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.

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.

Building a welcoming environment and improving support services for international students and staff is a high-level goal that needs to be recognized in the institution's strategies and related action plans. Based on such a strategic approach, institutions could reflect on the topic from a broader perspective related to its contribution to the achievement of the other institutional goals and missions. Incorporating this topic in an institutional strategic plan or internationalization strategy reflects the institution's commitment to these goals and, thus, involves an internal discussion on possible ways to achieve them.

Open, Transparent, Merit-based Recruitment (OTM-R) policy is one of the Europan Commission's flagship policies for development of a single European labour market for researchers. OTM-R implies: 1) publication of detailed descriptions of the open positions (including the career development prospects and selection process), on international web-based resources such as EURAXESS portal; 2) transparent and fair selection practices, as well as continuous communication with all candidates about the selection progress and outcomes; 3) taking into account whole range of experiences, skills and traits of the candidates and assessment in both quantitative and qualitative manner. OTM-R includes detailed description of the recruitment process that is inline with the principles of Charter & Code belonging to the Recruitment group. The following recruitment stages are concerned: advertising and application, selection and evaluation, and appointment. Implementing OTM-R policy will help making your institution more attractive place to work with enhanced reputation and image, enabling you to recruit better candidates and to implement equal opportunities.