'It Is Easy for HSE Graduates, Including Sociologists, To Get into IT': Graduate Arina Bykova on Her Work in 'Yandex'

Arina Bykova is a 2020 graduate of the Bachelor's programme 'Sociology and Social Informatics'. For more than two years, she worked for the company 'Selectel' and then moved to 'Yandex 360' in a position in HR marketing. Her interest in marketing aroused in her thanks to her bachelor's studies and volunteering at the Career Centre. Find out why the sociological studies are interesting, which skills turned out to be the most useful and how the graduate changed her career track.

Photo courtesy of Arina Bykova

About admissions and studies

Just like lots of eighteen-year-old teenagers, I did not really understand my interests. I was interested in absolutely everything: economics, sociology, marketing, culture, advertising... I decided that 'Sociology and Social Informatics' would help me to combine all these things. Besides, I was drawn to the interdisciplinary character of the programme and the good reputation of the university. This is how I ended up at HSE University.

I truly liked the studies in the programme—it was not detached from real life. We carried out real-life research, tested hypotheses and had lots of practice. When I started working in IT, all knowledge of how to conduct research and analyse results was very helpful. When they explained the theory to us, it was not on abstractions but on real and clear examples. This way, we learned the material better. In addition, we were very lucky with the professors: Ksenia Tenisheva, Yana Krupets, Vlada Baranova and Maria Safonova will stay in my heart forever. They know how to deliver a course so that it is always interesting to study.

We had quite a lot of useful courses. Among the best ones are 'Sociological Theory' as it is the basis for any sociologist, 'Research Methods and Methodology', 'Economic Sociology' and 'Statistics'. Perhaps, this is where my interest in the marketing sphere started. I got additional help from the exchange studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. I couldn't go there as it was the year of COVID-19 but studied online, and took many courses in management, marketing and communications. It was a good decision because I saw how useful the sociological framework was in business. I already realised that any decision came after the work with data and hypotheses. At the same time, I saw what meaning was behind the numbers and how to avoid data manipulation.

About the career start

When the pandemic started, I got really scared: what if it would be too difficult to find a job? This is how I started looking for options and got an internship at 'Heineken'. There, I engaged in analytics. Six months in the company were interesting but I realised that I wanted to communicate more during work and decided to search for other positions.

At the same time, I started an internship at the Career Centre of HSE University-St Petersburg. I wrote texts and ran social networks. Then, they started to involve me in other projects as well—for instance, Higher School of Career Development for which I helped to find speakers. Together with the HSE team, I organised partner exhibitions, communicated with employers, found out what they expect from students and helped to adapt their positioning.

At the end of the third year, I quit my job at the Career Centre and undertook an internship at 'Selectel'—an IT company which deals with cloud solutions. Then, I already knew that I was interested in marketing and people, which is why an internship in HR brand management was perfect for me. I spent 2,5 years in the company and grew into a specialist in brand development, then I wanted new knowledge and started looking for a new place.

About work at 'Yandex'

I often thought about working at 'Yandex'. It was interesting to get there but I rarely came across any vacancies which would be suitable in skills and interests. After all, my main concentration is HR brand management, and it is a quite new direction, there are few such specialists right now. Then, I saw similar vacancies at 'Yandex 360' and thought: 'Oh, I have already been doing it, the scale is just larger now'.

Of course, I was nervous when I applied. After all, 'Yandex' is one of the largest companies in Russia. The products of 'Yandex 360'—mail, disk, telemost—are daily used by millions of people. It is a great responsibility, not being able to cope with it was a little scary. It seemed like their employees were only superhumans whom I would never be able to reach. But in the end, I overcame my fear, sent the resume and had a call with a personnel consultant. 

After that, I had an interview with my supervisor, and she truly impressed me. This is a person who manages the team of monetisation, marketing and client experience but also has excellent knowledge of what is going on in the team of developers and business in general. Moreover, she understood why the team needed an HR brand manager, explained the goals for the near future greatly and set clear priorities. This is a supervisor one wanted to follow. In addition, the team of 'Yandex 360' works on interesting products, and I accepted the offer.

My working day depends on tasks a lot—they are very different for me, everything depends only on plans and priorities. Sometimes, I need to write an article for 'Habr', sometimes—write a text for a landing page, sometimes—come up with an event concept, sometimes—organise a meeting to prepare speakers for a public appearance. And this is only a small part of what I do. You have to deal with a wide range of issues but this is what I enjoy.

Now, my focus is on the tasks related to the promotion of the tech brand 'Yandex 360' for an external audience. I help our IT specialists apply for conferences, find topics, write articles, share their expertise and launch various special projects. To feel more confident with the developers, I practise my visual erudition, read a lot of articles, and keep learning something new. I like that I have very diverse tasks. We work on the project in collaboration—I provide the marketing part, manage processes, come up with ideas and validate them with the development teams. They help with details. Together, in collaboration, we can do something really cool.

Apart from that, I really like people at 'Yandex'. It gathered those who were not afraid to try and create something completely new. There are no people who do their work automatically. Quite the opposite, our employees think globally, about the whole product. Plus, of course, the company cares about us, I see it myself. Offices have everything for comfortable work, employees can upgrade their skills via internal lectures or courses, attend conferences and so on.

Now, I really like what I am doing. I enjoy the work a lot—I like sharing my experience, helping people and talking about great things they do. In the future, I would be interested in further work in technological companies.

About the benefits of education

It seems to me that it is easy for HSE graduates, including sociologists, to get into IT. We have the skills which distinguish good employees. A usual employee performs a task as they are told without any questions. A thoughtful employee knows what and why they do. This is what HSE University teaches us. Our graduates, for instance, are used to asking where the data comes from and why this decision is the best. They always keep others on their toes. Moreover, they are initiative and always can come up with an idea on how to improve the project to help another team.

The bachelor's degree gave me a lot of useful skills which I use at work daily. The most important one is presentations. It seems to me that I can pack any amount of information into a simple and clear form and pitch it. If we need a short presentation, I'll cope with it within an hour; if it is something more difficult with a large amount of data, it'll take me around two days. For speakers, of course, we take longer to prepare presentations but it is because the whole team works on them.

The group work was no less useful. During my studies, I had lots of projects where each person was assigned their area of responsibility. Uniting people in the right way and taking into account their strengths are things I've learnt, and this is what helps me in management tasks. In general, HSE University teaches you how to study—it will come in handy during your whole life.

Find out the details about the Bachelor's programme 'Sociology and Social Informatics' on its website. You can apply via the applicant's personal online account.