Many new scholars from all over the world arrived in Austria in the winter term. This time we organised a special two-day event, with a Welcome Meet and Greet on Thursday evening and a career training event the following day at the OeAD. Scholarship holders from the Austrian federal provinces were also invited to come to Vienna for these events.
On Thursday evening, the scholars arrived at the OeAD to be briefed on all relevant aspects of their stay. About 70 people from 29 different countries attended the event. Gerhard Volz, head of the Department for International Cooperation in Higher Education, welcomed the students. OeAD staff then gave an overview of the services the OeAD provides for scholars. Finally, Illia Tikus, a scholarship holder from Ukraine, gave an impressive presentation on how to navigate as an international student in Austria and shared tips and tricks on how to best enjoy life in Vienna. Stefanie Hackl presented different networking activities, where scholars were divided into groups and had to pass different stations where they shared their favourite leisure activities as well as aspects of their study or research.
Through these networking activities, scholars had the chance to get to know each other better. The evening ended with a big buffet, and you could see from the many smiling faces that everyone was having a good time. We hope that participants found colleagues in similar fields, made new friends and met people to share their favourite leisure activities with.
Training for building your future career
The following day, "Training for building your future career" focused on EUROPASS, EURAXESS and grants.at, providing valuable insights for career development. 51 attendants from 24 countries joined the training. Verena Katscher and Alexandra Enzi led the event with presentations on their tools.
Alexandra Enzi from the National Europass Centre at the OeAD presented the different aspects of Europass.
The Europass portal is a powerful European career management tool, offering various possibilities to create a profile with all aspects of the applicant's career and to edit CVs in different formats and languages. It is free of charge, multilingual and provides a secure digital storage space for all users. Together with the Diploma Supplement, users can easily share their profiles on different job portals.
A few weeks earlier, scholarship holders had been invited to take part in a Europass CV competition. The 10 winners of the competition took part in a professional photo shoot to be used for future job applications or on their Europass CV.
In the second workshop, Verena Katscher from EURAXESS Austria presented EURAXESS, the European portal for researchers. EURAXESS provides information and support for researchers and has a large database for jobs and funding in the European Union. EURAXESS Austria provides up-to-date and comprehensive information on all issues relevant to the mobility of researchers and their families.
During the workshops, participants were invited to reflect on their careers and share their academic journeys and visions for the future with others.
Between the workshops, participants were divided into small groups to take part in a quiz about higher education in Austria.
The lucky winners of the "Higher Education in Austria Quiz" also received goodies from the OeAD.
The OeAD is always happy to support its scholarship holders and provide them with opportunities to further their academic and professional development.
We wish them all the best for the current semester and hope that they will take advantage of all the opportunities offered by their respective universities and the OeAD to socialise and network.
