Finding a job is a daunting task for most young Russians just out of college and lacking work experience. To help solve this problem, some institutions of higher education have turned to hosting job fairs as a way of matching prospective employees and employers and giving their students a little extra assistance.

Moscow's institutions of higher education are increasingly helping young graduates in Moscow to find employment. Unlike in the Soviet Union, where employment was guaranteed, finding a job can be an arduous process for a young Russian today, and so some looking for work turn to recruitment agencies, while others participate in job fairs organized by Russian and Western firms through such well-known Moscow schools as the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Finance and Moscow State University's Higher School of Economics.

Gennady Khvorykh of Moscow State University's department of Career Development and Recruitment said many people think that finding a job is impossible without professional experience, but this isn’t true.

Khvorykh said that both Russian and foreign firms do indeed often hire inexperienced graduates through career days or job fairs and then train them for their new positions. Career days or job fairs are events where firms present their services or products, advertise job vacancies and identify and make contact with needed specialists.

Since job fairs have become an annual event at the university, Khvorykh added that many companies, among them Bee Line, Nestle Food LLC, Danone, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Andrew’s Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have become involved in order to reach qualified specialists, preferring to do this instead of recruiting directly.

"It [the labor market] is getting tighter every year, as more and more Russians are taking managerial and business-related courses," said Yelena Golyubinskaya, training manager at Moscow State University’s Higher School of Economics. Job fairs are useful in part, she said, because Western firms participating in them “are giving young Russian graduates an opportunity to learn Western styles of management and the ins and outs of conducting business correctly." She added that the training graduates sometimes receive after participating in job fairs gives them the opportunity to build upon their education and become better and more responsible future employees.

Anna Farafontova, a graduate employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers through a job fair last year, agreed and said that they were useful as well.

With the effects of the 1998 economic crisis still hovering over Russia, Farafontova said most of her fellow graduates have lost hope after several futile attempts at finding a job. But, she said, job fairs are a useful and often successful resource, as they allow one to get familiar with the characteristics of potential jobs.

"Although finding work can be tough," she said, "I was prepared and succeeded."

On the other hand, Nadya Kravchenko, a Plekhanov graduate in economics and a participant in a job fair in 1998, said she could not adjust to the rigorous selection procedure used in job fairs. This procedure, she explained, includes filing application forms, attending a series of seminars and finally passing a nerve-wracking interview.

"I am not psychologically prepared for such things," she said. "I usually prefer to talk to friends who might know of a job than sitting down before an interview panel."

According to Kravchenko, exploring the labor market through in this way works reasonably well for many graduates.

Khvorykh acknowledged the cumbersome selection process but added that job fairs can be important because they thoroughly assess prospective candidates’ communication and analytical skills, assess relationships between potential employees and managers, and identify the most qualified specialists.