Question 1: What were the main factors that motivated you to establish Young and Hired?

Thank you very much! I think that I will start with presenting myself. My name is Victoria Zagitova and I’m the founder of Young and Hired and I started my international relations career as a communications intern at UNESCO in Paris. I was working there at the HR department and one of the big goals was to understand how to engage more young people in the international relations field to work with the UN agencies. I think we were conducting very big research on different UN agencies to understand better what kind of careers exist, how young people can come and how to inspire them. Before that I already had some experience in communications and worked a lot with social media and I understood that maybe one of the strongest channels on how to engage with young people would be social media. The time, Instagram was the whole thing however TikTok was not so much. To understand better and to touch the ground in my free time I was blogging. Honestly I didn’t use Instagram before so much for personal reasons so I started exactly speaking about international careers and this is like how I started my own blog first, Victoria speaking. After that I had so many requests, so many people interested in this career so I decided that it would be better to create a separate space and separate consulting that has already been built around the young and hired platform. So it was a very organic, very natural thing, that’s why this career consultancy was not like at the start where I woke up and understood that I need to start a startup. No! It was very organic thing that I just started having more and more young people around me, who were interested in this thing and we understood that we could do more than just me like answering messages that’s why step by step, year by year we started having more people the whole project more products, consultations than the team of experts who started also helping with me then online courses and etc.

The second reason why I was thinking that it’s going to be great is because I was also international relations student and I remember that when I was trying to understand how to navigate this field and explore it for myself the UN careers website and couldn’t understand anything there, so I started all my own searching different bloggers who were speaking about this and understood that there is nobody at that time. I mean years ago when I was studying and it was I think in 2018-2017 (many years ago I already know it’s very scary just seeing how many years have passed) and I understood the time was OK. So if there is nobody speaking about this since I have taken this pass already I understood how to work at the UN, I was already inside. Maybe it’s going to be great to share with others. Let’s say fulfill the dream that I was having when I was a student because I understood exactly what exactly people need and very often young people need something very simple not to explain you go there and there but they need the explanation very easy. Very complex thinking and easy way like; push exactly this button, go exactly through this website, this is the section of the vacancy, you need to look at. So overall let’s say that generally these are two reasons how Young and Hired were born in the end.

Question 2: What are the biggest opportunities that Young and Hired provides for young people who want to enter the international arena?

I have to answer this what is our unique proposition value in the market is that we are a team of experts who work at the biggest institutions of the world. The biggest advice you can get is just when you speak one by one and when you want to have a high level career, for example, to work for the UN or EU institutions or in general in International Organizations. It’s very hard to approach people who work there but what you really need is somebody who is just speaking with you. We are speaking right now in which we offer at Young and Hired is to have a call with the person who work in the biggest institutions and this is very unique opportunity because usually in order to approach a specific person you need to search for hours such as LinkedIn, or you need to go to specific events. So it’s really time consuming but you need it right now because you also have exams you also have your friends and etc. So whatever is that you’re having and probably you don’t have time for this and you just can come to us messages even on Instagram so we don’t even ask them to go to the website because young people don’t use very much the websites now, so you can just message just grab it and then set a call with one of the experts who will look at you speak with you and you get this amazing opportunity of networking with the person who works for example for the World Bank now or another big institution. And we have very democratic services, so it’s very easy to use, easy to approach and moreover we have a section of online careers courses that teach you what university doesn’t teach you. Of course I gave university career service, but so many students there exactly focus on international careers. That’s why sometimes when people see our international relations careers courses, they think that we’re going to teach them again international relations or global affairs but what university teaches you is giving you exactly the skills like to understand different aspects to understand different concepts we teach you exactly. How to approach the job market when you’re young when you have problems like no work experience not great CV and it’s very hard to compete on the job market and that’s why when you come trust to take our course we exactly understand your problems start with explaining you; what exactly you can do, what kind of exactly career roles you can take, and how to prepare your profile in this, so we’re not teaching you again international relations or economics or whatever subject you can have that really can teach you how to get cool skills that you can put in your CV, but we explained the very basic things you need to know in order to use this university experience in order to approach the job market in the future.

Question 3: What would be your first suggestion for someone who thinks that young people should be more active in this field but does not know where to start?

I would say that first of all to understand, to explore what you like, and start with yourself and more or less the first step would be to understand what I like to do. For example if you understand that you’re very much about analysis or you’re very much about being active like being in events or you’re very much about social media or whatever.

Second of all, to analyze the job market and see the real job vacancies maybe UN maybe OECD maybe parliament but to find real job vacancies where you see that for example social media and you go on LinkedIn or whatever platform you go in. At youngandhired.org you see the vacancy you see OK I see social media specialist in their international field and the next step would be to look at the requirements sections and the requirements section you will find all the answers because the requirements section explains you what kind of skills you need to have to have this role. When you find 10-20 requirements, what are the generic requirements that are required for this kind of role, so if you are now studying yet you still have time to get these kind of skills because we are often young people say what I had a girl I was speaking like in Milan from one of our followers a week ago I guess and she asked me what to study international business or international relations? It’s like you don’t check the weather outside and you think you wear a jacket or a swimsuit, right? So maybe it will work, maybe it will not, but if you don’t check the weather you don’t know how to specifically tailor your CV. So maybe you’ve heard about this, when they say don’t send generic cities because you don’t tailor it’s like not to tailor your closets to the weather you have outside this is what is happening. That’s why there are a lot of rejections. That’s why you never get a response. Basically coming back to this question is that when you analyze the requirements you understand what you’re study you understand what kind of course is to take you understand what kind of languages you need to learn and then of course when you already understand this kind of analysis you go to the action plan and you understand that, okey this year I will take these classes, I will take extra activities in university clubs or maybe some volunteering because at the end when I am graduating already will have the skill set. So, I do not take the like random skill set. I got during my studies, but I get exactly the very tailored ones that I will then propose to potential employers because the job market is a market is when you go to the supermarket, you look at different types of cheese right? And you think okay, so I want something salty or like I want something else, and you choose. So, the same thing is happening on the job market. So, basically you have different companies were deciding what kind of product to take because at the end they take this employer. That will generate impact or income in the company. Yes, so depending on where you go on the non-profit or you go to the business section. So here it is very important to be a bit less romantic and more pragmatic and sooner you understand the fact that you are on the job market. So, you are basically selling your skills. You will start looking at this a bit differently. You will start focusing more on your skill set. At the end of course when they say work experience also it is not like any type of work experience, why? Because if you need a cheese and you take a chocolate, so it is not going to make your salad better. I am trying to explain in a very simple concepts because in this way you understand better the idea why you need to be more pragmatic on the job market. In my practice, I saw some great successful stories of students who landed great jobs at Banks, United Nations Institutions, or big organizations. But these students usually understood from the beginning already what kind of job they can potentially have. Of course, it is not happening all the time. Also, in my life had crisis when I did not understand what exactly I wanted to. It is also normal but you need to spend this time understanding what kind of job vacancies you can potentially target because these successful stories which I saw, those students all the new organizations they want to join or the job market they want to join and in the end they started researching for example organization and then you already okey this organization has a graduate program, so I need to check the requirements, I need to speak with people who already did this kind of program so they speak and they already prepare themselves. In the end when they graduate, they know where they go and what is the next step that is way of course. Summarizing what I said, the first thing would be to understand yourself. Speak with yourself, sit down in the room, and say okay this is a paper and let’s write what I like to do and then you see whether it exists or does not exist. If it does not exist, let’s make a hypothesis. Because in other things sometimes what is happening is that maybe you are more entrepreneurial like you guys. So, for example you understood that you are more like about giving the world something else right? Not to join a specific organization but to give a world something else. It is also existed sometimes but, in this case, of course, sooner you start better it is going to be for you.

Question 4: Could you tell us about the projects you are currently working on?

Speaking about the projects, well, so actually we are launching one of them like today so it’s like very exclusive. Let’s say you know about this before, we started something that a lot of guys were asking for so much time. It is the global career podcast. It is going to be a podcast about international careers that we are hosting with Diego M. De Giorgi, UN Diplomat living also in Italy currently. We are going to explain how to build an international career focusing very much on the youth target audience and trying to break some stereotypes about like whether it is possible or impossible but of course I can already tell you that is more possible than impossible in life. This is something that we are going to present today. So, you can definitely listen to on Spotify or Apple Music, and I hope that you are going to like it and find a lot of nice, interesting insights. Because since we understand with the younger very much, the problems of young people, we try to a bit explain better. Then of course, we are launching more online courses now from the next month besides like having online courses on international careers and international relations English, we are going to come back first the diplomatic etiquette course that was some years ago but again because of the interest we decided to revive it a bit we decided to upgrade it. That of course we are launching is about creative industries since we spoke very much about diplomacy in international work at Young and Hired, we are in Milan, and we understand very much creative jobs and fashion jobs. So, we are going to also explain how to mix if you are creative for example, but you still want to work in international relations and what exactly career paths you can have and how to prepare your profile. Because not so many people want to live in the huge stations of the UN, for example, join the ministry or like non-profits but want to be in more creative industries but now even business requires very much international relations students, and this is the beauty of international relations. Because you have very wide option of jobs that you can potentially take. That is why we are going to explain better like what you can do if you want to live in cities like Milan or Paris, more fashion and creative. Those cities are more popular for this kind of industries. Another course that, we are launching is about careers in abroad. So, we decided to create more course for those students who are not European citizens. In struggle with different problems like Visa requirements, competing with the citizens of European Union etc. So, focusing more in explaining how we can prepare your profile. What kind of programs are existed in the region. So, you can solve all the legal issues and understand how to approach it from the right way. But you know, some things that usually the citizens of the country may be do not collide with while non-European students can collide with. Because when we speak about an international field, we always speak about international people from all around the world who can still want to work in different institutions that sometimes are in the Europe Union.

Question 5: Finally, what would be the most important advice you would give to young professionals who want to pursue a career in international relations?

Maybe a bit like philosophical but like more elit understand. That it is really very much starts with yourself because sometimes you can have all the insturments possible. But there are some important things you need to believe in. In my life, I remember that when I started my international path and a lot of people were saying me, one phrase that really like, touched me very much. Because I also, when I was writing I did not have network, I did not have any specific methods people, for example financial support from family. Whatever, so, I did not have anything of this. So, I started scratching the ground on my own. I did not know anybody from the UN. It was like absolutely zero point. So, one phrase I wrote in my cover letter, when I was applying for the international relations. I wrote the phrase that “I want to prove that everything is possible”. People were telling me that it is impossible, that is why, what I really advise is to believe that it is possible and it is never too late to follow your dreams.

This interview was conducted by Uğur Can Özkan & Esma Akçiçek