Kanat MUSAKHANOV: I am proud of my students

In just seven years, Kanat Musakhanov rose from third-class electric welder to lead welding engineer at AlES JSC. And since then – for 10 years now – Kanat Amangazinovich, lead engineer of the Metals and Welding Service (MWS), has been a mentor to his young colleagues. Combining his main job with teaching and mentoring, passing on his knowledge to young people, he sees this not only as a professional duty or obligation, but also as an expression of gratitude to those who taught him the practical basics of the profession in his time.

The company has a long tradition of mentoring. Therefore, no matter how inexperienced or confused newcomers may be, if they are willing to learn the profession and have the support of experienced mentors, they quickly become masters of their craft.

“My first mentors in the profession were Kusain Tuyakovich Nauruzov and Tatyana Konstantinovna Mikhno”, says Kanat Musakhanov gratefully about his teachers in the profession. First, as a welder, I trained as a certified electric welder, but I didn’t stop there. A year later, my mentors helped me to master a related specialty – manual oxygen cutting. And once I had gained experience and moved to SMiS, Kusain Tuyakovich and Tatyana Konstantinovna taught me welding, teaching, metalworking technologies and much more. In fact, they generously shared their experience and professional secrets with me. For which I am very grateful to them.

Kanat Musakhanov emphasises that they not only taught him the profession, but also showed him by their example what it means to be a mentor. They showed him how to treat inexperienced employees, how to support them, and thus how to strengthen the general spirit of goodwill, responsibility and mutual assistance within the team.

“I think it is very important to pass on your experience to others and to train young people in good time so that we do not lose good specialists. Especially nowadays, when it is very difficult to find competent employees. It is no secret that young people today want to sit in an armchair or do easier work right away. Few want to climb the career ladder. To be honest, at first I never thought that I would ever become a teacher or mentor,” admits Kanat Musakhanov. “But now, for me, mentoring means passing on my skills and knowledge to young people, teaching them the basics of the profession in practice. In this way, theory and practice go hand in hand. This is important for a better understanding of the subject by the students. After all, we work with them, and it is very important that we can rely on them completely in any situation. And so that later, when I retire, I can hand over the business to professionals without any worries.

Kanat Amangazinovich does not hide the fact that it was not easy to master the role of a teacher. It was not easy to convey to beginners in words what you can do with your hands and what has become automatic in practice. But that is not the most difficult part of being a mentor.

“The most difficult thing is when a person does not want to learn,” says the mentor, and after a moment’s thought, he adds, but you have to get them interested! It probably helped that I myself had trained and gained practical experience working as an electric welder. At first, it was difficult to teach theory. But then, when I tried to explain things to the students, I began to understand the meaning more deeply myself. And it was easier to explain in practice: I could take a student by the hand and guide them.

During his ten years as a mentor, Kanat Musakhanov has trained about 250-300 welders and gas cutters. These were people of different ages: from 18 year olds to those approaching retirement age. Therefore, the master mentor emphasizes, you need to be able to communicate with different people and find an individual approach to each student. And sometimes this was a radically non-trivial approach! He had many such cases.

“I don’t remember the person’s name, but the fact is that he couldn’t write in either Kazakh or Russian,” Kanat Amangazinovich recounts. “He had been taught to write in Arabic, so it was difficult for him to take notes. Nevertheless, we were able to complete what we had started. Another unusual case in my practice as a mentor was when I was sent a person to teach who had only three months left until retirement. But in most cases, the learning process went smoothly.

He is always happy about the achievements of his mentees. Especially when a student wins a competition and when he surpasses more experienced specialists.

“I am proud of them. After all, as a mentor, I am responsible for ensuring that my students gain as much knowledge as possible and become good and competent specialists,” concludes Kanat Musakhanov.