The First Arctic is a professional development leadership program launched in 2018. With its help, Nornickel is looking for potential leaders. This year, the First Arctic received more than 4000 applications. Only 10 percent of the total number of applicants reached the final.
“The main feature of this season is the coverage of the program. This year, not only the Polar Division, but also ROСS (Russian organizations of the corporate structure) in Norilsk are participating in it. Also our colleagues from the Kola peninsula – the Kola MMC – have joined us. This year, we got an unprecedented number of applications – more than 4000. The geography of third-party participants has also expanded: young people from all over Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, decided to try their hand at the program. This proves that our program is popular throughout the country, they know it, they hear about it. Many students and workers with less than three years of experience want to work at Nornickel and try their hand at First Arctic”, Anastasia Perfilyeva, deputy director of the Nornickel Polar Division for human resources and social policy, told.
Among the participants in the program there are graduates of the country’s leading universities, as well as employees of mining and metallurgical companies.
At the moment, all candidates have passed the preliminary stages of selection: screening of the questionnaires, telephone interviews and testing. As a result, more than 400 candidates were able to continue their participation, they were admitted to the full-time selection stage. They had to show themselves in the team competition, solving a case, and in the leadership championship at an individual interview.
42 applicants were able to show themselves. Experts assessed them according to the Nornickel’s key competence model – system thinking, communication, result orientation, development (this is a knowledge base and an opportunity to improve in the future), discipline and cooperation. If a participant showed these qualities, he received a plus, if not – a minus.
“Solving cases is a stressful situation. You find yourself in a new team, in which you need to get to know everyone and make friends in five minutes in order to make an important decision. After defending this decision on stage in front of the company’s experts – not everyone could do this, – said Anastasia Bulycheva, one of the 25 lucky ones who made it to the stage of the individual interview. – This is an invaluable experience for me, which I could only get here and which will certainly be useful to me in the future. Well, if I don’t get to the final, I’ll come back in a couple of years”.
“We selected those who could prove themselves as potential participants in the First Arctic program. Everyone has different readiness: there were candidates who are already in leadership positions. For example, a young man from the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company who was appointed to the position of acting head of the shop, despite the fact that he has been working in this area for no more than five years. That is, he has already shown himself as a leader, he has the makings of a leader. Someone is just starting the way”, the expert of the First Arctic leadership program, chief metrologist of the Nornickel’s production automation department Evgeny Stogov shared his opinion about the candidates.
Based on the results of all stages, experts will determine several finalists who will become participants in the First Arctic. And then over the next two and a half years, mentors at the enterprises will be engaged in targeted training with them. The First Arctic is an excellent springboard for career growth: it provides the opportunity to take a leadership position in two and a half years.
Text: Elena Stepanenko, Photo: Denis Kozhevnikov
