Resilience in Job Search: ICEF Career Services and what they offer
Although a high school degree alone no longer guarantees career success, holders of internationally recognized degrees still have many doors open for them. With its Career Centre team, ICEF knows how to make the most of education its students receive. In this interview, ICEF Career Services leader, Victoria Pralich, shares how they connect students to employers, what jobs there are available for students, and where students should be helped when they’re starting out. Read also comments from the market leaders’ HR officers about the latest happenings on the employment market.
What is a Career Centre?
Just when you think you can breathe again after having made it to the university after months of preparation, there’s another challenge to face: What career is right for me? What job should I target and how do I achieve it? ICEF Career Services Centre was created to help students navigate career landscape and prepare for successful entry into the labor market.
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The Centre serves as a kind of a navigator on students’ way to industry leaders, internships and job offerings. Along with guidance events, workshops, meetings with spokesmen of top well-known brands, resume writing and job interview counselling, the Centre offers a wealth of vacancies ICEF students can take advantage of to ease the stress and to avoid mistakes when entering the job market.
Elizaveta Rozanova, ROSBANK
Head of Enterprise-wide Risk Management Center
The crisis made us revise our decisions about our staffing needs. Now that key operational activities require less personnel, to the foreground come digital qualifications and good analytics skills. We continue looking for promising employees, conducting job interviews over Zoom, Skype, and WhatsApp.
At ROSBANK, candidate selection process is three-stage:
- interviewing by HR and subject-matter experts/managers, where candidates are expected to take tests and solve cases
- filling out the application and security clearance
- job offer
The key advantage of ICEF Career Center is its enhanced professional connections. Strong linkages have been established with businesses in Russia and abroad, financial institutions and government agencies, which ICEF is readily introducing its students to. And because the Career Center has been a springboard to success for many, some of whom have made it to the top, it has many of its career guidance events supported by alumni who act also as student mentors.
What companies can ICEF graduates and students work for?
Since ICEF bachelor's students earn two degrees, one from the Higher School of Economics and the other from the University of London, they have the benefit of going global. An internationally recognized degree is seen by employers as an endorsement of quality, signaling the advanced level of qualification. And yet, a prestigious diploma per se is not a guarantee of career success. Graduates have yet to prove their professional level, as well as demonstrate their best skills and knowledge.
Marina Zevakina, IQVIA
Talent Outreach and Acquisition partner
This year IQVIA is operating virtually, delivering some of its internship activities, as well as working meetings, in the form of Home-office webinars. We continue searching for candidates, and if graduates have concerns they might be ‘downsized’ after having been made a job offer, they can be sure this won’t happen at IQVIA. That we continue hiring people even now, when the market is down today, is a good sign of business stability.
ICEF Career Center sees its mission also as maintaining contact with global business elite – McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, BCG, Bain, to name a few. By monitoring market requests and how recruitment requirements and candidate evaluation criteria change over time, the Center maintains widespread information-sharing networks to bring its training standards in line with expectations of the industries.
This grants ICEF students access to major international and Russian companies, including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Alfa Bank, VTB, Sberbank, IIDF, Bain & Company, Deloitte, BCG, McKinsey, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Yandex, Gazprom, among others. ICEF graduates land jobs also in Russia’s governmental agencies including Bank of Russia, ministries and departments of the RF Government and Moscow City Government.
What services does the Center offer?
Students learn resume writing skills and how to adjust their CVs to meet the employer needs. They also learn how to write motivational letters. Also, we teach them self-presentation techniques and how to overcome some of the disconcerting situations that can emerge during a job interview. This part of the training is largely contributed by employers themselves – through series of dedicated workshops, elective courses and case championships they host. One recently completed course series was with PwC, Unilever, and Bain & Company and had its focus on English proficiency and topics as diverse as strategic marketing and consulting, public speaking skills, time management, storytelling, business communication, team management, and information structuring. The Center is where students can learn how to communicate with companies in an effective way and that includes the ability to ask questions and come across as someone who is competent, as well as the awareness of personal goals and weaknesses to be dealt with.
Tatiana Semina, Raiffeisenbank
Graduate recruitment officer
My team sees students and graduates as a source of fresh eyes to foster development and lead the bank in the future. We therefore continue working to expand our talent pool, with one minor change in the procedure, and that’s remote format of interviewing and hiring, which we are not entirely new to, though, because we have been hiring candidates remotely before.
At ICEF Career Centre, psychological and motivational training unfolds through information support and individual guidance. While information is delivered at a multitude of venues where students can meet companies in-person, individual guidance involves counselling on a variety of career issues ranging from resume writing to choosing a career track to accessing the desired employer. The Center is supported in its work by HSE Career Services, whose resources are equally available to ICEF students.
Students and graduates are updated on vacancies, internship opportunities and upcoming events on a weekly basis. They can expect to be able to ask for advice at any time and be guided throughout the entire period of study. More benefits are available from ICEF’s mentoring programme with mentors from among ICEF alumni who act as counselors in work-related and academic setting.
How to prepare for an academic career?
Students who choose to continue their studies abroad can take advantage of the Centre’s dedicated preparation programme and ICEF Academia, a project designed to prepare students for careers in academia and PhD studies.
With assistance from ICEF Career Services, applicants can plan their enrollment by being advised on the choice of university, preparation of document package, obtaining references and taking GMAT/GRE tests. On a parallel track, individual guidance is provided on aspects of communications psychology so as to increase the applicant’s awareness of their potential for easier and more flexible adjustment to new settings. But, as was repeatedly noted by ICEF graduates themselves, they receive all this while doing a double degree. The double degree is what offers avenues to global integration, brilliant career prospects and a mindset that allows one to feel comfortable in professional and academic settings in Russia and abroad with equal ease.