Students and graduates of the Bachelor's degree program “Digital Product Management” shared their employment experience

According to statistics, half of the students of the bachelor's degree programme "Digital Product Management" (previously called "Digital Innovations in Enterprise Management") of HSE Graduate School of Business already start working during their 3rd year of studies. Most often, they either go for an internship at one of the partner companies (VK, Axenix, AlfaBank and others) or immediately occupy positions such as business analyst, project manager or product manager. On May 16, a panel discussion was held on the campus of Graduate School of Business with senior students and alumni, who shared their experience of combining work and studies.

The speakers were:

- Margarita Gasparova, 3rd year student, project manager, Alfabank,

- Margarita Linkova, 4th year student, business analyst, Axenix,

- Andrey Rogovoy, 4th year student, project manager, CROC,

- Maxim Kolomytsev, 4th year student, project manager in international business, Yandex,

- Ekaterina Shirmankina,2022 alumna, expert business analyst, SBER.

 

The conversation turned out to be extremely useful and interesting: employee selection stages and case championships were touched upon as a way to quickly get into the company of your dreams, as well as a tool for developing hard and soft skills. The speakers also discussed their work experience and the competencies essential for their current jobs. From these stories, it also became clear how useful the activities organized by HSE are, in particular the events of the educational program itself and the Career Center of Graduate School of Business, such as meetings with business representatives, lectures from practitioners, job fairs and case championships.

The opinions of the speakers differed on whether hard or soft skills should be emphasized during their studies. The discussion led them to the conclusion that it is equally important to work on both types of skills. Regarding soft skills, the speakers emphasized teamwork, self-presentation and protection of their ideas. "Our seminars include a lot of projects and teamwork, which contributes to successful work of a project manager," said Andrey Rogovoy.

The participants of the panel discussion noted that a high-quality manager pays great attention to analytical skills and knowledge of mathematics and should be willing to master complex things. As Maxim Kolomytsev said: “Owing to the mathematical and technical subjects we had in our curriculum, we learned the most important and valuable thing in employment – to master difficult material in a short time."

The quality of analytics is extremely important for both business analysts and product managers, and decisions are always made based on data. "We were taught not just to analyze data, but to look deep into this data – this is a skill worth learning," said Ekaterina Shirmankina.

 

Find more links and tips from our speakers in the Telegram channel Product Innovation day