A pilot college team in the Altai Territory, the Republic of Buryatia and Altai, the Novosibirsk, Vladimir, and Ulyanovsk Regions have implemented the practice "Development of joint expert teams for the personnel partnership of colleges and business."

The Agency for Strategic Initiatives supported the project also backed up with the Young Professionals Direction. It was posted on Smarteka, platform for the best practices exchange, for dissemination across Russian regions. Thanks to implementing the project in only one educational institution, the employers' demand for graduates has increased 1.7 times.

The practice aims to train college and university teams to moderate relationships between students, teachers, and companies.

Who can become moderators?

On the one hand, teachers who, together with students, think about the future and are ready to help build relationships with business. On the other hand, the main drivers are the students, who negotiate with the businesses, make agreements and propose them to the head of the college and the company. The "moderator" helps them to do this more effectively.

"When a first-year student, having received a task from a teacher, goes to a company according to the profile of their specialty, they learn directly from the business those concepts, competencies, requirements by which he will be evaluated at the workplace. With this knowledge, they get back to college or university to select together with the moderator what needs to be studied, how it is reflected in the training program and what is possible/necessary to implement in the educational process through a direct agreement with the business," says the author of the project, the Research Director of “Career in Russia“ group of projects, Smarteka expert Sergey Gil.

According to him, to build a sustainable career, it is important that students learn to negotiate with three parties involved. Students should have good relations with employers and companies where they design their work and career path. At the same time, students need a trusted teacher to tell them how to promote themselves in the market. And students must understand themselves and their capabilities. A three-way dialogue and interaction with teachers and business is the best platform to develop self-awareness and understanding of one's values.

Why "student is key" for the project, but you have to look for active teachers?

Sergey Gil says that the task of the practice team is to find 3-5 teachers in colleges and universities who are committed to building trust with and supporting students.

"Our focus is not to engage teachers as we work only with those who are already committed to help students. Students themselves help us find these people, because they turn to such teachers for advice and trust their opinion," Gil said.

The resource of "trusted teachers" is always limited. Due to the conveyor, year-by-year logic of the educational process, no more than 15% of teachers become trusted partners for children throughout their education. These people become a platform for effective communication between students and the outside world, particularly with a future employer.

Sergey Gil admits that this project has a "limited audience" as only educational institutions committed to building a partner ecosystem with business are interested. The practice team teaches students its own methodology and provides monthly supervision throughout the year.

"Our project has a support service to articulate, discuss and understand any controversies. A student needs a healthy atmosphere of reflective dialogue and confidential conversation with intelligent adults for normal growth. This is how we create it together with colleagues, or rather, we support the process: the teacher helps the student to master technologies, the student begins communication with the business, we help to remove risks, fears, prevent typical mistakes and prepare for effective negotiations and designing quick and best solutions," he says.

The entire team at Careers in Russia together with students, moderators and business would select and implement formats for further actions: internships, trainings, or bootstrap camps that are equally interesting to the parties and effective.

"This helps our team generate the most attractive and effective formats of our own activities at a high pace. We offer such formats as The Entrepreneurial Village, Personnel Podium, Skills-Hackathon, Bootcamp Camp for Professional Tests and Career Startups, and Not a Career Fair. These are moderators' toolkit," Gil said.

According to one of the recipients, Acting Director of the Altai Academy of Hospitality Elena Lobanova, this project has boosted the demand for graduates 1.7 times.

"The technological conference 2021 Altai Entrepreneurial Village held by Sergey Gil organized graduate practical training at a new level by syncing the requests of business, students and the government. Graduate Career Podium brings together 790 graduates of year 2021 and 69 companies operating in the Altai Territory. Gil's successful practices have already been included in the Academy's action plan for the next academic year to address career guidance, optimization of the Academy's educational simulation company and graduate employment," Elena Lobanova said.

"Tools and practices offered by Career in Russia allowed the students of Altai Transport Technical School to enter into an open dialogue between education and business, providing the bootstrap camp interns with real professional challenges, career and entrepreneurial startups. This has helped to form an effective trajectory of graduates' personal and professional growth," said Inna Pavlovskaya, Director of Altai Transport Technical School.

Today, there are persistent efforts to scale the project. More than 40 directors, deputy directors, 200 teachers, and 300 students of vocational education institutions have been trained to apply HR partnership technologies for businesses, colleges, and students. The project participants have expanded the existing pool of personnel partners by more than 30%, verified the roadmaps of personnel partnership of educational organizations with small, medium, and large businesses in the region. The project has engaged more than 3 thousand students of secondary vocational schools and 10 thousand schoolchildren.