Features of the European Curriculum Vitae

1. What is the European Curriculum Vitae
2. Who needs the European Curriculum Vitae
3. The European Curriculum Vitae: a multipurpose tool

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What is the European Curriculum Vitae

The ECV is one of the tools that can be used to facilitate and encourage the mobility among people.

To this day, though the free movement is already defined in terms of legal conditions and established rights, the European citizen is likely to have not his qualifications and competences acknowledged by a country different from where they have been acquired.

The situation is further complicated by the growth of qualifications on a world-wide scale and by the ever-growing changes in the national system of qualifications and of lower and higher education.

To solve this problem, in the last few years the European Union proposed different tools aimed at encouraging transparency and acknowledgment of vocational qualifications, university and professional qualifications , in order to allow citizens to provide and use their own competences in Europe, independently of place and context where they have been acquired.

The ECV represents an important chance:

• For the person aiming to find a job, and/or to keep up his training, as it enables also to improve and give notoriety to unconventional learning;
• For the businesses and educational/vocational training schools having the possibility to recognize clearly the mastery of knowledge, abilities and competence, independently of the procedures used to acquire these qualifications owned by every single citizen.

The ECV represents a common framework of reference to give and find information on educational/vocational training acquired and on job experiences capitalised in years.

The aim is to allow all the European citizens to acknowledge and improve their own competences in order to put themselves up or up again for the job market and for vocational training with a clearer and more workable CV throughout the European Union territory.

The ECV fulfils completely the political guidelines proposed by the European Union concerning the development of human resources, ranging from the necessity to consider the whole experience of a person as a life span education to the visibility of the competences considered necessary to work in the current society.

The ECV, in fact, takes into account:

• Both initial education and life and job experience;
• Both competences developed at school or in a training environment and acquired in professional and social life;
• Both traditional technical-professional competences and those useful for new forms of work organization and new professions (relational, organizational competences etc.)

The ECV is a tool available to all citizens. It is not a certificate, but rather a self-certification and voluntary statement.

The ECV provides information for:

• Language competences;
• Job experiences;
• Qualifications and educational and training certificates;
• Abilities and acquired competences outside formal training schools too.

The choice of a standard format for all countries lowers barriers set by the different institutional and national methods of acknowledging competences, allowing people to state their own story and experience in an understandable way.

Who needs the European Curriculum Vitae

The ECV is a useful tool at different levels.

To European citizens, young and less young who:

• Wish to work in a European country different from their homecountry;
• Acquired an education certificate abroad;
• Acquired work experiences in different European countries;
• Acquired competences in various sectors different from training schools, without any specific certificate and qualification, and want to make them known in order to find a suitable job for their abilities and attitudes;
• Wish to continue their training also in a European country different from their homecountry making the most of not only their education and training but also the acquired competences and the experiences done;

To the businesses willing to employ qualified staff with a strong commitment to performing tasks requested.

The ECV, in fact, is a useful tool, to people in charge of selective recruitment of personnel coming from other European countries, as it allows to check certificates and acquired competences transparently.

To education and training schools, which, through the ECV, can arrange useful information for integrating people in various training schools.

The National Reference Point for Italy, an institute at ISFOL, is the structure commissioned by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and by the European Union to provide information of general matters concerning the ECV.

The European Curriculum Vitae: a multipurpose tool

Everything one has done in his lifetime can be useful for a job post. The traditional CV, in which studies and job experiences are reported, does not allow to express visibly many situations which have enabled the acquisition of skills and competences potentially useful for a job position.

While the curricula models usually employed suggest to gather information on studies and job experiences, the common model of ECV suggests you describe the acquired competences and personal skills.

The ECV is a useful tool also to whom in charge of recruiting personnel for his own businesses or on behalf of others. Reading a CV is not a simply task: from the reported information in few sheets, one must, in fact, be able to get the idea of the person he has in front and of his real skills, regardless of the qualifications possessed.

The possession of diplomas and qualifications or training certificates is the first requirement necessary to be called for a job interview.

The selection of a candidate rather than another one is based on taking also into account other elements, in particular:

• Past experiences within a specific activity;
• Competences, that is the skill used to draw one's own personal resources in a specific context;
• The combination of these two elements that characterizes each person.

This is the way how a ECV works, with the aim that the acquired competences of each person as well as the environments in which a person acquired life and job experiences may be expressed visibly.

If you happened to:

• Arrange parties for friends;
• Train a football team in your neighbourhood;
• Moderate a newsgroup of your former schoolmates; probably you acquired competences you may use in the future.

The ECV allows you to make the most of these experiences and use them to apply for a job.