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August 24, 2009
Young Talent Program at Alcoa SMZ
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On August 24, 2009, the first stage of a new Young Talents Program started at Alcoa SMZ.
The aim of the Program is to strengthen the line management level in production business units through attracting young specialists and graduates with technical knowledge and high professional potential.
After the training period, those trainees who successfully go through all its stages and demonstrate their professional potential will be offered positions of line managers at Alcoa SMZ. The first group will be trained for the Rolled Products Business Unit of the Samara plant.
The Program has been developed on the basis of the long apprenticeship experience of Samara metallurgical plant (now Alcoa SMZ) with use of the best modern techniques of human resource development and replication of Alcoa best practices in attracting and developing young talents. The Program is supported by the top management of Alcoa in Russia and on the corporate level.
Potential Program participants should have a technical university degree and a wish to work and build career in production. He/she should be a quick learner, a flexible and hard working person focused on achieving specified goals.
The first group of trainees includes 15 people: 6 graduates, 2 senior university student and 7 people with some work experience. All of them have graduated or are studying at the leading Russian regional universities: eight people from Samara state technical university, six from Samara state aerospace university and one person from Mordovia state university.
The apprenticeship process is based on the mentoring - a technique that had been actively used at the plant in the Soviet period. The majority of time within the training period the Program’s participants will spend at the workshop floor. Best BU specialists will act as the mentors. Trainees will also learn about Alcoa EHS standards and go through safety, leadership, HR management and quality control trainings, study ABS principles. Each trainee will be paid a stipend during the 4 months training period.
Sonja Narcisse, Group Vice President, Human Resources, Global Rolled Products, Alcoa Inc.:
The program we have launched in Samara stems from a best practice we’ve been successfully utilizing in Alcoa Group of Global Rolled Products, the Acquiring Talent Program.
The Acquiring Talent Program is designed to provide key developmental opportunities to high-potential leaders and bring new talent into the organization.
Svetlana Kersova, Manager of the Young Talents Program, Alcoa Russia:
We started to work on the program in May this year. It included the overall Program design, as well as the development of its key parts, such as: candidates’ selection and assessment process, trainees’ development program, etc. Simultaneously we started working with universities.
We’ve been selecting participants very carefully. We used different ways of search: browsed Internet, talked with university professors, took part in senior thesis presentations. Initial pool of candidates was around 170 people. After the first selection round via CVs, potential candidates went through testing and interviewing with the specialists from the Rolled Products BU and HR department. At the final selection stage the candidates took part in assessment-centers where their competencies needed for supervisory roles, as well as professional and leadership potential were assessed.
This is a pilot project in Alcoa Russia. If the first group is successful, we will expand the Program to the other BUs at Alcoa SMZ in the beginning of the next year. Then we would also like to launch it at our other location in Russia, Alcoa Metallurg Rus in Belaya Kalitva (Rostov region).
A very important and valuable thing for us is that Samara City Employment Center has become our key partner in this project. The Center also partly sponsors the trainees’ stipends during the training period.
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