One of the reasons why career planning skills trainings are being held is to encourage proactive career planning by equipping participants with the skills, resources and self-assessment information necessary to make informed career choices both inside and beyond academia. Organizing career planning skills trainings and labour market preparation trainings focus on professional career of PhDs and academics who are often uncertain in terms of decision-making for their next future career life. Therefore, the training possibilities for PhDs and academics can help, maintain and improve job skills, professional level of employees and prepare them for possible promotion.

By organising these events the HE institutions can benefit in terms of the overall job satisfaction level of their PhDs and academics.

By offering a wide range of possibilities for helping international research staff (in addition to local staff), including PhD students, develop their professional knowledge and skills higher education institutions enable them to fulfill their potential as researchers, make their stay more meaningful professionally and academically and thus contribute to their professional integration in the institution or the national labour market.

Interdisciplinary summer schools are a rather efficient way of universities and their faculties to introduce international PhD students and academic staff members to the fields of study they could offer. These summer schools could also offer a great opportunity to international PhD students and academic staff members to extend their knowledge on certain topics, introduce them to new ways of teaching certain fields of study as well as to meet new colleagues, and potentially establish connections within academic circles.

Many universities already have a fund for small institutional grants to support their local PhD students and young researchers in developing various transferable skills (e.g., writing a project/project and financial management of own project), and in preparing future interdisciplinary, international, or cutting-edge projects. Such grants can be used to cover e.g. travel costs, attendance fees for conferences, extra publication, dissemination and science popularisation costs, extra fieldwork, extra lab costs/consumables, individual trainings, etc. Those grants could be offered also to international PhD students and young academics under the same conditions as their local peers.  Information on grants should be available in English and easily foundable on the institutional website. The information could be part of the welcome package.

Allotting a space on the institution's website for the list of career promotion criteria could greatly contribute to foreign researchers seeking a more permanent involvement at the welcoming institution. Career paths should be structured, transparent, and clear for foreign researchers.

The main benefit of this practice is that this kind of training improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the support staff work. It also increases the levels of satisfaction of the end-users such as researchers in mobility, international PhD students and academic staff.

This training should be offered to all newcomer staff. It will enhance the procces of introduction to the newcomers and shorter the time for their integration.

As a result the newcomers will be able to engage in the process faster and deliver high-quality service, improving their capacity for the job.

An effective tool/forum platform to build up the community of experts. The support staff members can contribute their ideas in the knowledge that will be stored-archived in shared online workplace and can be referred back to at any time. Posting issues and receiving responses will create over time a network amongst colleagues that will be actively supporting each other. It could grow to become an FAQ or Wikipedia-style resource platform for support teams involved in internationalization or even for the other HEI departments/units.

A communication platform designed to facilitate the exchange of information among staff working in various institutions that support international academics and PhD students. Knowledge sharing involves a multi-directional exchange of information resources where each institution is both a donor and a receiver of knowledge. Therefore every institution involved should have the possibility to profit from as well as contribute to the knowledge-sharing platform. A community of experts from across different HEIs and research organisations can be created via such a platform.

Such events are an efficient way for professionals from different HEIs to share their knowledge, exchange their experience and challenges and build contacts and trust, in other words, a community of experts. Better informed support staff, with well established professional networks, inspired by good practices of other colleagaues can provide more professional and motivated guidance.

The events may also include some training part to enhance their competencies (soft skills, intercultural, unbiased communication style), or hands-on activities how to create more internationally friendly institutional environments. The events may include several sessions where support staff participants can collaborate on small tasks and jointly innovate various services (e.g. Orientation week), and suggest new channels of communication, or define practical guidelines. 

A very effective way of experiential peer learning activity through observation and exchange of knowledge is represented by study visits or job shadowing. They can typically have a cross-border character and lead to further intensification or introduction of new services at the home institution resulting in the high-level provision of assistance to mobile academics and building up professional networks.

Leadership development schemes vary from induction workshops for newly recruited academic staff to mentoring schemes for doctoral candidates, courses in project management, MBAs, job shadowing, general leadership development programmes to more established programmes in higher education. Prior research revealed that offering leadership development opportunities is closely linked to a wider culture of continuous professional development and to existing national legislative frameworks on work environment (Louisa Bunescu & Thomas Estermann, EUA).

The reasons for setting up leadership development and induction schemes can be diverse.

First, such professional development opportunities increase the level of preparedness of executive leaders at universities. Institutional induction schemes ensure continuity and a smooth handover of responsibilities.  

Second, they help acquire specific managerial (e.g. financial, legal, entrepreneurial, intercultural, international) competences while on the job and build confidence.

Third, leadership development schemes are also an opportunity for higher education leaders to learn how to better tackle crisis management situations, like the Covid-19 pandemic or influx of refugee students.

Training programmes on leadership skills are also offered to emerging leaders in higher education, including doctoral candidates in order to prepare them for the challenging roles that they might take up in the higher education sector (Louisa Bunescu & Thomas Estermann, EUA).

Social integration, in a narrow sense, may refer mainly to socio-cultural integration enabling the creation of personal connections/networking of international PhD students/researchers/academics, and their family members with their local and other international doctoral and academic fellows. In a broader context, it covers also other integration activities like finding a proper place for living, opportunities for career development, language learning, smooth access to the labour market and education to family members, access to health care, etc. However, also handling all the administrative issues related to relocation (residence permits, health/social insurance, tax, vehicle registration, pets, etc.) in smooth, clear procedures helps a lot for better navigation in the new setting. Being comfortable with the local environment may be substantial to the overall PhD/academics' performance.

Often international welcome centres or one-stop shops established by local/regional/national authorities or associations of several HEIs/research organisations in the city can take over many of the mentioned responsibilities, provide services in a structured manner for a critical mass of clients, promote the city/region efficiently, organise various events about life in the country/city, provide labour-market orientation and dual-career counseling services, offer domestic language courses, etc.

Here we focus on listing possible partners for collaborations to provide more advanced and higher quality services and a broader portfolio of them. Practical steps on how to establish them are also briefly drafted. Although establishing collaborations with numerous external partners might seem a laborious effort, such synergies might bring fruit in clearer/more detailed guidelines, databases, shared responsibilities, better information flow, and even saved human/financial resources.

Using professional networks could significantly facilitate promoting the host institution HEI as a study and academic/research destination, promoting its strength areas and funding opportunities, and fostering its global presence. This could substantially lead to attracting more of international talent.

Transparency and reliability are one of the key factors of a successful scientific activity. The transparency can be achieved by establishing an international scientific committee responsible for supervision and verification of scientific work. Such committees can be established for the HEI’s projects or units. The committee’s work will  improve the HEI’s scientific staff competencies and will be an opportunity for exchange of experiences and knowledge between the engaged institutions. Working with experts from various countries and institutions will be a way to improve communication and cooperation between the engaged institutions and will also increase the HEI’s visibility. The committee members can also be engaged in scientific staff selection and evaluation processes. The experts selection can be based on the HEI’s international partnerships and HEI’s staff personal networks.

However, the existence of such committee(s) shall respect the relevant institutional regulations and project funding agreement requirements. Nevertheless, although similar bodies might exist as part of the instututional structures, the practice might provide some inspiration about the mandates it can have.

A simple online mobility management app enabling an inviting person/department to enter all the parameters on incoming PhDs/academics prior to his/her stay, sending out an auto-generated welcoming email (s) with information and access to all university services (online library, pass/card, other electronic services before their coming to the receiving institution.) easing thus the whole pre-arrival process immensely.
This should be done in cases of incoming PhDs/academics who already know that their mobility/ job position has been approved/confirmed. 

IT mobility system/database is an important segment in organizing information regarding mobility. Each institution should develop its own database, and, if needs be, offer information from it to the other institutions. 

Both the specialised blogs and podcasts are a very effective and efficient way how to better connect with the current and potential target audience of international PhD students, academics, and researchers providing an insight into host HEI's institutional life and culture and welcoming environment. Those media allow you not only to keep the members/followers up-to-date with the latest events, but also promote vital topics and new initiatives, inspiring stories, and express opinions. Both activities should bring less formal but still valuable and entertaining content which should be complementary to the content published on the host HEI institutional website and social media. Both activities help encourage their followers/readers/listeners to become host HEI's ambassadors and raise its visibility and global presence. 

The great benefit of podcast listening opportunities is their mobile nature. Podcast audio content gives listeners the ability to dive into topics without having to set aside time to read or watch a video (e.g.during commuting, jogging, cycling, cooking, etc.). 

Volunteering is a great way to meet people, become familiar with the community and develop skills to include on a resume. 

Volunteer opportunities offered to international partners help spouses connect and feel welcome as international students and scholars embark on a new life in another country. Such opportunities foster the level of satisfaction, social integration and wellbeing of international students and staff and their family members.

The networking events for family members can contribute to both the researchers' and their families' better integration in the host country. Regular meet-ups can improve opportunities for networking, making in-person contacts, sharing knowledge, asking questions, and for receiving advice about the local environment.

In addition, regular meetings can strengthen the local community, also involving local players - HEI management, research, administrative staff, and local stakeholders among others.  

This could be a combination of a dictionary and glossary of the most common phrases and their definitions in English used in the academic and institutional life of the host institution/country. Special attention should be paid to country/region specific terms that have no actual parallel outside the host country/region, for instance, academic ranks and their hierarchy in the region of Central and South-Eastern Europe. It could be also extended by terms related to the administrative duties that need to be done shortly before or fight after arrival to or upon departure from the host country/institution. Such a tool would be of immense help to both international as well as local PhDs and academics struggling with proper vocabulary when talking to their colleagues.

International students and researchers often face a broad variety of legal issues during their stay in a host country. Professional legal advice can be rather costly and therefore not accessible to all scholars, particularly for early stage ones. Free legal advice offered to international scholars can help resolve and prevent difficult situations that could require more time and resources, compormise their security or cause reputational damage to the institution.