Most Sought-After Professional Competencies in Leading Research Teams of the Ural Federal District

Abstract

At the current stage of socio-economic development, one of the key tasks is to ensure that education quality matches labour market expectations, and the industry of science and technology is no exception. Nowadays, there is no systemic evaluation and due regard of research staffing needs and competencies required in this field. Hence, the gap between the current level of human capital development and its necessary level is ever increasing. This study focuses on leading research teams working in the area of advanced manufacturing technologies. The main research methods are the following: publication activity analysis for organizations in the Ural Federal District (henceforth UFD) in the field of advanced manufacturing, bibliometric mapping for identifying research teams, a series of in-depth interviews with research team leaders, job postings analysis using HeadHunter website database. Key findings: 1) we developed a methodology to identify leading research teams in the UFD that possess unique research and technology competencies in the field of advances manufacturing technologies; such teams and their leaders were identified; 2) in-depth interviews with research team leaders allowed to determine the most sought-after competencies for young researchers; 3) we compared the results of qualitative analysis (the in-depth interviews) with the final list of required competencies obtained in the process of analyzing job postings in the area of advanced technology in the UFD using the HeadHunter website. Thus, we identified the pools of the most sought-after competencies for the research and manufacturing sectors in the field of advanced manufacturing technologies. Identifying the most sought-after and in-demand competencies in the UFD leading research teams can inform decision-making on updating university study programmes to ensure that student training matches the needs of the industry of science and technology in the UFD.