Up until now, ITMO University hosted the regular ITMO.FutureCareers event twice a year. According to the organizers, the 2020 version of the event was scaled up in response to the students’ suggestions: over the week, ITMO University students had a chance to talk directly to their potential employers. The event also featured workshops, internship presentations and poster sessions. Initially, the plan was to have different days for different faculties, but the program had to be adjusted to the current pandemic conditions. Not every company was able to swiftly adapt their programs to the online format. That’s why the event focused on webinars and publications on the event’s VK page, and meetings with the representatives of IT, biotechnology, photonics and optics companies that appeal to every student regardless of their specialization.
According to Anna Minina, an analyst at the Career Center who works with partner companies, the participants of this year’s DigitalCareerWeek were chosen in accordance with the interests of the students.
“The main principle behind our choice was to pick those companies that our students interact with most, the ones that collaborate with ITMO’s faculties, welcome our interns and are generally attractive to our students. We invited these companies to take part in the event, and then they had a choice to either join it or not. Normally, the companies would prepare poster sessions and workshops, but those turned out to be much harder to organize online, which led many companies to cancel our previously made agreements,” says Anna.
Nevertheless, 14 companies in total took part in the event, including Danone, PepsiCo, Baltika Breweries, KraftHeinz and Digital Design. According to the organizers, the most popular and successful webinar was on creating a CV and attending interviews. This webinar was given by Natalia Kolkhidashvili, HR director at Digital Design. 45 people took active participation in the webinar.
Moreover, the program included “The Path of a Young Leader”, a talk by PepsiCo business support specialist Nikita Logunov, and “Secrets of a Successful Career”, a presentation by Diana Mamedova head of people & performance Eastern Europe at KraftHeinz. Vlada Musagitova, curator of Danone’s internship programs, discussed career opportunities offered by the company, while Polina Postolaty, an HR specialist at Baltika, and Lyubov Kosheleva, lead industrial engineer at Baltika, told the students about the company’s vacancies, as well as some technological aspects of the brewing industry.
As for the workshops, a notable one was hosted by Artyom Kopylov, lead programmer at St. Petersburg Information and Analytical Center, who showed how to create your own chatbot without any programming skills.
BIOCAD, a biotechnology company that produces and conducts world-class research in the field of biopharmaceuticals, and Selectel, an IT infrastructure provider partnering with AWS, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba Cloud, hosted not only their internship programs presentations, but also Q&A sessions for students.
Other partners of this spring’s DigitalCareerWeek – JTI Petro, Fedal, DataArt and Sberbank – also described their available internship programs and encouraged active online participation by ITMO students. Furthermore, the participants were intrigued by the giveaway of five career consultations: three personal ones and two for groups of 10.
Organizers note that despite this new online format, the event received positive feedback from both the partner companies and the participating students, who told us more about their experiences at ITMO.DigitalCareerWeek’20.
Damir Pilatsis, second-year Bachelor’s student, Faculty of Software Engineering and Computer Systems
“I took part in two webinars: the one given by Heinz and the CV-related one. The latter turned out to be highly useful: they mentioned letters of recommendation, for instance, which was something I hadn’t considered before. There were a lot of participants, who were all very active: they asked questions, me included, and then we got a checklist in the mail – it came in very handy. I was mostly led by curiosity as I am not thinking of doing an internship and I have other priorities now. But it was interesting to learn what was on offer.”
Lidia Petroshenok, second-year Bachelor’s student, Faculty of Control Systems and Robotics
“I attended the Baltika webinar – it was exciting to learn about their production technology. At the end, they had a quiz with prizes, and I took second place, winning a workshop on visualization in PowerPoint. I also wanted to learn more about the company’s internships but, unfortunately, they only take in students of year four and above.”
Alyona Kireeva, first-year Bachelor’s student, Institute of Design & Urban Studies
“The career consultation turned out to be more entertaining and productive than I expected. It boosted my motivation, and I received support from a professional that I really needed. Of course, there’s no magic pill that could solve every problem, but the right questions that I asked, together with the clear algorithm I was given at the consultation, helped me find a better vision of the steps that will take me to my goal.”
According to Maria Ososkova, the head of ITMO University’s Career Center, hosting an online event proved to be a good option, but in the future the Center is planning to return to the offline format and focus on the combination of these two approaches.
“We are planning to continue organizing online events, outside of Career Week, and making them a natural part of the University’s career education. We will keep on hosting webinars and there already are companies who are ready to collaborate with us in this format. But when we have the chance, we will go back to live communication, business simulation games, and continue with our soft skills-oriented events. Ideally, we want to offer both meetings with experts and networking opportunities. That’s why we will combine these formats in the future,” notes Maria.
The next Career Week is to be held this fall – many companies have already confirmed their participation and are ready to host more webinars for ITMO University students.
