YEREVAN, July 30, /ARKA/. For the fourth consecutive year HSBC Bank Armenia provided local and  international career development opportunities to Higher Education Institutions (HEI) students and young  talents by conducting summer internships and Management Trainee (MT)  programmes.

To date, 42 students and 9 graduates benefited from these  programmes, which enable gaining hands-on experience in core banking  business locally as well as internationally, make an early career   decision,  and earn the opportunity to secure a job when they graduate, the Bank said in a press release.

After  successful completion of the internship the bank has employed 15 of its  interns and trusted 9 managerial positions to management trainees who  completed MT programmes in HSBC Group member banks in bigger markets like  UK, China, UAE and other European countries.

Initiatives of the bank also encompass developing relationships with the  local universities. The Bank’s Human Resources Department is engaged in  regular consultations with HEI career centres which aim to foster talent  development and management for the local market. Recently the Head of HR Department represented HSBC insights on young workforce employability and  market development opportunities at the republican seminar held at Yerevan  State University with the participation of many HEI career centre  representatives, education, government and industry experts.

“Our people are fundamental to our business success; we continually invest  in them providing professional development solutions locally and  internationally. Since 2009 we spent AMD 50 mln on training and   development  projects engaging 80% of employees, besides six of my colleagues currently  work in leading positions at HSBC Group member banks abroad who will come  back and bring the internationally gained experience to Armenia. At HSBC   we  are not supporters of only experience diversification but also of human  resources: currently we have employees from around 8 different regions of  RA and 3 other countries”, said Head of Human Resources, Elvina   Aghajanyan.

HSBC Group has a diverse workforce of over 335,000 people in 8,000 offices  in 88 countries and territories worldwide. In Armenia HSBC employs 360  specialists coming from various backgrounds, with or without previous work  experience. The average age of the bank employees is 30, male to female  ratio being 40 per cent and 60 per cent respectively, absolute majority is  trilingual, with 8 other languages in line.  -0-