Migration flows are steadily increasing worldwide. Especially in Europe, the percentage of immigrants from third countries generally ranges from 9% to 17%. As one of the main factors that plays an important role in the overall integration of migrant groups in host countries is their ability to work, there is an emerging need for effective policies and mechanisms to identify and certify skills and qualifications of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in order to enable them to integrate effectively into the labor market.Many existing skills frameworks at European and international level emphasize the importance of cognitive skills as well as non-cognitive skills, attitudes and also the crucial role of personality traits that determine the success and employability of the workforce. A framework for universal skills is proposed based on a thorough literature review of the existing international frameworks and of the skills and competencies required to integrate into the labor market. In addition, a field survey with a structured questionnaire was conducted with both employers and migrant groups, to capture the views of both on the selected skills included in the framework and to confirm the extent to which those skills are considered important towards the labor market integration of migrant groups in the host countries.The results of the research highlighted on one hand the importance of hard skills required to perform a task and on the other hand the soft skills that are of particular importance regardless of the profession. Moreover, a high majority of both groups stated that skills profiling and online assessment tools that matches skills with labour market needs would be valuable in recruiting procedures.
In the new context of transitional, mobilised and globalised labour markets, an urgent need has emerged for meaningful assessment tools, methods and techniques to measure and recognize the workers’ skills. This paper aims to present a novel approach in skill assessment developed under NADINE H2020 project, the indirect skill assessment, as an alternative or supplement to the traditional selection methods. AI technology is utilised to facilitate the indirect skill assessment via two agnostic content serious games (Tetris and 2048), based on the evaluation of an individual’s performance in playing a game outside a situational judgement test (SJT) context. Novel datasets have been developed, comprised of game sessions and the corresponding skill assessments of the players through validated psychometric questionnaires, which were the basis for the algorithm training that would provide the estimation of a player’s skillset. The trained neural models for both games proved to have strong skill assessment capabilities, indicating that there is indeed a correlation between a person’s action sequence and his/her different skills.
This paper aims to give an overview of the development of the NADINE soft skills test, focusing mainly on the results of the study conducted to assess the psychometric properties of it, so as to ensure that the proposed test is suitable, reliable and valid to assess the soft skills of migrant groups. The sample used for the standardization of the tools consisted of 427 persons. Reliability and validity of tools were calculated; factor analyses were conducted to ensure that each scale was measuring only one factor and further comparative analyses were made to explore whether there is statistical significant relation between demographic variables and the performance in the skills under evaluation. Results of the analyses depict that the NADINE soft skill test constitute valid and reliable instrument that can be used by career practitioners, hosting organisations and administration bodies to accurately assess the soft skills of vulnerable migrants, refugees and asylum seekers and facilitate their labour market integration.
The present paper aims at presenting the development of the NADINE Hard Skill Tests for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The NADINE tests are assessing the following skills: Observation, Language learning aptitude, Numeracy, Accuracy, Mechanical, ICT skill, Decision making, Problem solving, Dexterity, Spatial ability, Cognitive/analytical skills and Technical skills. The paper focuses on the linguistic and cultural adaptation and equivalency of the English, Farsi, French, Arabic and Spanish versions of the tests. To determine the degree to which the items, the response scale and the instructions are comprehensible and culturally relevant to the target population, four focus groups were formed, rating all items in terms of clarity and cultural relevance. The review resulted in minor changes. Furthermore, the Farsi, Arabic and French versions of the tests were administered to 120 migrants/refugees/asylum seekers and we calculated the difficulty level of each item and its contribution to the scale's internal reliability coefficient. Items with extremely low or high difficulty level and items that reduced reliability were eliminated. The remaining items had difficulty levels between 0.20 and 0.80 (with few exceptions), while all reliability coefficients were above 0.70 (the vast majority being above 0.80). Finally, the new versions of the test were administered to 427 participants and factor analyses were conducted to ensure that each test was measuring only one factor. Moreover, we calculated Tucker's congruence coefficient for each test to ensure cross-cultural equivalency. All Tucker's phi coefficients were above the 0.90 cut-off point. Results of this study support the case of linguistic and cultural equivalence between the different language versions of the tests, which constitute the NADINE Hard
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