Methods and Tools for Researching Employers’ Practices and Skills Transferability Across Borders

The paper examines the state of the art on employer practices and skills transferability across borders. As background, it acknowledges the existing obstacles to cross-border skills transferability, to underline the necessity of further research on the topic, especially from a micro-level on the labour demand side (i.e. on employers’ decisions and practices). To inform future research on the topic, first, the paper reviews the empirical literature on employer practices in cross-border hiring, highlighting what methodologies are used for investigation in this field. Second, it explores EU instruments that employers can use to improve their practices and lower existing barriers to skills transferability across borders and discusses how these instruments can serve research on the topic. The paper concludes that, despite certain limitations are to be taken into account for each of them, several methods and tools are available to progress research in this field, including those offered by EU instruments for skills transferability across borders, such as the EURES job portal.