Great opportunity to crystallize my own career path and goals – Summer in Procurement

Working at Valmet, there wasn’t one similar day. It was awesome how I was able to apply my skills and develop them during the summer. I am sure that the new skills I developed can help me a lot later in both education and working life.

This trainee opportunity really gave me an insight to Valmet’s business. Without this position, I would have never gained knowledge on pulp and energy business or see how interesting this industry truly is. I have always liked Valmet’s working environment, as the office in Tampere is nice and modern. The co-workers are open-minded, and it's easy to ask for assistance from them.

The working experience has also made me more open-minded and helped me realize my career goals and what I want to gain from work. It has been fascinating to see different career paths in Valmet and a wide range of positions and tasks available. I was also able to gain more international experience, and I realized that I like to work in an international environment.

For me, it is difficult to say what has been the best part about summer work because the whole experience has given me so much. Perhaps I would say that flexibility has been the best thing! As a summer trainee, I have been able to widely organize my work, working schedule and the working station. For example, I am a morning person and most efficient before lunch, so the possibility to come to work already at 7.00 am is awesome.

The biggest insight into working life has been the responsibility and ability to affect my work. I have also learned how global companies work and working in international groups. This summer, I had the opportunity to try working from home. It was a nice chance to change places to work and it gave me more energy and motivation. With this possibility I realized that I liked to work more at the office but once a week working from home gave a new boost.

During this summer, I have developed new skills and achieved so much. For example, I upgraded my searching skills because it can be tricky to find information and sometimes you need to find the right person to seek the right information. I also noticed that I am more self-guided. Also, Valmet had some new softwares, which I managed to quickly adapt and later I helped my colleges to use them, too. Foremost, I have developed my IT-skills, for example, excel and ERP systems.

To all future summer trainees at Valmet, I encourage you to express your ideas, ask a lot of questions and at the same time research things as much as possible. I have noticed that it is much easier to ask someone for help rather than doing tons of research on your own because there is so much information behind every page or folder. Also, Valmet has a lot of good online courses available which I recommend doing.

With Kind Regards,
Sofia Niemi,
Summer Trainee, Procurement