EURAXESS Estonia network gives a warm welcome to Estonian Business and Innovation Agency (EISA) as its new member.
For several years, the EURAXESS network has collaborated informally with initiatives managed by EISA, such as Work in Estonia and the International House of Estonia. We are now thrilled to announce their official integration into our international EURAXESS family. It is a significant step forward in our collaboration that allows us to enhance our services and share best practices with peers who share similar missions in Estonia, all over Europe and beyond. We see many mutual benefits arising from this collaboration.
Work in Estonia (WiE) and International House of Estonia (IHE) share EURAXESS’s mission of attracting and retaining the talented people in Estonia. We both achieve this by providing free-of-charge welcoming and relocation services for our international (incl. returning) talents, as well as providing their employers with up-to-date information about legislation and administrative matters concerning international employees. The latter is done in close collaboration with state authorities like Police and Border Guard Board (PBGB), Tax authority etc. While EURAXESS primarily targets researchers and family members and research institutions as their employers, the profile for WiE and IHE is more broad over the sectors, particularly IT and industry talents in their focus.
The Estonian open research positions published on the EURAXESS Jobs portal are automatically integrated into the broader Work in Estonia job portal for internationals.
With the EURAXESS mission expanding to create the European Research Area Talent Platform, which would provide comprehensive career guidance and support services for researchers, one of the newer focus areas is the intersectoral mobility of researchers. The number of international young researchers engaged in PhD studies in Estonia has been constantly rising, reaching more than 750 students now. It is important to ensure that these highly skilled and highly trained people could envision their work and life perspectives in Estonia, both in academia, but also in case their interests grow beyond this sector. EURAXESS Estonia can support Work in Estonia in its goal of better reaching those talents and ensuring (as a common effort by the Estonian network members) that they are informed about their opportunities in the Estonian labor market and available state support services.
For the EURAXESS network, supporting researchers’ intersectoral mobility is not limited only to internationals but extends to the whole research community. This goal consists also of spreading the knowledge about aspects of engaging in scientific start-up entrepreneurship activities. We also foresee deeper collaboration possibilities with another EISA initiative - the Startup Estonia DeepTech team, which has the best overview of advancements in the field in Estonia and provides information and access to our well-connected ecosystem and available resources.
The International House of Estonia has established an excellent service portfolio for our international talents, acting also as a physical one-stop-shop for matters such as PBGB and local authority services, as well as career services provided by the Unemployment Insurance Fund. These services complement information services in general matters like family or health issues. They also organize special programs for international spouses and have initiated social events. We believe that their experience in service provision can be highly valuable for many EURAXESS network members across Europe, and they are happy to share their experiences with us.
We anticipate a fruitful collaboration that offers a great opportunity to promote the Estonian talent ecosystem, both academic and private sector, more broadly, especially among research talents worldwide.
Cover photo: Priidu Saart