Stories
Job Shadowing: HOGENT International Office visits Frankfurt UAS
Hanna: Nausikaä, nice to have you here in Frankfurt. This is a perfect opportunity to ask you about your job shadowing experience with our International Office: how did this cooperation come about?
Nausikaä: I’m involved in the U!REKA project for a while now and already have regular and very good contacts with the International Office in Frankfurt. My team members though mostly work indirectly or via email with their colleagues and many of them never met each other in person. At the same time, we’re working on the same topics. So, I was wondering: why don’t we organize a mobility of the whole International Office? In a job shadowing concept, we can learn from each other and get new ideas for cooperation. For example, we are working to have more mobilities of students and staff. But more mobilities will also mean more work in our International Office. So, it’s nice to personally know the colleagues of our partners’ International Offices. When problems arise, we can solve them more directly. We also learn how you handle the same processes and how we can optimize our processes and approaches.
Did you or your colleagues have any specific expectations? Why did you want to join this job shadowing experience?
At HOGENT, professionalization is very important to every colleague including the administrative and technical staff. But it’s not always easy to find a good match with the work we are doing. You can follow a general course or training, but it’s more effective if you have a counterpart in another country working in the same context with the same programs.
Our expectation was to learn and to get inspired. That’s why we prepared the agenda together with our colleagues in Frankfurt. We wanted to see how you are doing and approaching the work and how you deal with obstacles. During the first, very interesting day we have already captured a lot of ideas and interesting approaches.
What were the highlights of your visit to Frankfurt?
We’re currently working on new approaches for crisis management, security, health and other situations at HOGENT. I was really impressed how far at Frankfurt you are already in this domain. We also got different presentations and exchanges on topics like incoming and outgoing students. It’s very nice to compare how you are organized as an International Office and how you are located within your institution – and to see that you are struggling with the same things. Really recognizable!
How are your days here in Frankfurt organized?
We were able to travel sustainably by train to Frankfurt. We arrived at noon and first got acquainted with the director of the International Office and the Erasmus+ coordinator. They gave us an overview on how you are organized. Afterwards we did a little campus tour and had a session with the outgoing students’ team and the officer for international compliance. Today we had meetings about Erasmus+ coordination, strategic approaches to partnerships, incoming students and the recruitment of international degree-seeking students. We try to make the most of the two days of our job shadowing and take our knowledge back home to disseminate it to other colleagues.
What would you recommend to other colleagues who are interested in job shadowing?
It’s a great idea to do a job shadowing with our U!REKA partners. I would recommend developing the agenda together so you can have an exchange about topics of mutual interest – in our case this worked really well. As guests, we have prepared questions we experience regularly at our office. Job shadowing is an easy first step towards the close cooperation we are aiming for within the U!REKA alliance, offering the chance for physical mobility also for colleagues who generally do not travel for work. Our team is quite mixed in this regard, with people going out often and people who are more at the office. And it’s perfect to do this exchange with both. U!REKA is often considered to be more attractive for lecturers or researchers to get involved in, but the job shadowing is a wonderful opportunity for administrative and technical staff to actively engage with the U!REKA partners and deepen the cooperation. It helps so much to see your counterparts in a physical way.
Wonderful, thank you for sharing your insights.
Thank you for having us.
