Compliance with modern trends in the labor market is the key to successful employment of graduates. In the automobile and road industry, trends in the transition to new design and maintenance facilities, new software and associated new organizational and management solutions have recently manifested themselves especially intensively.

That is why for the current academic year, the SPbGASU Faculty of Automobile and Road Building has planned a whole range of events that will allow students of all courses to maintain direct contact with employers.

One of the traditional areas of these events are lectures and master classes for students from industry representatives. This academic year there are even more of them. Thus, during the first weeks of November, graduates were given lectures by an expert consultant in the field of management of automobile service enterprises, Rostislav Lukashuk, and the chief specialist of the LUCH design bureau, Aleksandr Semenov. Students learned about the basic principles of organizing and managing car service enterprises in modern conditions, as well as about the experience of technological design of motor transport enterprises. It is interesting to note that several years ago, representatives of LUCH turned to the faculty for advice on the use of technological calculation methods for enterprises, and this year they shared their experience of updating and applying them in the design of urban passenger transport parks.

A new direction of career guidance at the Faculty is events for freshmen. Among them is a series of meetings with employers: Sergey Mayevsky, advisor to the general director of St Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise Passazhiravtotrans, as well as representatives of the Avtopole company, which acts as an official dealer of more than two dozen brands of passenger cars: Aleksandr Sherestkin, head of the service department, Natalya Erilina, Director of Client Service, and Tatyana Bocharnikova, Head of Training and Development Unit, spoke to the students.

First-year students heard what competencies employers expect from them and what subjects and disciplines they should pay special attention to during their studies.

• To confirm these competencies, the Faculty is participating in a pilot project to conduct an independent assessment of qualifications for graduates. For this purpose, an examination platform was created on the basis of a training car service as part of the interdepartmental laboratory of the educational base “Krasnoe Selo”, which was included in the register of information on independent assessment of qualifications under number 2316; a number of teachers have undergone advanced training under the program for experts in independent assessment of qualifications; cooperation is ongoing with the Council for Professional Qualifications in the Automotive Industry in terms of updating professional standards. In 2022 and 2023, 29 graduates of the Faculty took part in the independent qualification assessment procedure.

“The development of career guidance mechanisms is one of the priority tasks for the Faculty,” says Deputy dean for career guidance counceling Natalia Chernykh. “It helps solve the ever-present problem of finding oneself in a rapidly changing labor market, updating the content of educational programs and motivating students to study. I am glad that the graduating departments made many proposals to the plan of career guidance work and were actively involved in their implementation. The Faculty’s immediate plans include developing students’ project activities, defending their final qualifying works in the form of startups, and, of course, the “Introduction to the Specialty” festival for first-year students.”.