Translation. Region: Russian Federal
Source: Novosibirsk State University – Novosibirsk State University –
The IX International Conference “Best Practices of Interaction between Educational Organizations and Employers” is being held at Novosibirsk State University from May 14 to 17. Representatives from 10 regions of Russia from Khabarovsk to St. Petersburg are taking part in the in-person events of the conference. An online broadcast is also organized.
The conference is aimed at the heads and specialists of regional executive authorities, vice-rectors in charge of international cooperation, academic mobility and career development centers, as well as heads and employees of career development centers. The event is aimed at analyzing the current state and determining the further development vector of career centers, forming new ideas and approaches to improving their activities, opportunities for business cooperation with colleagues from other regions, inter-university cooperation through career centers and education export.
These days, NSU has become a platform for discussing current issues affecting the problems of employment of university graduates in the new realities, according to the methodological recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia dated 02/25/2025, the organization and forecasting of employment of NSU graduates, identifying the professional intentions of future graduates, as well as graduates at risk of unemployment. The conference participants will exchange views on the formation of the National Rating of Higher Education Organizations and Professional Educational Organizations, the role of university career centers in the formation of a professional community and human resources, analyze the interaction of universities and businesses, as well as the dynamics of the labor market in the regions of Russia.
— This conference is being held for the ninth time. It was first held in 2017 and brought together representatives of several career development centers and departments involved in student employment at universities. During the discussion of the current situation, the conference participants came to the conclusion that they face the same problems in their work. In order to take joint measures to solve them, the All-Russian Organization of Career Centers was created, and the conference became annual. The number of its participants is constantly growing. Here, at our horizontal level, we discuss the most important issues related to monitoring the situation on the labor market, career guidance work at universities and various tests that students must pass. The state is currently paying a lot of attention to career development centers, which currently act as the flagship of career guidance and establishing a career path for university graduates, because their activities are directly related to the implementation of the National Project “Personnel”. Therefore, such meetings of the professional community are very important, — said Svetlana Dovgal, Director of the NSU Career Development Center.
This year, representatives of secondary vocational education institutions are taking part in the conference. The round table “Interaction of secondary vocational education institutions with employers: experience, problems, prospects” will be held on May 16 and is devoted to discussing their problems. It is noteworthy that employers and business partners of NSU are taking part in the conference, including SHIFT specialists, who will conduct a quiz “Transformation of education, from Y to Z” for representatives of career development centers.
In her welcoming speech to the conference participants, Olga Yakovleva, Vice-Rector for Youth Policy and Educational Work at NSU, noted that the current conference is taking place at a very difficult time – over the past year and a half, the vector of the issues being discussed, in the center of which are representatives of Generation Z, has changed significantly: if earlier the focus was on its characteristics, shortcomings, quality of knowledge and motivation, now the emphasis has shifted to the sphere of employment.
— For current applicants, it is important to choose from a variety of universities the one and only one that will become a bridge to the employer, and the task of the university is to ensure that each student is as useful as possible in the labor market. And today, career development centers are entrusted with the important work of building such tracking. We organize meetings of our CRC representatives with first-year students, because this work with students should begin at the very beginning of their studies at the university. The Career Development Center also participates in Open Days — so that applicants understand what career opportunities studying at our university gives them, and all their years of study develop the skill of effective employment. And we must learn to effectively build communication with these new people of Generation Z and make sure that they are as useful as possible to society and the state, — said Olga Yakovleva.
Deputy Minister of Education of the Novosibirsk Region Svetlana Malina noted in her speech at the plenary session of the conference that the role of career centers in the educational and career guidance processes will only increase.
— The trends in federal and regional policy are that in the next 2-3 years, the number of ninth and eleventh grade graduates is expected to decrease. The situation is aggravated by the general aging of the population. In the Novosibirsk Region, the unemployment rate is currently quite low and amounts to only 2%. The labor market is undergoing radical changes, and if earlier, graduates of universities and secondary specialized educational institutions looked for employers upon completion of their studies, now the opposite situation is often observed: employers are looking for graduates. Now, in the labor market, the conditions are determined by the candidate for employment. Enterprises — especially in the defense industry — compete with each other for graduates, raising salaries and offering various social packages. Graduates, in turn, are not always ready to agree to working conditions that do not suit them. In the current situation, our universities should receive motivated applicants, so career guidance should be carried out from a fairly early age. This is especially important for engineering specialties. It is necessary to implement career guidance activities for middle school students, for which purpose a unified career guidance system was introduced – the so-called career guidance minimum, according to which career guidance activities of different levels are implemented in each school, said Svetlana Malina.
Conference participants shared their experience in career guidance and career development of their graduates in their speeches. Head of the Novosibirsk branch of the Center for Public Diplomacy, Associate Professor of the Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Informatics Dmitry Kaznacheev spoke about the specifics of interaction between universities and employers in the employment of foreign students. Director of the Career Center of the Chelyabinsk State University Svetlana Eremeeva gave a report on “Successful cooperation between universities and enterprises: interaction models and their impact on the educational process”. Project Manager of the School of Information Financial Technologies Vera Vyacheslavova introduced the participants to the formats of interaction with universities from the standpoint of an industrial partner. Deputy Head of the Department for Work with Students and Alumni of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Director of the ANO “Unified Center for Career Development” Anastasia Voitsitskaya presented the key career trends of this year.
The first day of the conference ended with a round table on “Features of Higher Education Development” as part of the celebration of the 270th anniversary of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
In the future, conference participants will take part in two round tables: “Features of employment of generation Z: from Y to Z” and “Interaction of educational organizations of secondary vocational education with employers: experience, problems, prospects”.
Director of the Career Center of Chelyabinsk State University Svetlana Eremeeva:
— The Career Center is designed to help our students enter the labor market as trained specialists and navigate it correctly, so I never miss events like today’s conference. For us, career center specialists, this is a unique opportunity to exchange opinions, learn something new, master new approaches and models implemented in other universities and designed to help our students find their place in the labor market. This conference is especially relevant now, when new methodological recommendations have been released by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. The exchange of opinions, experience, methods and information is very important for our professional community. We apply the experience of our colleagues in our educational organizations. In my speech at the conference, I will talk about the models of interaction with employers that we implement. Previously, the educational process was closed in on itself and concluded within the certain framework of a specific educational organization. Now, career centers ensure interaction between universities and enterprises that are actively involved in the educational process. This is very important for us, because we want to adapt our students to the labor market, and not just provide higher education.
Head of the organizational and educational department of the center for advanced professional training in the direction of “Social sphere in the Sverdlovsk region” Svetlana Larionova:
— I represent a career center in the secondary vocational education sector. It is still poorly represented in the All-Russian Association of Career Centers, but we are concerned with the same problems as career centers of universities. And our tasks in this regard are similar. Therefore, professional communication and exchange of experience are of great interest to us. Establishing interaction between educational organizations and employers is very important, and we are now increasingly focusing on employers themselves formulating the criteria by which we then send our own to them. It is necessary to structure the educational process in such a way that these criteria are necessarily taken into account when developing the skills and knowledge of students. Then the employer will not have to retrain graduates, and they will immediately successfully join the work process.
Vice-Rector for Personnel Policy of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Morozov:
— The topics discussed and worked on at this conference, dedicated to the labor market and relations with employers, have always been and remain the most relevant for all universities, because the purpose of a university’s existence is not studying for the sake of studying, but training certified specialists who must receive a profession and, importantly, a good salary.
Any university works to provide its graduates with, at a minimum, an education, and so that a specialist can find himself in life, receive professional guidance from the university and meet a reliable employer.
Unfortunately, in some universities, in some specialties, there is a certain disconnect between education and the real labor market, which creates problems for university graduates upon completion of their studies. In order to prevent this from happening, universities are actively working to ensure that the employer comes to the university as early as possible, gets to know the students, makes a presentation of their business, company or government agency. And the maximum is, of course, the participation of the employer in the educational process. In this we see the highest degree of cooperation between the university and employers.
The decision to establish the All-Russian Association of Career Centers was made in 2018. Today, it includes more than 110 universities of the Russian Federation, which, cooperating horizontally with each other, develop a unified policy and a unified vision of the problems and issues that need to be resolved jointly. And this allows us to formulate our common position and contact government bodies with any proposals and wishes, with the confidence that they will be taken into account when developing regulations.
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