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.). 

Customised assistance ranges from providing an overview of available funding opportunities from various sources to tips for writing an application and pre-screening of application as well as assisting in finding a project team or inter-institutional project team. Individualised support will also facilitate the professional development of the academic staff and will improve communication and cooperation between the HEI’s support staff and the international academics and PhDs. Increased academic activity will influence positively the HEI’s visibility and may increase enrolment and retention of academic staff. This service requires well-trained support staff in the area of academic development, funding opportunities and procedures, and project drafting. However, writing an application is not a simple matter. It requires knowledge of the methods and techniques of creating applications.

An indispensable part of the application preparation is a thorough reading of the funding scheme documentation, e.g.call for proposals with attachments. programme thematic priorities, guidelines for applicants and project beneficiaries, funding principles, etc.. These documents describe all major information, including who can apply for a grant (i.e. eligible applicants), what grant can be obtained (grant size and total call budget), the procedure and deadline for application (when and where to submit an application), what the project evaluation criteria are, how will they be assessed, what costs are eligible, or it is possible to find the content of the future contract along with the terms of the project implementation. Before completing the application, each applicant should also check whether the instructions for its preparation have been provided. The task of the support staff is to provide support and assistance to the applicant in the process of preparing and submitting the application.
 

Career development support for PhDs and junior academics is an important part of preparation for future employment. The main aim of career development support is to help PhD students and early career researchers:

• Understand the specifics of job search in the labour market for researchers
• Explore career opportunities within and beyond academia
• Navigate them in terms of decision making of their future job and
• Develop their skills to match the requirements of potential employers.

If there is career support service for researchers at your institution, make sure that it is also available for international PhD students and researchers and that it takes their specific needs into account.  As they probaly have neither knowledge of local labour market nor strong professional network in your country they might benefit from availibilty of career advice a lot.

Ensuring accessibility of career advice to international PhD students and researchers might help you to:

• Increase the attractiveness of your institution for international talents as they see that the support for their next step will be available to them
• Retain international researchers (and your potential collaborators) in your region
• Develop collaboration with local employers who gain an access to wider pool of highly skilled candidates.

Final output: career support services available to international researchers and PhD students.

Major activities: Examples of such services might include professional career coaching, individual career counselling, interactive trainings, workshops, online navigation tools etc.

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.

Short course/series of courses on local cultural specifics. These include both specifics of everyday life and of organisational culture. The trainees will be able to deal better in everyday communication and to act more efficiently as a member of your ourganisation. Their spouses will find it easier to adapt to local cultural specifics..

Intercultural differences, sometime invisible, may destroy any team. The best way to:

• Avoid miscommunication;
• Ensure good athmosphere at work;
• Achieve better scientific results and
• Retain attracted foreign students and researchers,

Is to integrate them as much as possible into the local and organisational culture. 

The easiest and most effective way is to offer a series of short (preferrably 1-hour-long) courses on different themes from your local and your organisational culture. It is even more efficient if each of them is combined with a relevant informal event involving local researchers or visiting an external event, museum or exhibition. This way the international PhD students/academics and their spouses will be able to combine theory and practice, which in turn will facilitate their integration in the local/organisational culture providing them with opportunities to further socialise and with (hopefully) nice memories.

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 satisfaction levels of international PhD students and academic staff. As a result, the atmosphere in both administrative and academic teams becomes much better since a lot of conflicts and misunderstandings would be avoided and communication will run more smoothly.

The most important thing for this practice is that to achieve sustainable results such courses need to be offered on a regular basis.

The main benefit of this practice is that such training improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the international PhD students and academic staff and increases their satisfaction and social integration. Soft skills are at the core of making any mobility programme successful. Soft skills related to intercultural communication can facilitate researchers' and PhDs' adaptation and social integration. Researchers and PhDs need to receive regular training in the full range of soft skills to perform best in their jobs/academic and research tasks. As a result of that training, it is expected that the atmosphere in the academic teams will improve substantially since a lot of conflicts and misunderstandings will be avoided and communication will run more smoothly. The most important thing for this practice is that to have sustainable results such courses need to be offered on a regular basis.

In the era of technology, it is a great idea to use social media for promotional purposes. Welcoming institutions should set up a page where they can promote the incoming academics and staff members, and do so in English so that other institutions could have access to it. It might significantly contribute to greater visibility and new possibilities for cooperation.

Networking events, be it live or virtual, could help connect PhDs and academics with similar interests, and they could also help them discover different ways of approaching certain aspects of academia life. They could be organized in the form of conferences, seminars, lab meetings, various social events as well as online social networks, where social media profiles of academics can be used for a rather useful purpose. Such events bring people from different fields of academia together, creating opportunities for them to hear about other people's research, and also allowing them to discover different institutions they could visit in order to gain new knowledge. 

Collecting and managing data about mobility could significantly affect the quality of the institutional process related to assisting mobile researchers and internationalization in general. It produces a body of evidence for strategic decision-making, facilitates smooth and effective communication with mobile researchers, provides a framework for a flow of activities related to assistance, and improves the efficiency and productivity of the service center.

• Basic level: Creating a Mobility info sheet (Xls/word file) enabling the contact person to fill in all the relevant data on an incoming PhD student/academic and share it across all the relevant departments involved (IRO, HR, Accommodation department, Library, IT center) before his/her arrival. For details see the example Mobility Data Infosheet.
• Intermediate level: Simple central online application enabling an inviting person/department to enter all the parameters on incoming PhD/academic prior to his/her stay, sending out an auto-generated welcome email with information and access to all university services (online library, pass/card, other electronic services before the arrival of incoming.
• Advanced level: Central comprehensive IT mobility system/database with advanced functionalities regarding task management/work division among support staff members, personal information of incoming, pop-up notification of new arrivals, details on visa/residence procedure, health insurance, reminder of expiry dates of various documents (visa, residence permit, hosting agreement, etc), expected services and interest in social events, information of accompanying family members and their needs, email invitation generation, overview of all the emails sent via the database, indicator of completeness of case, statistics, etc.

Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be (Eric Pasloe).

A dedicated mentoring programme for PhD students allows institutions to encourage students to progress with their thesis, connect PhD candidates with alumni and local peers, support academics in their professional development, and build a vibrant academic community at the institution.

International PhD students can particularly benefit from their engagement in an institutional mentoring programme by expanding their professional network in the host country, gaining knowledge about local academic culture and traditions, gain tangible academic/professional experience (e.g. workplace visits, shadowing, interview experience, placements, a graduate job), develop written and verbal communication in the local language. Academic mentoring programmes therefore greatly contribute to the professional and social integration of early-stage international scholars.

The aim of this activity is to pair employees involved in providing services to international academics in a mentoring relationship to foster professional development and career growth while building an inclusive culture and diverse networks. 

This is a key service for effective social integration of international PhD students, academics, and researchers, especially in everyday life outside the academic context. It is an advantage if the hosting HEI can provide the service within its own resources (by Language Department/ Language Centre) with experts trained in teaching the national language as a foreign language. Moreover, the language department could also offer other foreign language courses.

If the hosting HEI does not have sufficient capacity, partnerships with other HEIs in the city could be formed or HEI should create a database of language schools in the city/region. The starting point could be the existing practice of providing language courses for incoming Erasmus+ students. A complementary option is to explore whether there are any already existing e-learning national language courses and offer them to internationals as an opportunity to get acquainted with the basics of the language even before their arrival in the host country.     

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. 

The FAQs platform is a practical tool for storage of practical information and good practices for processing the agenda of incoming PhD students and academics. It´s a database of standardized responses/solutions to recurring questions helping thus the support staff members efficiently navigate through administrative processes/issues they typically encounter. It is particularly useful for newcomer support staff as well as for situations occurring just sporadically. It could be part of an internal knowledge-sharing platform or any other type of intranet. 

Using physical and online exhibit marketing can be powerful for higher education institutions to foster their visibility and attract new students and early-stage researchers through the promotion of national and institutional opportunities for study and research.

Higher education institutions can use this channel to communicate externally about their institution and possibilities to engage with it, including existing scholarships, grants and other forms of support to collaboration.

Database of PhD students/academics and a structured programme how to engage alumni in the academic and public life of the HEI.

Various forms of collaboration engaging alumni are possible e.g.: information sharing/distribution, organising events, alumni as academic and cultural ambassadors, alumni as academic and intercultural mentors

Active alumni networks of international PhDs and academics play an important role in strengthening the HEI reputation at the international level. Their knowledge and working and life experience represent a valuable resource from which potential/future Ph.D. students and visiting academics can greatly benefit. Active alumni are valuable assets for the HEI, their experience of living in a host country and the knowledge of how they incorporated their study or research/academic activity at the particular HEI into their further professional career can help the HEI optimize their study/research programmes, academic or research conditions, and external cooperations. Alumni can help in achieving higher visibility of the HEI nationally and internationally, they can create bridges among different cultures and reach out to broader academic and public audience.

On the other hand, the alumni can benefit from a variety of professionals and workplaces and continue their lifelong learning and develop rewarding collaborations.

The aim of this service is to provide mental health and wellbeing support to all interested international PhD students and members of staff in order to ensure they feel psychologically safe and to enable them to focus more effectively on their professional/academic goals.    

The institutional welcome website is usually the first source of information about the HEI, typically containing information on the most important aspects related to smooth preparation and actual onboarding. It is important that the information is structured in a way that reflects the logic of end-users perspective. The webpage should be easy to navigate and high-quality SEOs should be used. The information on the website has to be regularly updated including the FAQ section which typically draws the highest traffic. 

This is a form of personal assistance that helps international PhD students and academics with the adaptation process in the new environment handling not only practical issues but also help them with social and cultural integration. While the basic services such as airport/train transport assistance or arrival to the hosting university/faculty can be provided by local undergraduate students (Erasmus+ buddies), international PhD students and academics, especially in terms of social and cultural integration, need a more sophisticated approach and the commitment of his/her new colleagues.