution, and reflect on decision-making throughout the work is also highly valued. Companies are interested not only in the outcome, but primarily in the way doctoral candidates think.

Team collaboration

Another important area is teamwork — the ability to collaborate with people from different disciplines, share responsibility, and communicate effectively in a professional environment.

How we work with ResearchComp in the interviews

Each interview also includes the introduction of the ResearchComp competence framework. With companies, we discuss:

• whether they have already encountered this framework,
• their first impressions,
• and whether they can envision its practical use in their own context.

We then jointly review the self-assessment tool and open a discussion on its potential use:

• in recruitment processes,
• as a tool for the personal and professional development of researchers,
• or as an HR tool, for example in self-evaluation meetings, performance reviews, or motivational interviews.

These discussions help us assess to what extent the tools developed by the European Commission are understandable, usable, and relevant beyond the academic environment.

The interviews will continue in the coming months in other European countries. Their results will be used to better align academic training with labour market needs and to further develop and refine the ResearchComp framework and the self-assessment tool.

The results of these interviews will be used in subsequent phases of the project to support the further development of ResearchComp and its self-assessment tool.