Cooperation with the public education system

Rostelecom pays special attention to its cooperation with educational institutions. We work consistently in this area: from training young talents to having them participate in the development of innovative solutions and technology.

Rostelecom organised the Ticket to the Future careers festival in eight Russian cities. As part of the festival, in Veliky Novgorod from 13 to 15 November, Rostelecomemployees gave lectures to school students on cyber security. Started in 2018, the event has grown into a career guidance platform for secondary school students. Over three days, the festival was attended by more than 6,000 students from Tomsk, Seversk, and the Tomsky, Asinovsky, Zyryansky, Pervomaisky, and other districts of the Tomsk Region.

On 5 January, the Komi Branch employees took part in the ProfYESSiYa — the Territory of Choice project, traditionally held at the Syktyvkar College of Service and Communications. The event gathered over 550 final year students from Syktyvkar’s 26 high schools and lyceums. The students learned about various professions and options available at Syktyvkar’s public vocational education institutions. As a partner of the college and a potential employer, Rostelecom set up a stand showcasing the trade of a telecommunications equipment technician and the services provided by the Company.

«We have enjoyed a long-lasting partnership with the Syktyvkar College of Service and Communications. The college trains electricians to service telephone transmission lines and radio stations. Most of them start out as interns at our branch, and our specialists give master classes. We have participated in the project for several years. It’s an effective tool to engage young skilled talents.»

Svetlana Kovalenko, HR business partner of Rostelecom’s Komi Branch

The ProfYESSiYa — the Territory of Choice project has been run since 2011.

On 25 October 2018, Rostelecom organised a welcome tour for senior school students in Murmansk. The undergraduates of specialised IT courses who participated in the Arctic Young Engineers regional science and technology festival visited telecommunications sites. Rostelecom specialists acquainted the children with modern telecommunications equipment and explained the basics of data transmission and fibre-optic communication. The students saw a digital PBX, an optical distribution frame, a line equipment room, a data centre server room (the heart of the region’s internet), and the work of those at the regional network operations centre and the technical support centre. They learned that the network condition is controlled automatically and an operator is promptly alerted to any faults.

«Our task is to familiarise the younger generation with the opportunities and options available to them in the Murmansk Region. I’m sure that learning about Rostelecom’s services and technologies was exciting and useful, and that senior school students see our dynamic, innovative company as an attractive employer offering opportunities for professional development.»

Olga Shangina, Director of Rostelecom’s Murmansk Branch

For a third year, the Arctic Young Engineers festival will bring together young researchers and engineers from every corner of the Arctic Kola Peninsula. Since its beginning, the event has welcomed over 8,000 children and teenagers. The new season does not only focus on polar research and expeditions but also the research and technology driven development of Arctic regions. The festival covers the entire Murmansk Region and is held as a large-scale research and technology marathon for young people, during which 15 cities will host over 50 competitions for young engineers, with the final event scheduled for April 2019.

From May to June 2018, Rostelecom and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kaluga Region held the 24th annual P.M. Golubitsky Competition. University students involved in information technology and telecommunications research were invited to participate. Ten projects out of a total 67 won the competition, with eleven young developers awarded subsequent grants from Rostelecom.

Winners of Rostelecom awards 2018:

Bauman Moscow State Technical University (Kaluga Branch): Evgeny Cherepkov, Anastasia Kozina, Andrey Solomatin, Svetlana Medvedeva, and Alexey Kuzminsky
Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation: Dmitry Chelyapin, Yana Tarashchuk, and Anna Stepanova
Kaluga College of Electronic Devices: Denis Ivanushkin, Denis Gruzdev, and Kirill Polichev

«The focus of this competition was practicality. We met most of the participants personally to discuss the outlook for the IT industry and their potential contribution to its development. The names of the winners were announced at their universities, as this success is reflective of the winners’ adept engineering skills as well as their universities and professors. The award is financing for their research. This approach fully correlates with Rostelecom’s growth focus: transformation into a digital partner for households, business, and government customers. Young talented IT professionals are our valuable future human resource and capital. These kinds of investment foster technological progress and an accelerated digitalisation of the region and the whole country.»

Natalia Kalyatskaya, Director of Rostelecom’s Kaluga Branch

Cooperation with Sirius Educational Centre: Cyberchallenge Competition

The project focuses on selecting talented school students matching the Company profile and training them. Our task is to fully involve them in IT and cyber security and show the challenges faced by the Company. The final interactive event was designed to consolidate their learnings and select the most talented participants.

The competition reached 3 million people in 2018. A talent pool was built of 1,500 participants actively involved in the online round, and the basics of the industry and Rostelecom operations were discussed with them. The competition also provides career guidance. The Company now has an asset of 60 school students well-trained in information security. The finalist diploma also gives five to ten extra points to those who choose to study through specialised information security departments at technical universities.

«Everyone showed amazing results. All first-stage tasks were completed within five hours. The competition for points became fiercer each hour, with simpler tasks increasingly losing in value. The heat grew even greater at the second stage.»

Vladimir Dryukov, Head of the Security Operations Centre Solar JSOC, Rostelecom-Solar

Launch of the business-focused Internship 365 programme

In 2018, to engage the best students and graduates, Rostelecom launched the Internship 365 leadership programme to boost managerial skills. The participants majored in four fields: analytics, marketing and product management, project management, and business support.

Candidates were selected through stages:

Stage 1: Screening questionnaires
Stage 2: McKinsey Problem Solving Test
Stage 3: Online interview with recruiter
Stage 4: Immersive escape game based assessment

The project encouraged experimentation, as its KPIs included emotional connection, unusual format, and the WOW effect. The escape game was based around the dystopian fallout from ubiquitous digitalisation.

In solving the challenges, the interns and employees were expected to explore problems on their own and be pro-active and experimental. Although the tasks set may have been clear, the solutions were not. Bunker-42 cold-war era complex in Moscow’s Taganka district was chosen for the escape game, sitting 65 metres beneath the city with dark tunnels, armoured hermetic doors, and damp shafts. The winning students were gathered in the bunker entrance area, divided into teams, and sent off to pass the assessment.

The participants moved through the bunker tunnels, interacted with the game actors, solved the game and business challenges (putting diagrams and ideas on flip charts), and recorded the outcome on video. Six pressing problems were chosen for the escape game scenarios: pandemic disease, overpopulation, language extinction, rubbish crisis, mass unemployment, and escape into virtual reality. The task was to create products and services to address these problems and build a better everyday life for humanity.

As the students were working on their solutions, they were assessed Rostelecom’s recruiting managers posing as experts from the Institute of Time. Those who were unable to attend participated through an online stream.

Step 5: following the assessment, the best-performing students were invited for an interview with Rostelecom HR managers.

Launching IT internships are within plans for 2019.