The Kyiv Post Employment Fair expects to attract around 1,000 visitors to the Ukrainian House in Kyiv on Sept. 22. The biannual job fair will match job seekers with a peak number of employers over the last five years – almost 50 companies.
The event, in its 13th year, will have no entrance fee.
The career fair offers attendees an opportunity to talk to representatives of the big companies, learn about job openings, file application on the spot, and expand network. Plus, it also features motivation speeches from the experts during the whole event.
The companies include long-time participants, namely Brain Source International, Danone, EBS, EY, Runway, ProCredit Bank, and others. The newcomers that will participate in the fair are Central City Store, known as TsUM, admitad, Nexia DK, OLX, Puma, Transparency International, and United Nations Office for Project Services.
The companies are looking for candidates for various positions from entry to management level as well as building up a talent pool. Besides Kyiv, representatives of other cities – Lviv and Odesa – will also participate in the fair.
The speaker panel will feature six talks with an opening one at 11 a.m. by the Cabinet of Ministers on the state service reform. It will be followed by Gres Todorchuk PR company, Nexia DK auditor and consulting, OLX classified ads company, Ulichnaya Eda food festival, and the United Nations Development Program.
Motivation speeches
Yaroslava Gres, a co-founder and CEO at Gres Todorchuk PR, will be one of the speakers at the event. She will talk about how to find a dream job.
“Success is a path and it is a path of ups and downs,” Gres told the Kyiv Post. “If you never had a failure, then it is a very bad sign because it will happen once, and it will be very painful.”
Gres, 35, has been the youngest chief editor of Ukraine’s version of the Hello magazine. Because of the economic crisis, the magazine was shot down in 2009 and she lost her job.
She then switched to PR and opened PR agency Agentstvo, later renamed as Gres Todorchuk PR, with her brother Oleksandr Todorchuk.
After the EuroMaidan Revolution and raise of patriotic spirit around country, they decided the company should switch to cultural and social events. Looking for the projects like that, they relaunched with a new team and name Gres Todorchuk PR in 2015.
Today, Gres Todorchuk PR is an award-winning public relations and communications company with an office in Kyiv’s downtown. The Park of Corruption exhibition in Hryshko Botanical Garden is one of the recent events they worked on.
“I really want young people who are just starting their way to know what it means to celebrate failures,” Gres said, adding that young people often lack responsibility and speed to adapt quickly to the market needs. “Because the world is changing rapidly and quickly, if you do not react, you don’t have a chance (to succeed).”
Job matchmaking
Advanced level of English is another must-have skill, especially for international and tech companies.
“We like that Kyiv Post Employment Fair can attract English skilled audience that we target at the labor market,” said Yuriy Semenov, the managing director at Runway BPO.
For Runway BPO, foreign language is the key skill. Willingness to work is another requirement, Semenov said.
The company works in a growing sector of business process outsourcing. They provide remote services, like call services, accounting, telemarketing and others to its customers abroad. For instance, Ukrainian brunch with offices in Lviv and Kyiv handles services for Norwegian Air Shuttle, one of the largest low-cost carriers in Europe.
Today, they have openings for customer support specialists with the knowledge of English, German, and French. Semenov said they plan to collect “as many applications as we can” at the fair.
The company first participated in the fair in the western city of Lviv in 2017 and hasn’t stopped since. Semenov said that among 100 applicants whose resumes they collected at the event, they hired from 5 to 10 people.
Another talent seeker, Ukraine’s branch of OLX classified ads company, will be participating in the fair for the first time. They are ready to hire a customer relationship manager, a moderator, and a customer support specialist.
OLX public relations specialist Diana Demydenko said they don’t have experience in finding new talents through a fair yet.
“But we often heard from colleagues about the effectiveness of such events, so we decided to try this time,” Demydenko said.
Kyiv Post Employment Fair
When: Sept. 22, 10 a. m. to 4 p. m.
Where: Ukrainian House
(2 Khreshchatyk St.)
What: Around 50 leading companies, hundreds of job seekers, expert speakers.
Check schedule and details at www.employment.kyivpost.com
Admission: Free, needs registration at goo.gl/oRQhkR.
