Summer jobs promote young people's careers
Summer jobs provide youngsters with an important view on working life. The opportunity to explore various workplaces and jobs clarifies their ideas about the kind of work they would like to do, the skills needed in various tasks and working life in general, and what kind of work would help them achieve their career goals. At best, summer jobs are a mutual teaching and learning experience. Talented young people worked for Kiilto in a number of positions last summer. In this article we introduce three of them.
Jonna Hakala, Export (Lempäälä, Finland)
I am studying the Russian language and culture at Tampere University. It was my language skills that got me this year's summer job with Kiilto's Export team. In previous summers, I have worked in Kiilto's packaging section, where I also worked during my gap year before starting university.
When discussing summer jobs, you often run into the idea that summer employees are only given jobs that no one else will do, and which are of little benefit. At Kiilto, I have always got to do the same tasks as everyone else.
For me, the most rewarding aspect has clearly been the ongoing opportunity to learn about aspects of the language and culture which I would never have run into at school or anywhere else! I learned a huge number of new words in particular. I'm motivated by the wonderful working atmosphere: everyone has been really friendly and helpful. I've also learned how to put together Finnish orders; on the busiest days, I've helped out in the order centre in addition to my other duties. For me, it's important to face new challenges at work, and I've had just the right number of those at Kiilto.
I truly believe that the experiences I've gained from my summer job will be useful to me in the future. Exports to Russia are important to Finland, and even scratching the surface of the process will be useful to me going forward. In addition, every job teaches new aspects of work in its own way.
Kasper Arvad, Marketing (Assens, Denmark)
During last summer I assisted the marketing department at Kiilto in Assens, Denmark. I shot a lot of video material and edited short films. Before this summer I finished my bachelor’s degree in Media Science with a minor in screenplay development. It was a relatively theoretical education and when I graduated I felt that I lacked the practical dimension of the movie production. All that was resolved when I started shooting videos for Kiilto.
This last summer was a really important stepping stone for me to pursue something more practical and creative. Now I am enrolled at a film school in Denmark, where it’s all practical. So the many hours of shooting and editing video are already coming in handy at my new education. On the more specific side in regards to the videos I produced I learned what works and what doesn’t work in corporate videos. I learned some new camera skills and also got more experienced in editing. I’m most likely going to use the things I learned for the rest of my working life.
I get motivated by something that I find fascinating – for me it’s movies and videos. More specifically I get motivated when I am allowed to enter a creative state of mind and just explore whatever I might come up with. So the entire production of the video is something that just motivates me in itself – call that a sort of internal motivation. I also get motivated a lot by people’s reaction to my work – call that an external motivation.
I find Kiilto in Assens passionate, friendly and overall amazing. It’s a great workplace and the people there are extremely nice. I learned a lot about work practices and teamwork. It’s often thought that more experienced employees are not open to new ideas and approaches of younger colleagues. The myth that older employees want to do things like they’ve always been done is definitely not true – especially not at Kiilto in Assens.
Here’s a look at one of Kasper’s productions
Valtteri Stenroos, Quality Control (Turku, Finland)
I graduated with a Masters degree from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Turku, and this was my second summer working in quality control at Kiilto. Kiilto was already familiar as a workplace: I had spent two previous summers preparing mixtures in the solvent plant and wrote my university of applied sciences thesis for Kiilto in summer 2017 on streamlining the preparation process for liquid detergent. Last summer, I finished my pro gradu thesis on the development of a quantitative analysis method for a disinfection product.
In quality control, my duties included the analysis and inspection of semi-processed and raw material samples. I also participated in various projects and handled claims.
For me, learning something new every day is the strongest form of motivation. It has been instructive to see various aspects of manufacturing processes in the mixture preparation facility and quality control. I believe that I will benefit from the knowledge I have gained in both tasks.
The best aspects of my work have been my varied tasks and pleasant working environment. In my experience, Kiilto is a diverse and motivational workplace which develops its staff. My time at Kiilto strengthens my belief that I can play a strong role in shaping my own career through hard work, initiative and diligence.
Kiilto participated in this year's Responsible Summer Job campaign. Summer employees worked at Kiilto in a variety of areas such as product development, quality control, purchasing, production, customer service, exporting, marketing, maintenance and storage. Our warm thanks to all our summer employees, who enlivened Kiilto with their ideas and attitudes, and impressed us with their skills!
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