Novikova O.N., Silyutina I.N.

East-Ukrainian National University named after V. Dal

REGIONAL LABOUR MARKET OF GRADUATES ON SPECIALTY “SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTS AND INFORMATION ACTIVITY”

The world economic crisis which greatly influenced the labour market conditions in Ukraine made the difficult employment problem for the graduates from Higher Educational Establishments on different specialties including the specialty “Science of documents and information activity more difficult.

Students can get this specialty studying at different Universities including East-Ukrainian National University named after V. Dal. In the conditions of tough competition the requirements to the professional competitiveness, mobility and dynamics of applicants for the working places are increasing. Although the labour market for the graduates of specialty “Science of documents and information activity” is rather wide due to its inter-branched character, it takes too much time to find a job and sometimes it is without any good result.

The young people’s problems on the labour market and the problems of graduates’ employment have been discussed in many papers and articles written by both Ukrainian and foreign scientists. Thus, the monograph of V.V. Onikienko and L.G. Tkachenko [4] has been devoted to the studying of young people’s labour market, the analysis of youth’s quantity and quality in Ukraine and its regions and defining the factors which influence the employment. M. Korchun [2] has researched the ways of economic activity increasing and young people’s employment on the labour market. Organization-psychological approaches concerning the assistance to the graduates in looking for a job through the competitive approach have been given in the publications by O. Korchevnaya and O. Kiryanov [1]. However, only few works are devoted to the problem of graduates -document science specialty- employment. That’s why it is necessary to mention the paper by I.G. Plincha [5] which is one of them.

Modern tendencies of information society development are aimed at the increasing of information employees’ role in the production, science, management; consequently, they are aimed at the increasing of their services demand which is modified by special conditions of our country, and most of all by its economic conditions.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the regional labour market of graduates on the specialty “Science of documents and information activity”, to find out from the graduates’ point of view the most efficient ways of work search, and to learn what employers expect from young specialists.

The analysis of graduate’s employment of recent years showed that their main customers are the bodies of state and local self-government, enterprises of all types of property, scientific-production and commercial firms, law enforcement bodies, medical and educational establishments and so forth.

The graduates of this specialty “Science of documents and information activity” look for their jobs using different ways, such as: participation in fairs of vacancies, which are held every spring by employers on the basis of the University; monitoring official sites of state and local self-enforcement bodies, asking he recruiting agencies and job centers; searching in Internet and in mass media; using word-of-mouth recommendation from their parents, friends and relatives.

Only a few students successfully find their specialist’s positions of this or that category in state administration or local councils in the city of Lugansk and Lugansk region. It often happens if theses graduates had their practice in these organizations while studying at the University.

At vacancy fair which is traditionally held in spring on the basis of the University unfortunately there are practically no offers on this specialty. This fact can be explained that the employers underestimate the importance of this specialty. Moreover, they are sure that document-information activity can be done by people who haven’t any professional education.

To find a job the graduates use services of different employment agencies and job centers. There are seven active recruiting agencies which cooperate with commercial structures giving necessary information. The analysis of sites content of these agencies and also the analysis of personal contacts showed that the number of vacancies for graduates of above mentioned specialty is rather limited. It is necessary to stress that there is discrepancy of applicants’ educational level to an offered position. The most common, widely-spread vacancy is the position of a manager’s secretary, according to trades’ classification DK 003:2007 it is referred to the fourth trade group - “technicians” (technical employees) who perform auxiliary functions in the specialists’ work (secretary, office-work employees, employees dealing with information belong to this category).

Specialists belonging to this category must have the diploma of junior specialist, general compulsory education or sometimes they may have professional-technical education. However, one of the main requirements in the advertised vacancies is to have a higher education. At the same time graduates from the East-Ukrainian National University named after V. Dal like from other Ukrainian Universities can apply for the positions which refer to the second or third trade group (office-work employee, scientific worker (information analytics); adviser, the enterprise manager’s assistance (establishments, organizations), organizer. In future having gained the experience they can have the positions belonging to the first trade group: the chief of the office; the manager in the sphere of producing information, and the manager in the sphere of giving consulting services.

The less efficient way of vacancies search as the graduates said is the usage of mass media and Internet, although in some cases we have seen the positive results.

The most efficient way of work search is the word-of-mouth recommendation when somebody (relatives, parents, and friends) helps you as we have been told by recent graduates. This opinion and conclusion coincides with the opinion of a lot of employers as for the most efficient way of job search. The same result has been received by M.Ya. Matveev [3, p.79] in his research.

The common problem which the graduates of the specialty “Science of documents and information activity” face with during the job search is the lack of work experience (different kinds of production and diploma practices aren’t taken into the account by employers). One of the ways out of this situation is to have close cooperation with a wide range of employers and ask them “to bring up” specialists from the students who have practice at their enterprises and whom they will employ for their companies in future. The best graduates could perform the enterprise order in the frames of diploma Specialist’s Degree and Master’ Degree paper and to work out some kind of project having a practical meaning, for example, to work out normative instrument of documents to provide the management processes, to ground the necessity to automate the solution of some tasks or to introduce particular systems of electronic document circulation and so forth.

It is very useful to draw up treaties with employers to employ students-trainees in future on the base of full-time employment. Some examples confirm the fruitfulness of such cooperation. According to the opinion of O. Korchevna and O. Kiryanov it is necessary to attract and involve undergraduates and graduates who are successful on the labour market in the process of formation junior student’s motivation career. In this case as authors stress, the instructors’ institute is created and it helps the students to adapt to the today’s labour market from the first years of study at the University [1, p.35]. Another way how to solve the employment problem is to have good links, close cooperation with recent graduates who have achieved a professional success and work at different enterprises in order to support graduates and undergraduates and help them to look for a job and find some vacancies.

Certainly graduates’ success on the labour market greatly depends on their competence including the ability to solve a wide range of information tasks successfully due to the system of social, scientific, cultural and technological competence and also of their personal features, for example, a high professional mobility which must be formed during students’ study at the University.

Thus, as we see young people are the most vulnerable employees on the labour market especially when Ukraine is looking for the best ways out of the economic crisis.

The specialty “Science of documents and information activity” is very diversified and this diversity allows its graduates to work both in state and private organizations holding different positions from the secretary till the organizer of office work and the manager in the sphere of information producing. As graduates’ questioning showed the most efficient way of work search is a word-of-mouth recommendation or direct applying to the employer. That’s why higher establishments must give much greater assistance to the graduates to find their employment; they must develop such system of qualifications which could help them to be competence on the labour market and aim them at the up-to-date requirements in the system of qualification.

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