For many students, a summer job at Koskisen is an important part of their learning path. They get to try out in practice things they’ve learned in theory and expand and deepen their understanding. And being able to hone their social skills as team members is a bonus.
This summer, we had 78 summer employees in various clerical employee and worker positions. We also find it especially important to offer summer jobs to local young people under 18 – this summer we had 33 younger employees, who worked as fire guards during the maintenance shutdown.
In the photo above are three of our Sawn Timber Industry summer employees – Laura Ketola, Pinja Hermunen and Sofia Oijala, forest sciences students at the University of Helsinki – with Jesse Kuusisto, our sales manager. For the summer, Laura worked as a sales assistant and Pinja’s and Sofia’s duties were in the further processing of sawn timber.
Jesse provided orientation to the students in the order-to-delivery process: “I find it important that summer employees get to see various stages of the sawn timber process and to broaden their understanding of the process overall. In the office, they had the opportunity to gain experience about the order process, which transforms orders to actual deliveries. In the office, there’s something different going on every day, and one cannot learn the ropes of office work from textbooks alone. I hope that everyone found the office period rewarding”, Jesse says.
We asked Laura, Pinja and Sofia to tell us about their experiences as summer employees:
Laura’s workdays as a sales assistant mainly included the invoicing of sawn timber products and further processed planed timber for domestic deliveries and export and preparing the required documents. She is excited to have had diverse opportunities to collaborate with different stakeholders, both internal and external. “I’ve enjoyed versatility and flexibility of my job. The absolutely best part of this job has been the Koskisen’s working community: I felt right at home here from day one. Each day has also been different, and I have learned something new every day.” As the autumn approaches, Laura will start her fourth year studying forest economics, her major, although wood technology is also part of her studies.
Pinja majors in forest sciences, more specifically forest ecology and use, and she will start her third year at the University of Helsinki. In the summer, she worked as a sorter at the planing mill, where her tasks included the quality control of planed timber and the packaging of products. “It was interesting to be able to put theory into practice in my summer job. I found the sorting of sawn timber particularly interesting on the wood products industry course I took last autumn, and during the summer I got to apply it in practice with further processed sawn timber. Every now and then, we also toured the mill and the painting line. It was great to get to see the production line almost from start to finish and to gain a better overall understanding of the mill’s operations. From the perspective of learning new things, my summer job experience was extremely rewarding. And a special mention goes to the magnificent co-workers – thanks to them, coming to work was always nice!”
Sofia will start her third year of studying forest sciences at the University of Helsinki, majoring in forest economics and marketing. After graduation, she would like to work in sales, marketing or communication in the forest industry. “At the planing mill, my task was to tally packages of sawn timber and planed timber and check their information, cover the packages for shipment and mark the package information on the packages. Towards the end of the summer, I also got to familiarise myself with sales manager tasks at the Koskisen office for a few weeks. The best thing about the summer was the great co-workers – they made me feel truly welcome. It was also interesting to learn about the sawmill industry in practice.”