Job Fair “beAhead. Autumn 2020”: Traditions and Innovations

Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute held a job fair “beAhead. Autumn 2020”. The event is traditional, but this year its organizers - employees of the Department of Employment Promotion and Professional Development – the Career Development Center of the Department of Educational Work - decided to move away from the usual agenda and held it in a completely new form. Of course, this decision was made not only due to the quarantine restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic, but also due to the desire to make this fair more efficient and interesting for both employers and Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute students.

The fair was held on November 16-20 online. For this purpose the site with convenient navigation and quite meaningful content was specially developed. Actually, everyone can recognize the fact when visit the site careerfair.kpi.ua.

This year 30 companies has taken part in the fair. More than half of them are reliable partners of the University and have repeatedly participated in such events. During the week before the beginning of the fair the organizers actively informed users about its features, participants, schedule of certain events. Of course, the appropriate navigation was developed as well.

As a result the fair visitors had the opportunity to join four blocks of activities.

The first one – “Enterprise tours online”. Here, everyone was given an opportunity to visit all or only the most interesting companies, presented in the block of virtual tours.

By visiting the second block – “Webinars and trainings”, you could learn about the practical application of knowledge and skills, communicate with company representatives in real time and ask them questions. In particular, the topic of the Ernst & Young (EY) webinar was “Career opportunities in consulting for students of technical and economic specialties”; INTERTOP Ukraine offered a training topic “Advanced technologies in e-commerce”; the Ukrainian mobile operator lifecell offered the webinar topic “Principles of web development”, etc. A total of 729 listeners took part in these webinars.
The third block – “Express interview with HR-manager” offered interviews for job vacancies of companies. Such post-registration interviews were conducted on a pre-arranged day and time.
Finally, the fourth block – “Company Interactives” - offered quizzes and lotteries with professional prizes from participating companies. By taking part in them, you could test your knowledge and, in case of victory, get a memorable gift from the company. Sure enough, visitors enjoyed such an opportunity.

The final part of the job fair “beAhead. Autumn 2020” was an online discussions at the round table “Employing of young professionals: challenges of today”. The representatives of 14 companies participated, as well as the Vice-Rector for Educational Work, the Head of the Department on Educational and Organizational work, coordinators at faculties / institutes and students of the University. According to the agenda of the round table, the participants discussed requirements of companies to potential employees (first of all, what exactly is necessary to know and be able to do for Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute graduates for adapting quickly to a company and getting quality results); searching for job by graduates and compliance of resumes with requests of companies; importance of internships, etc. The participants also raised questions concerning a high salary of graduates; interaction of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute with partner companies for organizing joint events for graduates to acquire relevant professional skills; involving stakeholders in the formation of educational programs; state support in encouraging training and support of professional adaptation of graduates in companies and others.

In conclusion, Vice-Rector Natalia Seminska thanked everyone for participating in career events and showed mail-order gratitude gifts to the first online job fair “beAhead. Autumn 2020”,