UPM Graduates are ready to take full action
Joyful conversations, laughter, noises that moving chairs are making... These are all voices that I hear when I first walk into the Biofore House. Today is the first time that the UPM Graduates of 2019 are going to meet each other. Let’s get to know trainees little better and have a chat about their feelings.
Sophie Schnepf and Julia Popova were working on a team task and discussed occupational health and safety. Graduates were asked if they ever walk on a red light. Do you?
Julia Popova is a trainee in UPM Raflatac, based in Tampere. Julia was determined that one of her rotation targets would be Raflatac factory in Poland. “I think that at the beginning time flies when you get to know people and the assignments, but soon it turns into serious work” Julia says. She dreams about possibility to get to travel also to China’s Raflatac factory.
Sanna Siipilehto has started her graduateship already in June, and she comments Julia by saying “Especially that latter part about the project speeding up sounds very realistic!” She laughs.
Sanna Siipilehto had some tough questions for UPMers, as she has worked in the company already since June.
Sanna started earlier, as the project she is in UPM Finance, was already running intensively on summer. “It’s a huge IT-project, where we renew the whole system. Project has been running already a few years. I thought the same as Julia, that we would have time to get into things a little bit deeper first, but very fast we started to actually work”, Sanna describes.
Next we meet Sameer Sawaqed and Josef Doll. They are both working in UPM Communication Papers’ Sales and Sales development. Sameer is from Naperville, USA, and Josef is from Augsburg, Germany. Sameer has worked previously in a USA based, Fortune 500 listed company, and on the meantime, he was actively involved in basketball team operations.
Two international salesmen, Sameer and Josef.
”I’m really looking forward to learn about developing sales, cold calling, administration and business in general. In UPM I’m fascinated about wide networking to different people and cultures. This is possible in a global company”, Sameer describes.
”I want to have a good overview about forward looking global business. I was also interested of UPM because of the global aspect”, Josef summarises.
Mandy, who’s originally from Hong Kong and her born name is Kai Yi Tong, started working in Hamburg in month before. Mandy has studied business and marketing. “My field of working revolves around the operative side of sales, plywood specifications, marketing and sales’ information management. I’m working in two market research projects and later on, when I will go to Lahti, I get to work with customer information management. Customer relations and engaging the customer interest me especially, and I look forward to learning more about UPM Plywood customer experience,” Mandy describes.
Mandy has been impressed especially by UPM’s input and efforts to develop sustainable business.
“Sustainability of the operations at UPM is thought from long-term perspective in such a way that I find it almost hard to believe. It is great to be working here,” she says.
Mandy is happy with the UPM work environment, team spirit and commitment to sustainable operations.
Intense day at the Biofore House continues while the journalist sneaks carefully out of the door. As the year starts, smart and hard-working group of graduates will bring a massive number of ideas and excitement to the company once again. Welcome!
The UPM Graduate Programme 2020 is now open for applications.
Read more and send your application by end of February.
Text: Saara Töyssy