Opening doors to working life through P2P

News 6.11.2018

One of the projects was improving the regional recognition of the Kotijoukkue real estate company by means of events. The other project I started has, a bit surprisingly, carried me all the way to writing my thesis and offered me a lot more than I could have imagined in January 2016. The assignment of our project was to prepare the social media strategy for the Finnish unit of the German Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy and to deploy it. The Finnish headquarters of Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy are located in Kerava, where the company’s operations began in 2004.

Our project team kept closely in touch with our client Eero Viskari during the project. At the completion of the project, we had set up social media channels for Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. In addition, we prepared a social media strategy for the company. It included an annual clock and a variety of potential marketing measures to improve the company’s visibility and recognition in the Finnish market. The project ended in May 2016 and I thought it also marked the end of our cooperation. However, I was also certain that a positive attitude and the results of our project would be useful with regard to the future. And this is exactly what happened, and for me, it came as a bit of a surprise.

In November 2016, I received a phone call. It was Eero Viskari, business manager at Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy. In November 2016, I was finalising two new projects and a bunch of other courses, and I was getting a bit concerned about my coming work placements. My alternatives were to recognise my first placement as prior learning, complete the first placement in the spring and the second one later. However, I needed to arrange the placement first and find a company where I could do my internship. As it turned out, I did not need to worry about it much, since Viskari called me to offer me a placement at Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy in the spring of 2017, or whenever I could start. This came a bit out of the blue, since I could not have imagined that someone would call me and offer me a placement like this.

I was offered an opportunity to complete both placement periods consecutively. The placement topics would be various development tasks in marketing and assistive tasks in sales. I discussed the offer with my instructor Tero Uusitalo, and we both agreed that I should take this opportunity since it would be good for my study path. The placement period started in March 2017. My approach to all assignments was to complete them with a professional, positive, proactive and flexible attitude, and it paid off. Towards the end of the placement, Mika Laatikainen, Managing Director of Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy asked me to see him and offered me a paid thesis position that would start in 2018. In other words, in practice I was offered a thesis topic and a job. I had not had time to even think about what the topic of my thesis would be, let alone that I could have a job at this stage of my studies, so I considered this offer to be a true ”jackpot”  for my studies.

Currently, in 2018, I still study on Laurea’s Hyvinkää campus, I am writing my thesis at Jungheinrich Lift Truck Oy and also receive monetary compensation from the company. It would be safe to say that my studies are going well. All this has been made possible by the project we started for Jungheinrich Lift Truck in January 2016.

At the end of the placement I asked Eero Viskari, just out of curiosity, what made him pick me to call, and he said he had been impressed by my positive attitude. That is why he decided to contact me and offer me the work placement in November 2016.

It remains to be seen what will happen after the thesis, but one thing is certain: good things start to happen when you have a positive attitude and are willing to take on new challenges. I am sure that by maintaining an upbeat attitude during the projects, everybody can impress the project partners and all parties that follow the project. Project work creates amazing opportunities to get one’s foot in the door and to expand one’s networks during the studies.

Petteri Leino, student