The EU is currently facing a paradox: while the youth employment rate stands at 16.1%, there are around 2 million unfilled vacancies across Europe. It has been elaborated that this paradox might be attributed to the fact that “a high number of employers cannot find the right mix of skills in the job market, especially with regard to e-skills.”(Eurostat, 2017, app.1,pt.5). The explanation has been supported by employers themselves who when recruiting young people, look first and foremost for the right attitude and aptitude to enable young people to be effective in the workplace. In particular, 5 key competences are foreseen: - Communication - Adaptability / flexibility - Creative thinking - Problem Solving - Teamwork In order to overcome this skills mismatch, better VET provision is needed to include those soft skills and better prepare the youth entrance on the labor market. The main objective of STRATAGAME is to support young people in acquiring and developing key soft employability, developing an effective open and innovative education through the use of ICT and contributing to professional development of the VET teachers by including common methodologies for introducing soft employability in curricula. These objectives were achieved by providing VET teachers with specific tools enabling them to include soft skills teaching in their professional activity, by developing an online diagnostic test to assess the soft skills of young people such as communication, adaptability/flexibility, creative thinking, problem solving and teamwork; by creating an online game to let young people and VET leaders develop the above mentioned soft skills and by providing to VET teachers electronic guides, equipping VET teachers with digital guides on didactic methods for incorporating the diagnostic test and the online game on soft skills within wider classroom activities. Partners are 7 entities from 5 European countries including Romania, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. All of them are educational providers and or stakeholders working for territorial development and labor insertion thanks to better adequation of skills to the market demands. The working team created for the implementation of STRATAGAME work under the leadership of the Romanian partner CDA: Arad Development Center. Then, STRATAGAME involves in the project activities two main target groups: VET teachers, including I-VET and C-VET formal, non-formal, and informal providers from all kinds of subjects and specialization to integrate soft skills among their activities. At least 140 VET teachers were planned to be directly involved in the development of project products. As the second target, STRATAGAME addresses young people understood as VET learners and potential VET learners facing the need for soft skills to facilitate their labor market integration. Again, at least 140 young people were planned to be directly engaged during the development of the project outputs. Finally, STRATAGAME also works with educational stakeholders such as VET institutions and teachers associations, youth associations, business associations, employment services, among others, with the aim of widening the outputs diffusion and impact. Description of activities STRATAGAME developed three main products: 1) A Diagnostic test, made of a set of psychometric questions and which aimed at drawing an evaluation of the youth level of competences in the 5 key soft skills addressed. This tool is helping teachers to assess their students' level of knowledge and provides young people with a deeper self-understanding. 2) An online game, which has the form of one building with 5 rooms, each one presenting a new challenge corresponding to one of the 5 competencies. 3) Electronic guides, which are supporting tools given to the teachers with teaching notes related to the online games, new scenarios for classroom implementation, sources of information and references on soft skills theoretical contents, best practices, etc. The methodology used for the development of STRATAGAME products relies upon educational gamification theory. The idea behind it is that learners are motivated and remind better the knowledge while entertaining. Also, it is participative and interactive, based on real cases and a contextual approach. Results and impact The project brings important impact on VET teachers by providing them with a selection of innovative didactic tools to apply within current methodologies and the daily classroom while getting increased teaching effectiveness, an increased understanding of the employer's’ requirements, and higher overall job satisfaction and motivation for Continuous Professional Development- The project has a positive impact on youth by developing their soft skills with the use of online tools resulting in an increased professional potential, an increased level of awareness of their own soft skills, increased confidence in their employability potential, and higher chances of getting a job. Soft skills are crucial not only in the workplace but also in daily life. By developing soft skills in the classroom, young people increase their chances of success within such fields as completion of assignments (time management), peer relationships (teamwork), and job hunting (networking). As long term benefits, partners expect to contribute to a better-trained youth generation able to be more efficient at the time of answering to employers expectation, thanks to an overcome of soft skills mismatch.