Employers’ Feedback on ICEF Graduates: Otkritie Bank
Marcel Salyev, who is responsible for Business Strategy Management at Otkritie Bank’s Business Development Strategy Department, talks about the qualities that distinguish talented employees, why Otkritie sees ICEF as a provider of talent, and how financial institutions increase their cooperation with universities.
Our department is a close-knit team of dedicated staff with degrees from the top ranking universities. We therefore expect our candidates to meet a special set of requirements to make sure they can share our corporate culture and approach to performance. At Otkritie, the key to career success lies in erudition and high performance as two basic essentials allowing one to quickly explore new topics, analyze the current data and make profound conclusions. Another equally important quality is motivation. It is what helps us handle intense workload and fuels the interest in achieving better solutions. When attracting candidates, the bank faces competition from the consulting industry.
In our search for the most promising of graduates, we’ve always relied on ICEF as a provider of talent
Otkritie and ICEF have been long-standing partners. We know ICEF graduates to be well-trained workers and versatile personalities who can bring fresh thinking. Five years ago, when Otkritie underwent restructuring and was about to build its new strategy team, ICEF was one of our basic sources of talent. Our current strategy team has two graduates of ICEF, one of the class of 2018 and the other of 2021. Not only are they perfect fits in the team, they repeatedly prove their worth by contributing to our goals and showing fast progress. Their being highly competent, versatile specialists in finance helps us to achieve tangible results in our line of work.
ICEF regularly provides us with candidacies for our job openings. All of them are highly educated, highly motivated students who would like to start careers in finance. The very fact that a candidate has stood the test of ICEF’s rigorous standards means they had been working to capacity and will prove reliable employees. This is a mark of quality to any employer.
As industries and universities increase cooperation, talent search and staff development become easier for us. By contributing to the on-campus career events and supervising students’ project work, we can meet our potential candidates and welcome some of them to our team knowing that they are already aware of their future tasks. By cooperating with us, HSE allows its students to meet their potential employer while they are still students.
Several times a year, we invite students to join our internship programme called Career Start, where we host talks about the activities within our department and announce job openings to ICEF Career Services. One such talk was given at ICEF in the spring of 2022 by Roman Zilberman, Otkritie Senior Vice President & Director for Strategy and Business Development. We are planning for more case study activities and interactive projects as part of our collaboration with ICEF.