By Yuriy Humber
Staff Writer

Finding a job as a young graduate or as a school-leaver in St. Petersburg is not easy, despite there being more job offers than applicants. All companies want experience, not just a degree. But how much harder is it for young people from so-called «difficult backgrounds,» such as the disabled or those from orphanages, to find a job? A U.K.-based charity says it may have the solution.

In spring 2005, a British non-profit organization the International Business Leaders Forum, in partnership with the St. Petersburg NGO Development Center, launched a two-year project called New Life Scenarios for Russian youth.

The project aimed to improve the quality of job and career information and consulting available to young people in St. Petersburg.

«We'd like to introduce the partnership approach and unite efforts of not-for-profit, business and the state, to jointly solve the psychological and practical problems young people today are having in obtaining a job,» said Yelena Korf, Russian representative of the International Business Leaders Forum, or IBLF.

«In particular, we want to reach young people from non-privileged backgrounds,» Korf, who is based in St. Petersburg, said.

Working together with the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast authorities, as well as businesses in the region, IBLF will initially set up special courses for those involved in helping young people find employment: Staff at job centers, university careers advisors, and members of youth organizations.

The project's first wave will take on 30 participants next spring. By fall next year, the charity hopes to enroll 100 people on the courses and expand the opportunity to a wider range of applicants. These could be university students interested in helping pass on the project's know-how to other young people.

«At the moment staff at job centers or careers service centers are not altogether confident in how to approach their task,» Korf said. By offering places on the course to them first of all, IBLF will seek to «install an infrastructure of knowledge.»

«We hope that those who passed the course will later train and advise others,» Korf said. «I know some great students at the St. Petersburg State University of Finances and Economics who combine study with working as trainers at nonprofit organizations.»

IBLF's project, sponsored by a two-year, 300,000-euro ($359,000) grant from Tacis, a European Union initiative to aid development in Eastern Europe, will split its course into a week of study and three one-week placements in different sectors: commercial, public, and non-profit.

An intensive one week of studying will include psychological training and advice on how to approach job-hunting and how to set up a business, as well as seminars on self-assessment.

Korf hopes local business people will be interested in volunteering to share their knowledge and experience with young people to promote business as being socially aware.

Irina Galiyeva, public relations manager at Japan Tobacco International, or JTI, which operates a large factory on the edge of St. Petersburg, said businesses will be interested in supporting such schemes.

“It could be interesting to companies like Coca Cola, which work on image and marketing among the younger audience,” Galiyeva said. “The company may not gain new workers or managers, but in promoting training programs for young people from deprived backgrounds, a corporation can show itself to be a socially responsible business.”

With the legal age for smoking set at 18, tobacco firms with large local factories like JTI or Phillip Morris are restricted in their work with young people. However, JTI takes on 20 fresh graduates each year as interns, which can lead to future employment.

The company is one of many in the region to offer trainee and management trainee experience, which Yury Mikhailov, managing partner of Consort Petersburg recruitment agency, says play a major role in banking on the future loyalty of young people.

It is not just youngsters from deprived backgrounds, but also university graduates who are sometimes unaware of real job needs and expectations, and work experience and internships help to bridge the knowledge gap. The Association of the Personnel Search Consultants in the Northwest even felt the need this year to produce «The Young Specialist Guide,» a book to help young people take their first steps on the labor market, sold in most major bookstores in the city.

But such publications, no matter how practical, may never reach youths from deprived backgrounds.

«Through the IBLF project we show the deprived youth another way,» Korf said. «Instead of entering a university, they can gain vocational qualification and go to work at a major factory and enjoy a good standard of living and salary. At present, the youths don't know that such opportunities exist.»