Virtual FBI day

8.2.2021

PI's Annual recruiting and career event FBI-day was for the 22nd time - this time online, due to the pandemic

Forest Based Industries day was opened by the Futurist Elina Hiltunen. She discussed about megatrends and what kind of effects will climate change, digitalization and population growth have on the work in the future.

The strength of forest industry is the know-how of how fossil-based raw materials can be replaced by renewable ones. This theme was discussed in many of the day’s presentations. In the spirit of a recruiting and networking day, the speakers also shared their career stories and introduced their companies.

Speakers of the day included Investment Manager Katariina Kemppainen from Metsä Spring, Process Technology Manager Satu Karjalainen from Sappi, CIO Head of IT & Digitalisation Teemu Salmi from Stora Enso, Managing director Antti Lindqvist from PI-Forest Product Engineers and Johan Ehrnrooth, Head of Competence Line Pulp & Paper form AFRY Finland.

Thoughts from an organiser

Ida Savinainen studies process technology at Åbo Akademi. She was attending the FBI day for the first time.

– I went to the deep end straight away. Besides just participating I was also organizing this event with ÅA’s Kemistklubben and PI. I am the chair of PI’s Youth forum this year and one of the task is organizing this event.

– FBI day has been organized for over 20 years with more or less same practical matter, so organizing it as a virtual event for the first time felt quite stressful at first. However, I thought this will be a really good learning experience, that I will be able to benefit also in my future career. PI offered a strong support and they had already experience working with Propectum with the technical execution so my team did not need to worry about that.

­Henrik Lindberg, studying biomass refining at Aalto University, describes the event quite successful.

– Of course, this event was quite different from the previous ones. The webinar part was surprisingly well although as always in webinars the interaction between the speaker and audience is not the same as if physical events.

Lindberg missed the unofficial socializing and networking part of the event that he thinks typically makes the event so special.

– Also, in order to get to know the companies, it is important that students have possibility to unofficially spend time with each other and with the company representatives.

” Different but successful event”

UPM’s HR expert Heli Lahtinen has participated many FBI days.

– Naturally this was different, but I feel that it is good that this event was organized also this year to give the students a message that regardless of the pandemic, there are career opportunities in the forest industry.  

Process Technology Manager Satu Karjalainen working at the Sappi Kirkniemi mill was one of the speakers of the event.

–During the years I have participated FBI day as a student, as a company representative and now as a speaker. In my current team we have a person that was recruited us based on the discussions at FBI day last year. This event has a great tradition, I am glad to see it continued also this year.

 

See the traineeship positions at PI's office and other FBI day participating companies: