“Good for Deciding on Future Career” or How Traineeship at ICEF Went for Letovo School Students

© ICEF

How to navigate the outside world and find your best-fit career? How not to become discouraged over the immensity of offers and opportunities? How to plan your training in a way that guarantees easy employment in five years’ time and further?

This has been the third time ICEF welcomed the tenth graders of Letovo School for a presentation of its degree programmes, meeting with faculty, and a week-long crash course hosted by the top employers in the country. Not only were the students able to work on real-life cases and projects under the guidance of their ICEF mentors, they met with the employers in their offices. For many this experience turned out very useful – more so because some of the employers, including Yandex, had as representatives the former graduates of ICEF who shared their personal career stories.

“I really liked the lectures and how the traineeship unfolded: it used a format much more engaging than just sitting in the office and shuffling papers around.”

A Letovo School student about his traineeship in ICEF

Day 1

Day 1 began with the immersion into various professions within economics and finance and was led by Sber as a leading technology-driven company that can fit a diversity of career needs. Its team gave a talk about how to start a career in the country’s largest bank, what hard and soft skills banks seek in candidates, and what things the banking industry employees will most certainly have to say good-bye to.

Sber values intrapreneurs and people who want to make a difference. In this connection, Day 1 offered our trainees the opportunity to attend HSE Business Club Forum, where they heard first-hand about common business mistakes and importance of quality training.

Day 2

Day 2 was led entirely by top FMCG companies that continue to operate in Russia as manufactures of products that are known to everyone. Who hasn’t tried Lays or seen AXE creatives? The hosts – HR and marketing specialists – had introduced the guys to product generation stages and importance of consumer contact via marketing and branding. Olesya Kondrakhina, a teacher for a series of courses who holds multiple ICEF Students’ Choice Teaching Awards and had worked for many years at Johnson & Johnson and JTI, gave a talk about the financial and controlling parts of FMCG. After all, the giants are the giants because they know the value of money and profit optimization.

Day 3

Day 3 was devoted to economics, risk management and trendwatching. With ordinary professor Leonid Grebnev of HSE University, Andrey Vorchik of ICEF and ICEF Evening School, and Yaroslav Lyulko, who holds a PhD in Mathematics and Physics, as speakers, it proved another day of engaging experiences.

One “special highlight of the day”, as defined by the Letovo students themselves, was the talk by ICEF graduate Ekaterina Semerikova about projecting future. In SKOLKOVO School of Management laboratory for blockchain and fintech, Ekaterina has teamed up with another ICEF graduate, Egor Krivosheya, to launch Futureproof, a project that focuses on strategy as a tool for transformation, sound decision-making and entrepreneurship.

Day 4

The traineeship program was designed in a way to enable the high school students to get first-hand knowledge of the state of things in the finance and economic sector directly from inside the corporations. Thursday was spent in the offices of Trust Technologies and Yandex. Hosting the students in Yandex was Shuana Pirbudagova, who completed her bachelor’s studies at ICEF in 2020. The guys have met with nearly all core members of Yandex development team and are now more knowledgeable about the processes of tech product generation and market launch.

Day 5

The final day couldn’t get around the topic of the Central Bank (coincidentally, Day 5 was the day the Central Bank made its recent rate announcement). In their talk, ICEF graduates Dmitry Arustamov and Artem Arkhipov highlighted the many functions of the regulator, help the students to shape a more complete picture of how financial sector works.

Additionally, the trainees were tasked with identifying the top jobs of the future and presented their visions on the final day.

Relying on their own experience, the presenters provided an extensive list of fields and jobs to practice after graduation from ICEF. The formal names they used for courses and training programmes did reveal some truly inspiring jobs.

“We got some inside information about ICEF from its graduates and teachers. But on top of that, we feel inspired and motivated.”

A Letovo School student about his traineeship in ICEF.