Yandex, VK, Tinkoff, Sber and Gazprom became the most attractive employers for students

The top 5 most attractive places to work in the eyes of university students this year were Yandex, VK, Tinkoff, Sber and Gazprom, according to the results of a new rating of employers compiled by the consulting company FutureToday. This year, the gap between leading companies has narrowed, which, according to experts, indicates increased competition among their HR departments for personnel. The starting salary that future graduates would like to receive has grown over the year only within the limits of inflation (by 6%) and amounts to 82 thousand rubles. per month.

The best employers in Russia, according to students of Russian universities, are IT companies, large banks and industrial companies. This is evidenced by the results of the VIII employer rating from FutureToday. It is formed on the basis of a survey of final and pre-graduation students from leading universities (from the top 30 according to the Expert rating agency). In addition to the general rating, two additional ratings are also compiled – “Best of the Best” and “Best in their Target Audience”.

The top five in the overall rating are Yandex, VK, Tinkoff, Sber and Gazprom. At the same time, although Yandex retained first place in all three categories (this happened for the first time last year), its gap with its closest competitors in each of them narrowed noticeably. In particular, the gap between this company and second place in the “General Rating” narrowed from 16.5 to 9.7 percentage points. This was due, among other things, to an increase in preferences for VK and Tinkoff. The study’s authors note that the data demonstrates that “as the labor market becomes more complex, companies are having to invest more resources to remain attractive.”

The second top five in the ranking were OZON, Gazpromneft, Avito, 2GIS and Huawei. The last three companies were included in the list for the first time. At the same time, Huawei is the only foreign company in the top ten. Before the start of the military operation, the subsequent tightening of sanctions and the departure of many Western companies from the Russian Federation, the top 10 best employers consistently included Apple, Google and McKinsey & Co (see “Kommersant” dated January 26, 2022).

In addition to assessing the attractiveness of specific employers, respondents traditionally answer questions about the desired salary, employment format and other characteristics of the future workplace. Although over the past year employers have repeatedly announced a shortage of specialists in the Russian labor market, this has had little effect on the picture of the world of students. Their salary expectations after graduation increased by 5.9% (to 82 thousand rubles per month), but this is much less than it was a year earlier (plus 17.1%). However, the importance of a high salary itself is growing – this factor in the top 7 has moved from sixth to fourth place. The top three, as before, include flexible hours, work-life balance, and friendly staff.

Since the share of working “pre-graduation” students increased over the year from 53% to 61%, it can be assumed that employers began to work more actively with this category of applicants, trying to compensate for the difficulties in hiring more experienced workers. The most common formats of student employment are temporary or permanent employment (21% and 20%, respectively), internship (11%) and work outside of their specialty (9%). We note that Rosstat’s figures demonstrate a similar trend: according to the results of the second quarter of 2023 (the latest available data), youth unemployment in the Russian Federation decreased from 10.3% in 2020 to 6.3% (see Kommersant on January 23).

Anastasia Manuilova