Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest Group is radically changing its strategy for training and attracting personnel against the backdrop of a persistent labor shortage in the metallurgical industry. This was stated by the company's Director of Sustainable Development and Employee Relations, Tetyana Petruk, at the youth forum “Generation of Renewal: The Return of Ukrainian Youth and the Development of Human Capital for Ukraine's Future,” held in Kyiv. According to her, the company has effectively built an “end-to-end pathway” for a future employee — from vocational or higher education to the first job, onboarding, and further career trajectory. “This is not just a matter of cooperation with vocational schools or universities. It is an end-to-end system that we are building within our company,” Petruk emphasized.
An end-to-end system: from vocational school to career
One of the key directions of Metinvest's HR policy remains its partnership with vocational and technical education institutions. The company cooperates with more than 40 vocational schools in its regions of operation, where students complete industrial internships even while still studying. According to Petruk, in 2025 Metinvest employed nearly 500 graduates of vocational schools — about 13% of all new employees of the Group for the year. A separate talent reserve is the company's own university — Metinvest Polytechnic, where more than 1,400 students are currently enrolled. The university has already graduated over 100 bachelors and more than 300 masters, and about 30% of graduates stay to work at the company after completing their studies. Educational programs are designed with future production needs in mind: business representatives are involved in the scientific councils to help determine which specialists the enterprises will need in three to five years.
Steel Force: attracting youth from abroad
In parallel, the company is actively working to bring back Ukrainian youth who are studying abroad. The Steel Force program is in place for this purpose. In 2025, 28 students in the United Kingdom and Poland took part in it, and in 2026 the program's geography was expanded to Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria. Out of approximately 300 applications submitted, 53 participants were selected. After the young specialists join the Metinvest enterprises, the company applies onboarding, mentoring, and financial support programs during the first year of work.
Retraining in 3–5 months instead of a year
The labor shortage has forced Metinvest to significantly accelerate professional retraining. If preparing a worker for a new profession previously took 9–12 months, this period has now been shortened to 3–5 months. “Previously, there were queues of candidates at Metinvest's enterprises. Today we take everyone who wants to and train them right on-site,” Petruk said. According to her, the shortage of people is already directly affecting production planning: enterprises are forced to take into account not only the availability of raw materials and equipment, but also the actual number of workers capable of ensuring the production process. The company emphasizes that overcoming the labor shortage requires simultaneous work with vocational education, youth, Ukrainians abroad, and people ready to master new specialties directly on the production floor.
Veterans and engineers: the talent reserve of the future
It should be added that Metinvest has repeatedly been named the best employer for veterans and engineering students: the company currently accounts for nearly a third of veterans who have returned to work at large-business enterprises. The Metinvest Polytechnic university offers veterans preferential admission to promising engineering specialties — they are accepted without exams, based solely on interview results. Thus, the Group's HR strategy covers several dimensions at once: vocational education, higher education, international attraction of youth, accelerated on-site retraining, and the integration of veterans into the engineering workforce.
