I have to finish my studies
Dozens of universities in St. Petersburg train engineers of various profiles. The Northern Capital also attracts graduates from all over the Northwest, with many coming from the Urals and Siberia. So theoretically, employers should not have any difficulties with recruitment.
- The problem is that until recently, the higher education system lived a separate life. Once, at a conference, a representative of a large university said from the podium: "We are not working for the labor market, we are working for the education system." Of course, this is an extreme, but there is a gap between the knowledge that students receive at the university and the competencies needed in real production. Because of this, many enterprises are forced to retrain, improve, target, and specialize to the needs of a particular workplace," says Petr Tishchenko, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Labor and Employment in St. Petersburg.
The roots of the gap are clear: technological progress cannot be stopped, enterprises are changing equipment, and training programs cannot always keep up with modernization, especially since universities are training personnel not for a specific plant or factory, but for the industry as a whole, and they cannot adapt to the specifics of each.
Against this background, the role of students is changing. In recent years, students have been required to be active in the labor market. It is difficult for them, because their parents, as well as their grandparents, went through the distribution commissions after receiving their diplomas. Back then, it wasn't even a question of choosing a company to your liking, but of being lucky to stay in your native region. There was also a gap between the university and the factory, and the problem was solved at the enterprises with the help of the institute of mentoring. In the current system, the student is responsible for his own future.
- Students are not required to wait. Do not wait for graduation, do not wait for a diploma, do not wait for the end of exams and the painful job search after this wonderful fact. You need to start working at least from the third year, even then it is important to plan your career clearly, to look for someone who is interested in you. The sooner a young man begins to receive special competencies, the more real chances he will be in good standing with his future employer and he will be offered the place he dreams of," believes Petr Tishchenko.
The tasks are very difficult. But no one leaves students alone with their problems and thousands of "needs." In St. Petersburg, students are helped to enter the profession, the main thing is that they want to do it themselves.
In search of nuggets
The main building of the Mining University. Hundreds of boys and girls in distinctive uniforms. The guys huddle in groups of five, discussing something hotly, but fall silent when strangers approach. The stakes are too high: after a successful performance, they may be offered a job at a large mining company.
At the qualifying stage of the international engineering Case-In championship, students compete with their cases. The commission, consisting of representatives of the largest energy, metallurgical and mining enterprises in the country, gives tasks. Students must come up with a solution and economically justify it.
"Our team was solving a geological exploration problem," says Ekaterina Golubova, a student at the Mining University. - We had to provide a draft of how best to conduct exploration at the place of occurrence of minerals.
The jury consists of the same corporate representatives. They can invite the most distinguished students to practice or even apply for a special scholarship. This scheme works in leading St. Petersburg universities.
The priority, of course, is excellent students, Olympiad participants, and activists. Not everyone is selected and not in all educational institutions.
But employers don't just go to universities. Students and company representatives can meet at neutral venues. Almost every week in St. Petersburg, various forums, conferences and festivals are held for students, the purpose of which is to introduce them to employers. The Committee on Labor and Employment, which organizes most of these events, notes that they try to talk to students in their language. Loft conferences, open-air job fairs, trendy DJs, frisbee championships during breaks. The heads of large companies are usually present at the events. Together, they demonstrate their openness to students, and all for the sake of one thing: so that students stop being afraid of them.
Students are intimidated by the future. They have already read terrible advice from HR managers of abstract companies that no one needs their future diploma, that only experience is important, that employment is not a natural stage, but rather an act of luck and favor of the personnel officer.
At festivals, students are shown that everything is wrong. Top managers easily talk about the specifics of enterprises, HR specialists, who turn out to be not at all as formidable as they write on the Internet, are ready to honestly outline all career prospects. They are currently preparing for a Major Career Forum in St. Petersburg. It can already be said that the number of employers has not decreased compared to last year. Businesses still want to recruit yesterday's graduates and students and demonstrate maximum loyalty.
Time of choice
Students have already made their choice to a certain extent, they have decided on their occupation and can painlessly change their specialization and improve their skills, but it is impossible to become a pharmacist overnight, for example, a technologist.
Therefore, career guidance is important. There are many events in St. Petersburg designed to tell and show students the professions that play a huge role in the economy, but are not in sight. According to the St. Petersburg Employment Service, 18,964 people have participated in various career guidance activities since the beginning of the year.
In principle, students and their parents do not have to wait for any action to take place at their educational institution, they can contact any district employment agency themselves. Career guidance testing and consultations with psychologists in these institutions are free of charge.
St. Petersburg schoolchildren are actively taken on tours of factories and plants. But it is impossible to visit all the enterprises, so virtual excursions are planned in St. Petersburg so that students can find out for themselves what is behind the entrance of the company they are interested in.
The city also intends to popularize scientific and technical creativity. On May 18, classes for high school students in 3D modeling will begin in St. Petersburg. Teenagers will be able to create their own scientific and technical projects, meet with representatives of universities, colleges and the largest enterprises in St. Petersburg.
Most of the career guidance activities relate specifically to technical areas. This is not surprising, because 70 percent of vacancies in the Employment Service of St. Petersburg are workers and technical specialties.
But, as the employment experts themselves explain, it's not just about social ordering. Practice shows that when choosing a profession, schoolchildren are often guided by images formed from the mass media, where lawyers, economists or bankers traditionally rule the ball. And the students simply have no idea what they are really doing at the plant or what tasks the geologists are solving. The goal of career guidance is to show the maximum areas where you can realize yourself. And the graduate will make the choice himself anyway, but he will already be at least conscious.
A source http://rg.ru/2016/04/19/reg-szfo/kak-prevratitsia-iz-studenta-v-vostrebovannogo-specialista.html