More than 30 companies participated on Sept. 24 in the Kyiv Post Employment Fair, a major biannual event for employers and job seekers.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Kiltschko, who attended the fair, said that “it’s very good that many companies participate.”
“I’d like to thank them because they create jobs, pay taxes and do their best to develop our city and our country,” he said. “We need strong companies and jobs so that young people don’t dream of going elsewhere and are able to realize the great potential that each of you has.”
Giving a motivational speech for job seekers, Klitschko said that “if you want something, you will necessarily be able to achieve that. If you dream and work hard, any goal that you set will become reality.”
Illustrating his point, Klitschko said his friends had laughed at him in his youth when he said he would become a world boxing champion. He later won three world championships.
Klitschko also jokingly encouraged the Kyiv Post to start publishing in Ukrainian in addition to English.
The event also featured Arkady Vershebenyuk, CEO of taxi company Uber Ukraine. He outlined the principles of the company’s business and its values, comparing Uber’s challenging mission to a potential manned flight to Mars.
He said Uber’s mission was to “make transportation as reliable as running water.”
Vershebenyuk also spoke about the global rollout of the UberPool ride sharing service and UberEATS food delivery program, though he did not specify when it would happen in Ukraine.
Uber launched its operations in Kyiv on June 30. Vershebenyuk said it would also expand to other Ukrainian cities if they are deemed sufficiently big and when the company was ready for that.
The event was also attended by Roman Rubchenko, a graduate of Michigan University’s Ross School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School of Government and founder of the Youkraine.org program, which aims to “train and inspire the new leaders of the future civil society in Ukraine.”
He encouraged Ukrainians to study in the West and bring their experience to the country.
“You will see so many things that are wrong with our society,” he said, adding that Ukrainian education was of poor quality and Soviet-style.
On a similar note, Oleksandr Akymenko, the publisher of the Platfor.ua online magazine and graduate of Stanford University, gave a speech in which he urged young people to study there.
Meanwhile, Anastasia Deyeva, an advisor to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, spoke about the ministry’s efforts to make the police more responsive to society’s needs.
Swedish IT company Beetroot was both looking for employees at the fair and offering to provide IT training through its Beetroot Academy. The company trains veterans of the war with Russia and refugees from the war zone free of charge.
Another company present at the fair, Brainware, is a startup studio that provides a platform to launch companies and has offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Yekaterina Tyupa, 21, told the Kyiv Post that she was looking for a human resource manager job.
“I found out about the event just yesterday,” she said. “I saw that a lot of well-known, respectable companies would be here, and decided it would be a good experience.”
The event was also attended by representatives of Hyatt, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, ControlPay, Porsche, KPMG, Henkel, Auchan, l’Oreal, TCM Group and other firms.
The employment fair was concluded by Kyiv Post CEO Luc Chenier, who gave a speech on how to make presentations.
Chenier also urged the audience to be laconic and not to “say in seven what you can say in two.”
He encouraged presentation makers not to read from the screen, avoid the podium, not to be afraid to change course when something goes wrong and “create mystery to ignite curiosity.”
