Career Development Center: Why You Should Stop By

Let’s talk with the manager of Career Development Center – Alyona Kraykina.

Many students in the 3^rd and 4^th years of study start thinking more seriously about career path and begin to look for internships and open vacancies for young specialists. However, students without any working experience face many challenges and have plenty of questions and uncertainties. Who can help them professionally with such questions as creating a competent resume or CV, preparing for an interview or choosing a future profession? All HSE campuses have their own Career Development Center that aims to help students to find answers on all abovementioned questions.

The main goal of Career Development Center in SPb is to improve the competitiveness of HSE students and graduates in the labor market, assisting students and graduates in choosing the field of their professional development.

What the center does: throughout the academic year, the staff of the Career Development Center carries out a set of activities to develop the University's relations with industrial partners and assist HSE students and graduates in building their career path.

Alyona Kraykina is one of the managers of Career Development Center and is also a graduate of HSE - Saint-Petersburg. She will kindly help us to understand what the center does for HSE students and why you should participate in their activities and events and stop by their office at the campus. 

How can Career Development Center be useful for students? What do managers of the center do in order to be helpful for the students?

The Career Development Center aims to promote the career development of students. We want and do everything possible so that each of our students can easily find their dream job after graduation. It is important for us that every student of Vyshka is aware of the latest news about the labor market, able to correctly create a resume and cover letters, and can also prepare for an interview. To achieve these goals, we offer our students the following services:

1. Activities together with university partner-companies aimed at developing soft and hard skills, as well as developing new competencies among students
2. CV screening from managers - individual consultations on the preparation of a competent resume and cover letter
3. Higher School of Career - a unique project on how to find your career path and take the first steps in the chosen direction
4. Career Week is the largest career event on campus, dedicated to introducing students to the labor market, professions in various fields of activity, proposals and requirements of employers, as well as assistance in finding talented young specialists for the teams of our partner-companies
5. Internship Bank – a pool of internship places from partners is formed at Job Teaser (career platform) with a description of the intern's functional responsibilities, internship conditions and requirements for the candidate. Students apply for vacancies of interest to them in the form of a resume during the period of operation of the Bank of Practices. Next, employers contact the candidates they like and continue the selection on their own.

If students have any questions or hesitations, they are more than welcome to contact us by mail or make an appointment for an individual consultation in a convenient messenger.

What is the best way to start your professional career, how to find an internship or an open position for a young specialist?

It's no secret that headhunter is no longer a relevant job search tool. Creating a resume on the platform and waiting for offers in modern reality is not effective.

At the moment, it is very important to be well aware of the search sources. First, it is necessary to regularly monitor what is happening in the labor market. It is important to keep track of which jobs remain in the trend, and which go by the wayside and become less popular.

Of course, we recommend keeping an eye on career groups/employer sites. In most cases, companies publish information about current vacancies and internships directly there. In addition, directly on the career website/group, you can directly apply for an internship.

In addition, do not forget about personal connections and contacts. Therefore, we advise you to register in Linked In, subscribe to the right people and through networking you can also get good recommendations.

We also recommend keeping an eye on the university's career groups. For example, at the HSE, there is a separate channel in Telegram, where we collect all open positions from our partners. In addition, this year, exclusively for students of our campus, we launched the Job Teaser career platform, where partners of the St. Petersburg HSE publish news about events, places for internships and internships!

No working experience. Is it worth being afraid of or not?

Of course not! The main thing is to be active, attend master classes/trainings, develop soft skills. Be proactive, not afraid of rejection. Take part in as large projects as possible, and it is also important to volunteer.

If you have not yet decided in what area you want to develop your career, then where to start, how to find yourself?

You need to think about what areas are most interesting to you and focus on them. It will prioritize 2-3 areas and start with them. To find yourself, you need to try! After all, until you try, you will not know what is yours and what is definitely not.

Interview by
Ekaterina Srebrodolskaya