While the war in Ukraine unfolds, tens of thousands of people from Ukraine are fleeing the country every day in seeking protection in the EU. The EU estimates that this number could rise up to 8 million. To ensure a successful integration of the war-inflicted incomers to the European Union, quality employment is essential. As workers with migration background tend to end up in jobs that are below their skill level due to many labour market constraints, it is important to support the job-matching process of incomers so their employment outcomes live up to their full skill and competence potential. 

In this effort, ESCO welcomes and supports initiatives to improve the labour market mobility and efficiency of job-matching process for all refugees. Correctly assessing the abilities of a jobseeker can make a difference towards a quality employment. ESCO taxonomy, with its more than 13 thousand skills and knowledge concepts, can be a useful tool in doing so. The list of use cases of ESCO below can serve as an inspiration to any civil, public or private organisation that wishes to leverage up-to-date skills data in facilitating employment for people arriving to the EU in seeking protection and stable life.  

Are you a refugee looking for a job in one of the EU Countries? 

Build your curriculum vitae in Europass and benefit from the help of the ESCO classification to list the skills you acquired thanks to your working, studying or volunteering experience. Starting from English, Arabic or other languages you may speak, soon also including Ukrainian, you will be able to automatically translate all information in the language of the European country currently hosting you.

Are you a qualification provider? 

Join our Linking Learning Outcomes pilot to see how your courses align with ESCO skills. This could give an indication on what skills will participants be equipped with in the labour market after completion of your training. Participation in the pilot can help you better align your training courses with the EU labour market needs, which could be very useful for people of immigrant background when seeking some extra training to access better employment opportunities in the EU. 

 Are you an organisation wishing to offer jobs to refugees? 

Use ESCO to identify what skills are valuable for you. Using commonly recognized terminology for skills in job vacancies increases transparency in job-matching. This benefits both employers to find right candidates and job seekers to better identify what opportunities best suit their skillset. 

You can also explore which skills are considered green to suggest long-term and sustainable employment opportunities to people of third-country background joining your organisation.

Are you a NGO or another institution helping migrants into employment? 

Explore the EU skills-profiling tool for Third Country Nationals or SkillLab's app that help assess skills-set of refugees to provide them with best-tailored job-matching advice or suggest training they could benefit from the most in the European Union. Both tools for third country nationals builds on the ESCO skills/competences database. You can also get inspired from this list of creative solutions by other ESCO implementers.

To support these use cases, the Commission is currently translating the ESCO dataset into Ukrainian and will make it available on the ESCO portal once ready.  

Moreover, the ESCO team warmly offers technical support and peer-learning assistance regarding any other projects related to smoothening integration of refugees into the European labour market.   

ESCO warmly invites any civil, public or private organisation to use the ESCO skills database in their efforts to facilitate quality employment to refugees.  If you are a potential or existing ESCO implementer and want to receive technical support or connect with other ESCO implementers for peer-support and exchange of knowledge, please get in touch via email at EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu and use our hashtag  #ESCO_EU.