Who works in their specialty in Russia? Russia: why do millions of graduates work outside their specialty? Why do university graduates not work in their specialties?

Higher and secondary vocational education is now going through difficult times. According to the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor of the Russian Ministry of Labor, on average 30 percent of graduates in Russia work outside their profession. Among young graduates of technical schools and colleges, this number is 40 percent.

This is largely due to the fact that school graduates do not have complete information about which professions will be most in demand in the labor market by the time they complete their studies. Their preferences when choosing a specialty are formed in isolation from reality, and often the choice occurs rather on an intuitive level. In this case, higher education is perceived as a continuation of school, as a way to obtain another certificate of education.

The task of business today is to popularize education, to form a clear picture of the labor market in the eyes of boys and girls entering universities and colleges. Only a clear picture will give the main thing: the interest of applicants in choosing in-demand specialties.

In turn, one of the main tasks of educational institutions is to train specialists in such a way that a young person who has received an education in a specialized field could get a job and apply his knowledge at enterprises.

On average, 30% of graduates in Russia work outside their profession

The indicator of youth entry into the labor market is a successful transition from the “study” state to the “work” state. It is he who speaks about the effectiveness of personal and public investments in education, the correspondence of the educational services market to the needs of the labor market.

One of the additional ways to improve the rate of youth entry into the labor market is to build a comprehensive training system in universities with the involvement of company employees as teachers.

In this case, the young specialist will receive training to solve specific problems, and it will also be much easier to adapt after employment. Programs must include compulsory practical training: during it, the student acquires the necessary skills by understanding the problems that he will have to solve in the workplace.

Today, IT companies in Mordovia are confidently entering the interregional, federal and international levels. They develop and implement exclusive software products and create new jobs.

Bytex already offers such programs for embedding them into the curriculum of educational institutions or using them as electives. Agreements on cooperation in the field of training specialists in the field of IT were signed with large universities of the republic. After completing the program, students come to practice at the company, and most of them are employed.

This summer, about a million young specialists graduated from Russian universities. Statistics show that even a diploma from a prestigious university does not guarantee employment, and many graduates will face difficulties finding work. Kommersant writes about why employers are not always happy with young specialists.

According to the Ministry of Education and Science, which annually monitors the employment of graduates, of those who received diplomas in 2015, 74-75% found work. Graduates of the national research universities (NRU) Baumansky, Gubkinsky, and MEPhI were most successful in finding a job - 81.54%. Those who graduated from Moscow State University or St. Petersburg State University were less in demand - 74.58%. MGIMO graduates were employed in 53.17% of cases, and their average earnings were 47,760 rubles. The publication notes that we are talking about universities that are considered prestigious: high requirements for applicants, expensive preparation for admission and expensive tuition. According to Rosstat, unemployment among graduates of 2015 is five times higher than in the country as a whole.

The publication notes that those who received higher education for a fee find themselves in a paradoxically disadvantageous situation. Official statistics take into account state employees, but the state forgets about those who paid for education after they received their diploma. Experts interviewed by Kommersant draw attention to the fact that many yesterday’s students do not work in their specialty or are not officially employed.

Elena Avraamova

Head of the Laboratory for Social Development Research, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, RANEPA

“The conflict between graduates and employers is growing in the Russian labor market. Employers significantly reduce wages when hiring people for the first time. Therefore, there is a high turnover among young people; few people stay in one place for three years or more. In a crisis, employers immediately offer young people informal employment, I would say, they simply push them into freelancing, on fixed-term contracts, or even without a contract at all, paying for part-time work in cash, without a social package, without insurance and pension contributions.”

Avraamova notes that connections are of paramount importance when searching for a job. This is not just about “warm places”: almost every employer is more willing to hire a specialist if someone has recommended him.

A separate problem is the attitude of business towards graduates. In the West, companies are accustomed to investing in future specialists, but for Russia this approach remains exotic.

Every year, Russian universities graduate tens of thousands of young specialists. However, open vacancies corresponding to the specialties of young people with higher education for some reason remain unfilled. According to the latest data from Rosstat, in Russia more than half of graduates of higher educational institutions (55 percent) work in a specialty other than what is listed on their diploma. And for some professions this share reaches 70-90 percent.

In July last year, employees of the independent public organization “Association of Managers and Specialists in Human Resource Management”, together with the Department of Economics of USUE-SINH, surveyed newly minted graduates of Ekaterinburg universities. By this time, 60 percent of respondents had managed to get a job. Of these, only 18 percent found a profession in their specialty. The rest postponed their diplomas “until better times” and went to work where this document is not required.

According to the results of the same study, it turned out that the easiest people to find income in their specialty are programmers, builders, international affairs specialists, PR specialists and energy workers. But young teachers, sociologists, political scientists, managers, philologists and psychologists are less lucky.

The question of why the specialty obtained at a university does not determine the future place of work has been asked for many years now. The initial reason was that school graduates’ choice of university turned out to be wrong because there is no career guidance system.

For example, in China, as soon as a child goes to school, he begins to try various professions: he is taken to a factory and shown how machines work, and so on. Throughout his time at school, he is shown about 50 different professions.

A common situation for most Russian schools: the school year is ending, and graduating students are just beginning to think about who they want to be. They study the websites of educational institutions, look at passing scores, compare them with their own, and draw conclusions. Often many people go to study where their best friends go, with whom they spent most of their lives sitting at the same desk and can’t go anywhere without each other. Or another option is to choose a specialty on the advice of relatives. In other words, school graduates determine their future unconsciously. On the other hand, how can they understand anything here if no one has explained to them what professions exist in the world (except for the 10-15 that everyone knows), and which of them are the most in demand on the labor market.

“There is no such subject as orientation in any school curriculum, but in vain,” explains Georgy Amusin, chairman of the association of psychotherapists of the Sverdlovsk region. — Is it possible to decide what you want to become without knowing what a representative of a particular profession does? Therefore, after graduating from school, many, when choosing a specialty, are guided only by a superficial awareness of who they will become in the future, having chosen one or another university department. I think that a separate compulsory subject on career guidance and some special textbook would be useful for our high school students.

A striking example of a misunderstanding of the essence of the profession is journalism. Every year, journalism departments have one of the biggest competitions among applicants. However, after the first practical training, many journalism students become disillusioned with the profession. Well, this is inevitable, because they judged the profession by glamorous magazines and talk shows. But in reality, instead of bohemian parties, I had to go on a business trip to some godforsaken village and write or film a report about the problems of local residents.

Most often, career guidance classes are a private initiative of individual schools.

“We regularly, once a week, conduct classroom hours with our students on the topic of career guidance,” says educational teacher at Yekaterinburg secondary school No. 36 Gulnara Galieva. — We usually invite representatives of various professions, whom we look for among our graduates. In addition, sometimes we organize excursions for the children to various city enterprises. Also, all our students undergo career guidance tests.

Essentially, these tests help determine which specialty is best suited for a child - technical, humanitarian or creative. Some even take it upon themselves to specifically indicate to the student where he needs to enroll. I find one of these tests on the Internet, answer eight questions, and the computer program sends me to study to become a manufacturing engineer. I think this is not the most suitable option for me after three years of studying at a humanitarian university.

— In fact, there are authoritative career guidance tests that have already proven themselves. They are divided into age categories, and the child needs to go through them annually and draw some conclusions from the overall result, explains Georgy Amusin. — This is a useful practice for schoolchildren, teachers can use it, but under the strict guidance of a psychologist. And it is not advisable to trust unverified sources, for example, from the Internet.

The all-Russian trend for many years: you can’t go anywhere without higher education. Guided by this conviction, parents are ready to push their child into any university, into any department.

So it turns out that many students, having realized the whole tragedy of the wrong choice in the second or third year of the educational institution where they entered, begin to look for a field of activity that is truly interesting to them or will simply bring a stable income.

The editors of NE decided to ask those guys who decided not to look for a job in their specialty, what was the reason for their choice?

Kamilla ILYASOVA, 23 years old. Graduated from the Department of Economics of USUE-SINH:

— I am an economist by training. Already at the end of the first year I realized that this was not for me, but in order not to upset my parents, I decided not to leave the university and finish my studies. While studying, I got a job as a sales consultant in one of the fashion stores, which belongs to a large European chain. They immediately told me that if I work well, there will be an opportunity for career growth. I tried. A year and a half later, I completed training for the position of a visual decorator - this is a person who designs a store and window display. I started traveling to other cities to help open stores of this brand. After another year and a half, I was appointed merchandiser - a representative of the retail chain. Now I can say I live in eight cities at the same time: I fly from one to another every week and see how things are going in the branches. I don't sit in one place, I never get bored. A higher education, of course, was useful to me (they don’t hire me as a merchandiser without it), but the Faculty of Economics specifically remained a pleasant memory of student life.

Maxim Maximov, 22 years old. Did not graduate from the UrFU Faculty of Journalism:

— I honestly tried to study. I was expelled once, then reinstated again, took the tests, but then I finally admitted to myself that it was not for me and left my studies completely. When I was still applying, I was looking for some creative profession, and I thought that journalism was what I needed. But this is not how I imagined everything. While still studying, I bought myself a camera, began reading books on photography, practicing on friends, arranging photo sessions for them. I soon realized that I wanted to do this professionally. I built up a client base and opened my own photo studio. Now I make money doing what I really like. But I still receive higher education. I study remotely.

53% of students at higher and secondary specialized educational institutions plan to work in their specialty, 27% found it difficult to answer this question, and 20% of respondents realized that they were not attracted to their chosen profession.

The plans of university students and college students regarding employment in their specialty are almost identical - 52% of university students and 53% of college students plan to work in their specialty.

It is expected that among respondents who entered a university under pressure from relatives, only 20% plan to work in their specialty, while among university students who independently decided to enroll, the opposite picture is observed - 62%.

More than half of the students who plan to work in their specialty in the future devote the bulk of their time to studying (51%). Among students who do not intend to work in their profession, the highest percentage indulges in idleness and sitting out time while waiting for graduation (24%).

There is no consensus among university students regarding how higher education can influence building a successful career. At the same time, a clear correlation can be traced: students who subsequently want to work in their specialty tend to assume that having a higher education helps them climb the career Olympus, and, conversely, students who lack the motivation to develop in the profession obtained at the university tend to think that higher education Education, rather, does not have a significant impact on building a successful career.

On average, students and graduates of colleges rate the knowledge acquired at the educational institution higher than university students.

Among university graduates, only 30% of Russian specialists work in the specialty they received at the educational institution. The professional activities of 40% of domestic workers are in no way related to their education, and 23% are employed in a related field.

33% of specialists with higher education work in their specialty; among specialists with secondary specialized education, this figure is 20%.

At the same time, 37% of specialists who made the decision to enroll in a university independently work in their specialty, and only 19% of respondents who entered the university under pressure from relatives.

The share of respondents satisfied with their current job directly depends on whether their education corresponds to the position they hold: 50% of survey participants working in their specialty are satisfied with their work, and only 35% of respondents doing work unrelated to the profession obtained at the university.

The desire to open your own business practically does not depend on the relevance of the education received to the position held.

Among graduates working in their specialty, there is the highest percentage of respondents who devoted most of their time at the university to studying (65%).

A higher education diploma has become a necessary factor in the employment of 72% of specialists working in their specialty. Respondents employed outside their specialty required a diploma much less frequently (40%).

The knowledge acquired at an educational institution was useful to only 18% of workers who were employed outside their specialty, while among specialists working by profession this figure is significantly higher (51%).

Only every fourth young specialist works in his specialty. Among respondents over 45 years of age, this figure is higher (37%).

Specialists with specialized education most often work in such areas as “Jurisprudence” (81%), “Medicine, pharmaceuticals” (65%), “Extraction of raw materials” (55%) and “Accounting, management accounting, enterprise finance” (55 %).

Graduates of the Tyumen region (45%) and Irkutsk region (44%) most often work in their specialty.

The largest share of workers employed in their specialty is in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra (53%), Kemerovo region (45%) and Primorsky Krai (43%).

Do you work in your specialty?

Study region	Yes, %	I work in a related specialty, %	No, my job is not related to my education, %	Difficult to answer, %
Tyumen region	45	18	30	7
Irkutsk region	44	21	26	9
Kursk region	40	20	39	1
Udmurt republic	39	21	36	4
Kemerovo region	38	22	33	8
Chuvash Republic	38	30	26	6
Tomsk region	37	21	32	9
Primorsky Krai	36	33	25	6
Orenburg region	36	20	36	8
Omsk region	36	26	32	6
Krasnoyarsk region	36	14	47	3
Volgograd region	35	20	40	5
Rostov region	35	22	39	4
Stavropol region	34	21	37	8
Perm region	33	21	44	3
Ivanovo region	33	19	41	7
Chelyabinsk region	32	24	38	6
Saratov region	32	24	37	8
Ulyanovsk region	32	14	51	3
Voronezh region	31	17	45	7
Belgorod region	31	28	34	7
Krasnodar region	31	23	40	6
Moscow	31	24	39	7
Kirov region	31	29	34	7
Republic of Tatarstan	30	27	38	6
Altai region	30	21	46	4
Khabarovsk region	29	16	50	4
Republic of Bashkortostan	29	22	38	10
Novosibirsk region	29	23	41	7
Nizhny Novgorod Region	29	25	41	6
Sverdlovsk region	28	24	42	5
Saint Petersburg	28	23	43	6
Other regions	28	21	45	6
Vologda Region	28	29	36	7
Tver region	27	20	51	2
Yaroslavl region	27	22	44	7
Tula region	26	26	42	6
Smolensk region	26	20	46	7
Lipetsk region	25	25	46	4
Samara Region	24	29	36	10
Bryansk region	24	30	41	6
Moscow region	19	27	51	3
Ryazan Oblast	19	37	37	8
Penza region	16	25	53	6
Vladimir region	15	32	47	7

Entrance exams to universities are over. Previously, it was believed that the lucky ones who were admitted would have five years of serene and happy student life. Times have changed: now most students from the very first years are concerned about getting a job. Some start working by specialty already from the second or third year.

Who do modern employers prefer and what do graduates themselves strive for? Having analyzed this, one can clearly see what the quality of current Russian higher education is.

Expectations of applicants

Last year, the Begin group company, as part of the Examen project, surveyed Moscow applicants. They interviewed 182 people by telephone - high school students and school graduates. When asked what they wanted to do after graduation, 46 percent of applicants said that they were going to work in their specialty, another 12 percent wanted would like to work in their specialty, but are not sure that they will be able to do this. 33 percent intend to study a specialty that interests them at a university, and decide on future employment later. And only 9 percent have not yet thought about who and where they will work. It also turned out that most first-year students are going to find a part-time job in the 1st or 2nd year, and start working seriously in the 4th or 5th year. Only 7 percent plan to look for work only after graduation.

Rough reality

What actually happens after five years of study? More than a million young professionals, university graduates from 2007, are applying for available vacancies this year. The independent rating agency ReitOR has just conducted its research, the results of which are interesting to analyze.

A survey of more than 1,600 respondents from among university graduates in 2007 in various regions of Russia showed that only 23 percent of respondents will definitely work in their specialty (this is two times less than what applicants wanted), 3 percent will definitely not work in their specialty, and 18 percent said that, most likely, they would not work in the specialty they received. That is, it turns out that the efficiency of our universities is very small.

Interestingly, the study was conducted in the most applied industries and areas of university training: mechanical engineering, service and tourism, agro-industrial complex and food industry, construction, geology, mining and exploration, economics and management, electronics, telecommunications and information technology.

At the same time, it turned out that in recent years, more and more students combine studying at a university with work (52 percent of surveyed graduates), but their work during their studies is most often of the nature of additional work and is not related to the specialty they are receiving. Only 40 percent of students with work experience confirmed that the work was related to the specialty they studied at the university.

By the end of university we were able to decide on our future place of work about a quarter graduates of 2007 (27.5 percent have already chosen a company for future work). And 72.5 percent of young people start looking for work only after receiving a diploma.

Graduate Choice

What are the main criteria for a young specialist to choose a place of future work? First of all, career prospects, then the salary level, and then the opportunity for self-realization. Proximity to home, a social package, and relationships in a team are of much less concern to young people. In eighth place is the prestige of the place of work, in tenth is the fact that the enterprise is developing rapidly, in twelfth is proximity to home. And only on the thirteenth is the fact that the young specialist will work in a friendly team.

As for the real salary level of a young specialist, the starting salary on average ranges from $300 to $700 (we are talking about Moscow). At the same time, in all industries (except mechanical engineering) there are many enterprises where the average salary of graduates exceeds $700. Most of them are in the field of management, IT and telecommunications.

Choosing an employer

What guides an employer when making a decision to hire a young specialist? It turned out that the main thing is: personal impression from the applicant, his experience in business communication(educational practice, internship at the workplace), and only then - availability of specialized education. Despite the fact that employers do not say that the reputation of a university is of decisive importance, in practice, sometimes graduates unknown universities are not even considered as applicants. In addition, the following are important for employers (in descending order): availability of recommendations from the university, reputation of the educational institution which the graduate graduated from, level of graduate demands(position, salary, working hours, etc.), GPA; requests for patronage from relatives, friends, acquaintances.

Last year, the ReitOR agency, with the support of the Association of Personnel Selection Consultants, conducted a study, “The Career of a Young Specialist in Moscow.” It was attended by representatives of 150 Russian companies operating in five industries: gas and petrochemicals, mechanical engineering, IT and telecommunications, energy, management and economics

Employers were asked the question: “Which Moscow universities did you prefer to hire graduates for permanent work in the last two or three years?”

And it turned out that:

• mechanical engineers prefer graduates of MSTU. Bauman, MAI, MPEI, MATI (Russian State Technological University named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky), Moscow State Technical University "MAMI", MIPT, Stankin;
• energy We are happy to hire graduates from Moscow Power Engineering Institute and Moscow State Technical University. Bauman, MAI, Moscow State University. Lomonosov, MIPT, Russian State University of Oil and Gas named after. Gubkina, MEPhI;
• employers in the field "gas and petrochemicals" prefer graduates of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas named after. Gubkin, Moscow State University. Lomonosov, Russian Chemical-Technological University named after. Mendeleev, MSTU named after. Bauman, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
• graduates economic specialties and management They prefer to hire after graduating from Moscow State University. Lomonosov, MSTU im. Bauman, REA named after. Plekhanov, MGIMO, State University of Management, Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow Aviation Institute, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation;
• employers in the field " IT and telecommunications" Mostly they called Baumanka, Moscow State University. Lomonosov, MEPhI, Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics, MIPT, MAI, Moscow State Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation, MPEI.

To summarize, we can say: employers mainly name well-known brands that have been leading in surveys over recent years. In industries such as mechanical engineering, energy, gas and petrochemicals, industry-specific universities are considered the most attractive (usually no more than three are named). In industries such as management and economics, IT and telecommunications, employers are not limited to the top three brands and industry universities. And one more thing: they single out graduates of technical universities as the most attractive for economic and management professions.

How to find each other

Previously, in the era of developed socialism, everything was simple: graduates worked either by distribution, or found a place through relatives and friends of their parents (through connections, that is). The results of today's survey showed that an employer and a university graduate most often find each other by posting advertisements about available vacancies in the media, the Internet, and only then the old-fashioned way (using informal connections - through acquaintances, relatives and friends).

What qualities do employers value in young professionals?

Based on what qualities are valued in young specialists at enterprises today, one can judge what is missing in modern Russian universities. And they appreciate learning ability, adaptability, activity, ambition, communication skills, mobility, perseverance, technological training, knowledge of computers and foreign languages.

It is easy to see that “trainability” comes first for the employer. This means that our universities do not produce specialists of the required quality. That is why, despite the shortage of qualified workers, not every employer is ready to hire a university graduate. More than 70 percent of employers admitted that young specialists require additional training.

In business and industry, it takes from several months to two years for a young specialist to adapt. And not every enterprise is ready to spend money and time on such additional training.

What qualities do university graduates lack?

Based on the results of surveys of employers, one can judge: additional training of young specialists is necessary due to a general lack of knowledge in general and special knowledge in particular; lack of practical skills, isolation of knowledge from production, lack of communication skills, inability to use information.

I would like to ask: what qualities do our graduates actually have?

Employers do not trust universities. Fewer and fewer businesses are cooperating with them; They do not allocate funds for training specialists and do not organize internships. Employers prefer to send their employees for training to other enterprises or train them themselves. 290 out of a thousand surveyed enterprises already have own educational institutions: retraining courses, training centers, vocational schools, colleges and universities.

For example, back in 2005, the costs of Russian enterprises for retraining and additional training of their employees amounted to about 400 billion rubles. At the same time, the order of enterprises for the training of specialists in educational institutions turned out to be small - only 17 billion.

Perhaps for this reason, university graduates, having barely received a diploma, immediately think about getting a second higher education (despite the fact that it can only be obtained for money). They do this not for pleasure (like many of their Western peers), but out of necessity. Apparently, they understand that they are not ready for work.

P.S. The conclusion is not comforting: for the most part, universities, even if they train specialists in applied specialties, continue to provide some kind of abstract (even good) education. Education divorced from the needs of real life. Perhaps this is why graduates cannot immediately start working in their specialty, and our life is becoming more and more “beautiful” only in words. And they say about us: if you are so smart, then why are you so poor?