NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan’s Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve will begin receiving applications for its second cohort from Sept. 1, announced Chair of the Kazakh Agency for Civil Service Anar Zhailganova at a press conference on Monday, Aug. 16.
Tokayev during his meeting with the first cohort. The idea to create the presidential youth personnel reserve was one of the key planks of Tokayev’s election platform.
The positive evaluation of the first pool of reservists was the reason to continue the project. The applications will remain open through Sept. 30.
Overall, 50 candidates will be selected. To be eligible to participate in the selection process, a person should be a citizen of Kazakhstan, be no older than 35 years old, and have at least five years of work experience.
Unlike previous selection processes, this time the candidate should prove their knowledge of the Kazakh language at least at the level of B1.
The candidates will be tested for their ability to work with complex verbal, numerical information, solve real cases in the form of situational tasks, and show their skills in strategic thinking, proactivity, activity management, team leadership.
“The recruiting process will now be aimed not only at identifying the required knowledge, skills, and abilities, but also at evaluating the candidates’ true motives and values. We are shifting the focus to identifying young talents guided primarily by the public interest. To this end, new assessment tools, such as case studies and structured behavioral interviews, are being introduced into the selection process,” said Zhailganova.
The final decision to be made by the national commission will be announced in December. The selected candidates will stay in the reserve for only three years.
The reserve was originally proposed by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as a mechanism for creating a transparent and effective social elevator for talented youth. Its goal is to open up unique opportunities for the most prepared and experienced young people of the country to take leadership positions in the public administration system and the quasi-public sector.
The first pool of reservists included 300 specialists who were selected after a merit-based competition back in 2019 out of nearly 13,000 candidates.
At least 184 reservists were then employed in various state bodies. Among the latest appointments were Timur Mendebayev, who became Director of the Strategic Planning and Market Analysis Department at Samruk Kazyna National Wealth Fund, and Bakhtiyar Mukhametkaliev, who became Managing Director for Services at the Governments for Citizens corporation.
Employment, however, is not the end goal of the program. Its main goal is to give young professionals an opportunity to realize their potential and achieve self-fulfillment.
