On April 29, 2020 at the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University (GSOM) the graduation of mentoring program Talent Up! 2019/2020 was held. 45 pairs of students and alumni of the School summed up the results of six-month collaboration. Participants from London, Budapest, Moscow and St. Petersburg could take in the event.

 

 

The online graduation was held in the format of an online conference. The theme of the conference was “Adaptation to Big Changes”, an introduction to the theory of Growth Mind vs Fixed Mind. The organizers were project curators — GSOM alumni and students' project leaders of different years —  Ekaterina Mitusova, Ekaterina Mitskevich and Olga But. 

 

During the academic year, the program has included events with the participation of GSOM alumni and project mentors: an initial meeting of mentors and mentee in November last year, the Investment Banking Day event about a career in investment banking, the Product Management Day events about a career in product management, and an informal New Year's meeting of project participants and the Knowledge Sharing project — a series of video messages from mentors in which they talked about the specifics of building a career in various fields.

 

Most students took part in Talent UP! in order to learn more about the field of their further professional development, to make useful contacts and get an inside look at a specific industry, as well as to develop important personal qualities to achieve career and personal goals. All project participants noted the value of the close contacts between different generations of alumni and students, feeling the unity of the GSOM Family community.

 

“The program gives a look at who and what we can be after a while, how much experience can and should be gained, what actions to take and who to look up to. You can leave your comfort zone, expand the scope and boundaries of your thinking, while communicating with your mentor, which is important because you usually communicate only with your peers, ” said Anna Kravchenko, GSOM Bachelor student.

 

In 2019-2020 GSOM alumni and employees of Google, McKinsey, BCG, Google, PWC, Yandex, Gazpromneft, VTB, JetBrains and others companies participated in the Talent Up! Program as mentors, while students from Bachelor and Master programs participated as mentees.

  

The next time-slot for the program will take be in October-November 2020.

 

Talent UP! is a long-term mentoring program launched at GSOM in 2013. Each academic year, students (mentees) and alumni (mentors) join in pairs and for several months communicate and exchange experience. For mentors, this is an opportunity to transfer their knowledge, and for students, it is possible to find answers to questions about career and development after graduating from GSOM.