Anastasia Kekukh earned her bachelor's from ICEF in 2015 and her master’s from Queen Mary University of London in 2017. Currently a project manager at Moscow Exchange, the largest exchange group in Russia, Anastasia shares what it’s like for someone of a humanities bent to be a student of ICEF, why doing a master’s in London can prove an exciting experience, and how to move from Yandex to Moscow Exchange.
About choosing a college major
There were basically two majors I was choosing between: Design and Economics. I was carefully considering both and it took me quite a long time to decide. When I discovered that two of my exams – IELTS and Architecture and Art Competition Final– fell on the same date I opted for IELTS. IELTS was a requirement for admission to the second year. At that moment I realized I made my choice in favor of Economics.
HSE seemed to be a better option also because it practiced a more modern approach to training. And because I had a plan to gain international experience in the future, ICEF seemed a more obvious choice.
I went to ICEF for the Open House Day and talked to its students.
Turns out that apart from brochures and ratings it’s important to just ask the guys about what it’s like to be an ICEF student
They confirmed that students wishing to pursue an international degree could hardly find a better provider than ICEF. That finalized my choice.
About student hardships
When ICEF students told me they had a demanding curriculum, I didn’t quite see what they meant. The school I studied at had advanced courses in English, German, foreign literature and Russian literature. They proved a great help with using English at ICEF and learning new languages and a very poor one with improving my mathematics and economics.
But, we pulled together to get through and the friends I made at ICEF are still my best friends.
About landing first job
My thesis topic dealt with M&A. I liked exploring it and I started looking for an M&A job. Got an offer from Althaus Group, a consulting company which first hired me as an intern and later as a sell-side M&A analyst. I’m glad I chose M&A to be the topic of my thesis and that much of the knowledge that I gained at ICEF did prove useful in my job. The skills I felt I was missing out on were soft skills.
It was through learning by doing that I learned customer communication, presentation skills, that an M&A deal was far more complex than presented in theories and that there existed business valuation factors that I didn’t know about and which required a certain amount of flexibility to be dealt with adequately.
My role as a junior analyst involved market research, market players analysis, financial modeling, and preparing marketing materials. And since my company had a diversified portfolio, areas like finance, taxes and valuation were all part of my job. For early-career specialists, consulting is a perfect place to try different industries. It benefitted me by broadening my professional horizons.
About London
My first job experience helped me decide on my master’s and which courses were to be explored more in depth. I worked and was preparing for admission. I was looking to gain industry-specific skills, so the programme had to be of hands-on nature. And it had to be based in London. I have always marveled at London’s extraordinary combination of antique and modern looks. I chose Queen Mary University of London and its MSc Business Finance programme, which taught core courses in semester one and electives in semester two.
I chose the programme for its curriculum approach and flexibility in the choice of courses. And I had the benefit of graduates talks and the many student clubs and societies. They were so many that joining them all was simply impossible. I joined the student-run investment fund – a great teamwork experience, when three people from three different backgrounds get together for an investment decision. The training itself and the experience of teamwork had equipped me with fruitful, ready-to-use tools and skills. Being Europe’s dominant financial centre, London attracts many talented specialists from all parts of the world. This makes its environment truly unique and also excessively competitive. My master’s study coincided with the Brexit, when many companies started rebuilding themselves and/or moving their operations to the EU. Finding a job in Britain was difficult even for candidates from the European Union, let alone work visa seekers.
About benefits of a master's degree
I know for a fact that doing a master's, especially international one, is worth it. Not only will it expand your knowledge, it will take your communication skills to the whole new level. My experience in London was that of getting immersed into a completely different culture – cultures, to be more precise, because it was a multinational environment. When you find yourself amid different mindsets, languages, value systems, you learn perspectives that would otherwise have never occurred to you, and this can really broaden your horizons.
Exposure to diversity leads to improved communication skills. By learning to fit in with new philosophies, you learn flexibility and adaptability. This makes you better able to discern the opportunities in front of you and whether they really fit your goals. Also, my study environment had a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit – pursuit of new business ideas, creative thinking and co-working. This explains my getting interested in working for Yandex as a company that offered involvement in product launch.
About working at Yandex
I was on my way to Moscow for an interview set up at another company when, right after my plane landed, I got a call from Yandex offering me the position of a project manager for its newly launched food delivery business, known to everyone as Yandex.Food. I found it very interesting. The service was growing rapidly, and they needed the team fast. In two weeks’ time, after passing the stages of the interview, I received the confirmation.
Freedom to create was the best thing I liked best about my new job at Yandex
It required mostly soft skills such as improvisation, ability to generate unplanned solutions, interpersonal skills, time management, and problem-solving. My knowledge of finance came in handy when I joined the work on modelling business growth. I was in business development department and my team were tasked with finding ways to improve the quality of service – the task involving both creativity and high level of responsibility. Staying creative takes staying a broad-minded and effective teamworker. I liked my role as project manager and its freedom to be creative, but Yandex.Food and Yandex.Store were nevertheless linked mostly with logistics, while I started to feel there was more I could bring to the job in terms of fintech and the skills and knowledge that I gained from previous work experience and master’s study.
About Moscow Exchange
I started looking for project manager jobs in finance and came across a position on the Moscow Exchange. The job description listed the ability to generate business development ideas and new products, but within a content different from what I worked with earlier. Moscow Exchange operates trading markets in currencies, equities, bonds, monetary instruments, derivatives. I am in Derivatives team and I like it because we have greater flexibility with respect to contract design, compared to other markets.
Finance is, of course, a more rules-based industry. So, having to adjust to its philosophy after Yandex was pretty much what I expected. Many people tend to think of exchanges as having regulated ways for their absolutely every operation, which is not quite so. Exchanges, too, have lots of room for creativity.
My study abroad experience has been a great help in dealing with partners. Business English skills, cultural awareness and knowledge of communication subtleties to be observed when dealing with foreign clients are crucial in my line of work. With international experience, you are better prepared to capture the nuances of communication at all levels.
