Job Hunt’s Wild Side in Russia

MOSCOW —  Yulia wanted work as an accountant. So she pulled on a tight green miniskirt, squeezed into saucy high heels and pranced onto the stage of a hotel ballroom one recent night, batting her lashes and swinging her hips as she tried to win a job balancing books.

Nearby danced Valeria, hopeful of landing a managerial post. Also Irina, in body-hugging white, her law school courses all but forgotten as she flirted behind a cat-eye mask and dreamed of finding secretarial work.

Music boomed. Champagne corks popped. From the audience, businessmen studied the stage, looking, they said, for the perfect typist or waitress or nurse or assistant. An employment agency had set up this “job fair”--with 150 young women strutting their stuff to reel in a paycheck.

To introduce themselves, the women answered questions such as: “Describe your ideal boss.” At the emcee’s command, each dragged a man from the audience and shimmied with him on stage.

In her turn at the microphone, Valeria Yelatushkin was asked to explain how she might turn away a pesky visitor demanding to see her boss--her sole chance to display her professional skills.

Although a summary of her work experience was available backstage, for those who bothered to ask, she acknowledged that prospective employers might find it “hard to see my qualifications.”

Still, she thought that this show might help her snag a job.

“I still have hope,” she said.

And why not? The go-go atmosphere of this job fair might have been slightly unorthodox, but surely not much crazier than the average hunt for work in Moscow. With the economy crumbling and politicians fumbling, finding a job has become a wild free-for-all.

In the old days, when the Soviet system made unemployment a crime, the government funneled every able adult into a job. Bureaucrats sat in on oral exams at universities and technical schools, then assigned graduates for state enterprises. No one needed a resume. No one sent out a portfolio. That cushy system dissolved with the Soviet Union.

Now citizens are on their own. And they’re finding job hunting remarkably frustrating.

“They’re not used to it,” said Alexander Tkachenko, a demographer who heads the Labor Ministry’s population department. “Before, everything was well-defined: You got a job when you got out of school. That was our planned economy.”

The capitalist system, which requires a good deal of self-promotion, “is only now beginning to grow,” he added. “We understand we need to work on it.”

A few helpful hints have hit the market--the Russian version of Cosmopolitan magazine recently printed tips on writing resumes. But many students still graduate with no idea of how to write a cover letter.

Job fairs of the Western sort have popped up on a few big-city college campuses, including Moscow State University. But there, too, students are on their own, with no career counseling or placement service.

Sitting and Waiting for Offer

The old method of finding a job--sitting and waiting for an offer--still works for some graduates. Invitations from government ministries flow to young scientists and economists.

Ambitious students, however, tend to scorn such jobs.

“Maybe it’s interesting work, but they have no money and no good equipment,” said Volodya Kozlov, 24, an honors physics graduate who turned down several research posts to take up work as an accountant for a small American firm.

At least Kozlov had the luxury of rejecting offers: Many of his peers hold degrees in fields now dismissed as irrelevant, such as communal agriculture, textile manufacturing or food processing.

“Our system of preparing professionals has not adjusted,” Tkachenko said. “We put out people [ready to work] in fields that we need to get rid of.”

Thus, even though young adults are stereotyped as ideal hires--supposedly more energetic and more flexible than their parents--people younger than 30 account for 36% of Russia’s unemployed.

Only one group has it easy: well-educated Russians who speak fluent English.

The English-language Moscow Times runs pages of advertisements from Western firms offering good salaries for accountants, translators, computer specialists and sales representatives. Secretaries and drivers are in high demand too.

But tough luck dogs those who do not speak English.

Of course, there is that cafe around the corner from the Moscow Circus. They’re looking for janitors. And a few blocks away, there’s a grungy alley bakery that needs a cashier.

The only way to learn about those vacancies, however, is to walk by and read the hand-lettered signs taped to the business’ doors--not the most efficient method.

A few openings are easier to spot. In nearly every Moscow subway car, a poster woos potential train drivers with promises of fat pensions and free uniforms. Yet only men ages 18 to 40 may apply--and only if they have served in the army and completed middle school.

Too young or too old? A woman? A draft dodger? Don’t despair. There are always the want ads. Just be prepared to waste an awful lot of time.

Russia’s help-wanted sections tend to be maddeningly vague. In some newspapers, three-quarters of the ads say simply “Work,” then list a phone number. That’s it. No description of the job, no hint of a location, no clue about the salary.

Other ads are only slightly more explicit: “Work for young people.” “Interesting work.” Or, “We are looking for colleagues.”

Often, the mysterious work turns out to involve telephone solicitation or door-to-door sales. Veteran job hunters angrily dismiss such offers as a lot of hard work for very little pay.

Many, for example, seem to have heard about jobless Russians who tried to earn a living selling Herbal Life vitamin products. They found the experience so frustrating that many “job wanted” ads explicitly say, “Don’t offer me Herbal Life.”

A new publication lists thousands of vacancies in Moscow each week--and for once, it gives details about the work and pay.

‘Jobs Needed’ Ads

But with the Russian unemployment rate nudging past 8%--compared to 5.4% in the United States--”job needed” ads far outnumber “help wanted” ads. Moscow’s all-classifieds newspaper recently boasted 40 columns of ads from people seeking work--compared to just 10 columns listing vacancies.

Tkachenko predicted that the crunch will worsen several years from now. Russia still needs to go through a convulsion of bankruptcies and layoffs to make industries more efficient, he said.

By levying a 2% payroll tax, the government has scraped together money to help the growing number of jobless. Russia’s unemployment bureau offers free job training and steers clients toward potential work.

But financial assistance is skimpy: Unemployment benefits are set at the minimum wage, a barely livable sum of about $15 a month. Such aid does little to keep Russians from a desperate impoverishment or to ease the instability and deep unhappiness here.

In the new Russia, as in the old, those hoping to rise above such paltry paychecks must network to the hilt. Russians need to know someone--or at least know someone who knows someone--to have a shot at any good-paying vacancy.

“Connections are the only way to succeed,” said Natasha Yaikimova, 20, an aspiring model.

“Finding work if you don’t have friends [in high places] is impossible,” Alla Chernyenok, 22, agreed. “If you come into a business off the street, they don’t even want to talk with you.”

Trained as a fashion designer, Chernyenok has given up hope of working in the clothing industry now that many Russian factories are going bankrupt and imports are all the rage. Instead, she hopes to tag onto an emerging aerobics craze and teach exercise classes.

Chernyenok has a definite advantage as she hunts for work: She’s pretty.

She does not like the notion of applicants being judged by looks. But she knows it happens often.

“I don’t know why, but your appearance is very important,” she said in frustration. “You apply to be a secretary and they say you have to be a certain height.”

Indeed, one Moscow restaurant recently put out a call for “girls” to work as waitresses. Minimum height: 5 feet 11 inches. Well aware of the emphasis on image, some women have taken to describing their figures in job-wanted ads.

One would-be advertising manager listed her height, weight and age before getting around to her computer skills and professional experience. Then, to be sure she would pull in work, not dates, she tacked on a warning: “No sex.”

Even classified ads that do not mention height or weight still target a narrow pool of applicants. A firm looking for a secretary demanded a woman with “an honest face.” A sales company appealed for women younger than 30. Only men older than 40 could vie for a job driving trucks. And a company seeking a financial executive spelled out unusual criteria: applicants did not need an economics degree or computer training, but the job did require “an intelligent appearance” and a birth date no later than 1950.

In the United States, Justice Department lawyers would pounce on such ads as violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Employers cannot discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, disability or national origin.

In theory, Russia has a similar law. But only in theory.

“Discrimination is prohibited,” Tkachenko said. “But unfortunately, we don’t have the kind of law that would allow us to take [violators] to court.”

So employers continue to brashly appeal for applicants by gender and age.

When they are evaluating secretaries, saleswomen or personal aides, they freely admit that looks count too.

“I want to hire someone who’s pretty inside--honest, organized and hard-working--but of course, her external appearance is also important,” businessman Shamir Petrosyan said with a smile.

Petrosyan had plenty of time to study appearances at the glitzy, concert-style job fair organized by the Proserpina employment agency. But like most of the men in the audience, he did more gawking than hiring. Only seven of the 150 women found jobs.

Those left on the dole have plenty of company: Women account for almost two-thirds of Russia’s 6 million unemployed.

Women blame the disparity on sexism. At the Labor Ministry, Tkachenko acknowledges that some firms refuse to hire women.

“If a young woman with children calls about a job vacancy, [the employer] will say the spot has been filled,” he said. “If she has kids, you know they’ll get sick, and she’ll have to stay home from work too much.”

Strange New World

To combat that kind of discrimination, Marina Guseva founded the Proserpina agency last summer. She vowed to guide women through the strange new world of job hunting.

Almost 1,000 women have signed up, paying the equivalent of $11. Other firms charge as little as $2 for help in drafting a resume and finding jobs.

So far, Guseva has hit the same roadblocks as her clients, placing only 27 in full-time work.

The champagne-splashed job fair she organized at the Rossiya Hotel seemed to play into the very stereotypes she has railed against.

But she defended her approach. She had to do something, she said, to draw employers to young women. She had to try her hand at cracking this crazy job market.

Looking back, she’s glad she took the risk.

“It was better,” she said, “than sitting around waiting for someone to pay attention to us.”