INK-Capital General Director Ms. Sedykh met participants of “A Different Story” project

Over several months, young people have collected scores in VKontakte app to exchange them for a meeting with the top management and an internship in INK. Denis Startsev from Moscow and Valeria Aristova from Irkutsk have collected enough scores to have a meeting with Ms. Sedykh. The leader of “A Different Story” Kirill Khvil also attended.

Denis selected the meeting with INK-Capital General Director among other bonuses offered by “A Different Story” to present the result of his own research — a system for remote monitoring of emission sources. Valeria Aristova is a master student in programming. She has exchanged the scores collected in “A Different Story” for an internship in INK Communications and Branding department.

“I like trying new activities. In INK, I’m getting useful experience and knowledge observing how the company works with its HR-brand and addresses various target audiences. In the three weeks of internship, I have already forwarded a few ideas for promotion in social media and started to put them into life,” Valeria said, explaining her choice.

At the meeting, Ms. Sedykh talked to the guests about the history and development of Irkutsk Oil Company, her own experience as a manager, and advised to keep in mind that a successful career should be in balance with happiness. The participants also discussed and agreed in that nowadays’ young people have an immense choice of opportunities, one just has to be able to see and make good use of them.

“In our company, we have the “INK-Idea” app using which every employee can submit their improvement suggestions. Projects like “A Different Story” help us engage not only employees, but also gifted young people “from outside” in the improvement of the company’s activities. That is why we are very pleased to see such interest in Irkutsk Oil Company and welcome your initiative. If you need some mentorship — do not hesitate to ask. We have a wealth of experience, and there are no courses like “How to become a CEO” on offer,” said the General Director.

The main tools of “A Different Story” is Vkontakte mini-app of the same name, where users get tasks to complete and collect scores that can be exchanged for bonuses. For example, one can visit INK’s corporate museum and get 1,310 scores for it. And to have an internship in the company, 20,475 scores have to be collected. “A Different Story” is a part of the federal program “Russia — a Country of Opportunities” and aims to show that citizen engagement, self-improvement, and volunteering are ways to gain a diverse and exciting experience.

A cooperation agreement between the parties was signed on the Youth Day of the VI International Baikal Risk Forum (BRIF) in August 2022. The Irkutsk Region now counts over 30 thousand participants of the project.

“As Irkutsk is quite far away [from the federal center], we considered it as an experiment. And the experiment proved that the approaches, mechanisms and social engineering that we use do work and help to engage young people in the topical agenda, including ESG,” said Kirill Khvil.