On November, 24 the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI has held a massive event for students and alumni – the Career Days of the State Corporation "Rosatom", which the State Corporation holds jointly with MEPhI and the Corporate Academy of Rosatom. On this day, the event gathered about three thousand young people at the University who came to update information about work in the nuclear industry. A significant portion of them are the representatives of the core universities of Rosatom and other leading technical universities of Russia.
MEPhI is not accidentally chosen as a traditional venue of the event, aimed at attracting the industry's best graduates. As the basic University for the State Corporation, MEPhI prepares highly qualified specialists in a wide range of specializations. University graduates make up more than 30% of those who come to Rosatom enterprises and successfully make a career in the industry.
This year the Career’s Day was focused on the development of competencies that should be possessed by the prospective employee of Rosatom State Corporation, so the programme included a series of workshops – master classes “Project management”, “Rosatom production system”, “Intercultural communication” and many others.
The First Deputy General Director for corporate functions – chief financial officer N.I. Solomon spoke about the production system of Rosatom, aimed at increasing productivity, reducing costs and improving product quality. Today, according to Nikolay Solomon, "the knowledge and ability to apply the tools of the system is a prerequisite for professional and career growth of employees of the nuclear industry."
The HR Director of the State corporation V.A. Terentyeva told about new competencies in an era of VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself,” Terentyeva cited the words of Charles Darwin and noted that the high speed of changes causes the demand for new competencies on the labour market. In her opinion, training should be carried out in close cooperation with an employer. In particular, today Rosatom need specialists with a broad outlook, who know several areas at the same time, have not only expertise but also social competences. "This year the joint programme with the Russian Academy of Foreign Trade was launched for training of engineers with knowledge of foreign languages, economics and high communication skills," the representative of Rosatom gave an example. Special attention, in her opinion, should be given to knowledge of foreign languages, this competence becomes the most important in the selection and promotion of employees in the Corporation.
By the way, the Сareer’s Day included a discussion club in English language from the Corporate Academy of Rosatom, where participants discussed the problems of intercultural communication. A lecturer, Ekaterina Makarova, noted that one of the Rosatom’s strategic aims was to increase the share of orders in the international market, therefore, great importance was given to language skills of young professionals, knowledge of customs, culture of other countries in order to successfully promote the products of Rosatom abroad.
Today an important problem is finding young leaders capable to take on tasks of development of the industry. The General Director of Rosatom Corporate Academy Y.B. Uzhakina told about the training programs of personnel reserve of Rosatom, in particular the Program of leaders development, and gave advice to young people on how to achieve success by implementing their leadership skills in the industry.
The central event of the Day was the career fair, which was attended by representatives of Rosatom divisions. Throughout the day, the young people communicated with potential employers, receiving information about job prospects in the nuclear industry. Senior students were able to submit applications for internships, and alumni made resumes.
What else can interest students? Of course, it is communication with recent graduates and current employees of Rosatom at a master class "How to start a career in the nuclear industry". Young professionals, graduates of MEPhI Anton Poverinov and Mikhail Kasatov spoke about their work, about how to build their career, and what will happen to the graduates when they come to work in the industry.
Perhaps the most striking point of the program was "nuclear" scientific and educational event "Scientific fights: U-ROUND". Young scientists of the nuclear industry lock horns when they tried to explain the essence of their research in just eight minutes with the simplest of props: balloons, children's blocks, paintings of famous artists. Costumes played an important role as well, for example, a gas centrifuge was shown by a dancing ballerina in a pink tutu, and an ancient chain mail became a symbol of the cellular structures strengthening slopes of hydraulic structures.
During the scientific fights, students of MEPhI worked on solution of a complex technical problem in the engineering contest "Life support system". Dividing into groups – control, automation, assembly and study, they had to create a model of the cooling system of nuclear power plants, and configure it so to get maximum power without overheating the reactor. The task was tough but the guys, of course, handled it!
In parallel there was held an intellectual game "Knowledge corporation", organized by the joint efforts of MEPhI and RFNC-VNIIEF. It was attended by the best students of core universities of Rosatom: Sevastopol State University, Ivanovo State Power Engineering University, Moscow Power Engineering Institute and, of course, of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI. The team from the Ivanovo State Power Engineering University was on top, MEPhI teams were on the second and third places.
The Rosatom Career Day provided a number of fun activities: "Experimentarium", which presented technical tasks from line managers of Rosatom, themed quizzes, intellectual competitions, a master class in 3D modeling, a master-class “Future professionals need to start to train from kindergarten”.
On the same day, MEPhI became a meeting point for members of student construction brigades of the nuclear industry. During the conversation, they discussed various issues relating to their activities, and most important – the problem of safety and its solutions.
Completing the Career’s Day, MEPhI held an engineering quest "Create the future" for Moscow pupils from engineering classes.
