Which problem is the VALITS 2.0 project facing?
Low-skilled people and disadvantaged groups such as migrants, ethnic minorities or disabled persons often have difficulties to find employment. Moreover, digital and technological developments are increasingly replacing low-skilled jobs. For these people it is getting more and more important to have informal transversal skills. Nowadays these personal skills are often the key to access a job and are likely to become essential in today’s work environment. But many people have not yet recognised their informal transversal skills and are not able to use them to find employment.
What are Informal Transversal Skills?
Every person has informal transversal skills, which are learned in an environment outside the formal learning through personal or professional experiences. Transversal (or cross-sectional) skills and competences are relevant to a broad range of occupations and can be transferred to other jobs and sectors. They are often associated with personal or soft skills. Typical examples are teamworking skills, interpersonal skills, language skills, digital skills, leadership skills, and many more.
While school education and professional experiences can be shown in the curriculum vitae of a person and can be confirmed by certificates, there is no validation of informal transversal skills so far. The VALITS 2.0 project is aimed to help these groups in having their personal skills recognised and then to either use these to find employment or to learn new skills and improve existing skills.
The VALITS 2.0 Project Solutions
Within the lifetime of the project, three new and innovative tools will be developed, which will for the first time provide low-skilled and disadvantaged persons as well as professional qualification consultants with guidance, tailored to their individual skills sets:
- The VALITS 2.0 Assessment Tool – A tool aimed at low-skilled persons that is based on a set of tests and questions that will indirectly extract skills from the user, rate them objectively and document them in a credible Skills Certificate that employers can trust.
- The VALITS 2.0 Skills Learning Guide – This digital database will provide information on learning opportunities based on the personal assessment result.
- The VALITS 2.0 Training Manual – A tool aimed to provide professional qualification consultants with the necessary training and understanding of how to support low-skilled and disadvantaged persons in identifying and better using their informal transversal skills.
