Transfiere Forum round table highlights the challenge of attracting and developing research and innovation talent for public administrations and companies

José Manuel Pingarrón noted that a major challenge is enabling research staff to achieve stable employment earlier in their careers. He added that the public sector finds it difficult to compete with companies on salary, although it can offer other highly valued benefits such as job stability. He pointed out that recent legislation goes further in addressing these issues and stressed the importance of industry also absorbing PhD holders into its workforce.

Lluis Rovira highlighted that “Europe is trying to connect the entire European area and encourage researchers to consider careers in the private sector, and that is progressing quite well”. He recalled that the HR Excellence in Research Award (HRS4R) also reflects the multifactorial nature of talent management: it is not enough for a Member State to pass a good law or for a centre to launch grants to attract talent, because “it is an ecosystem issue and needs to be viewed from a broad perspective”. Rovira advocated identifying distinctive strengths at European level and building on them, adding that “we need bold policymakers to support these initiatives”. He also noted that the European Commission is working towards greater recognition of careers in technology-transfer management as a way of attracting talent into these areas.

Jorge Barrero argued that, in his view, “a PhD qualifies someone to carry out research, but expecting any economy to absorb every PhD it trains is not very realistic”. He acknowledged that “companies do have demand”, while noting that leading companies are finding that “the talent they have moves to less cutting-edge sectors that pay better”. COTEC recently published a technology-employment map which, according to its director, “shows that the shift in the productive model is already a reality”. The data support this: technology employment grew by 47.7% over the last decade, almost twice the average growth recorded across the rest of the economy, at 26.4%.

Eloisa del Pino said that “we are at a crossroads” when it comes to researcher and scientist profiles: “we ask ourselves what skills the scientists of the future will need, and we are approaching this more in terms of team skills because the demands placed on any one individual are simply too great”, given the breadth of knowledge now required to carry out research.