Students are our talents for the future and have become more important than ever for fast-growing top companies. However, Katrin Sulg, Content Manager for Ülemiste City Services, states that finding a suitable internship can still be a rather difficult and time-consuming journey for a student who lacks work experience and contacts.

In order to shorten the search journey and bring students together with the right companies, Ülemiste City organised the third Road Trip to Ülemiste City Hub, which took place for online for the first time this year. In addition, Ülemiste City took part for the first time with 15 other companies in the University of Tartu Career Festival “Straight to the Future”.

A total of almost 1,500 students from 13 higher education institutions from Estonia, Turkey, Belgium and Finland, among other countries, took part in the two events. At both events, students were introduced to more than one hundred vacant internships and Ülemiste City as their possible future work environment.

The world is open to talents

“Ülemiste City has been created as an environment where both talents and companies can develop. Our role is to support their development and to ensure the best of opportunities are provided,” said Katrin Sulg, Content Manager for Ülemiste City Services.

She pointed out that this was why Ülemiste City developed various talent services, such as internships and summer job placement, training credits, expert in higher education, Road Trip to Ülemiste City Hub, work shadow days and much more. In addition, new cooperation projects are being implemented with nearly 20 Estonian and international higher education institutions, where hundreds of thousands of students study.

The two events in February were attended by Ülemiste City companies Zone Media, Nordea, Rakett69 Science Studios, Hitachi Energy, Helmes, Parallels/Corel Estonia OÜ, Devtailor, Health Founders, Ericsson Estonia, Kühne+Nagel IT Service Centre, Cleveron, Estonian Association for Quality, Tallinn Airport, ABB and Tele2.

“Enterprises in this city have made clear their long-term corporate vision for the future and see the development of offspring as one of the important components,” said Sulg. She added that various companies have been interviewed, the need for additional people in the coming years has been identified, and it is known exactly how many interns are needed and with what profile.

Among Estonian higher education institutions, Ülemiste City has signed a memorandum of cooperation with TalTech, the University of Tartu, EAA and Mainor (Estonian Entrepreneurship University of Applied Sciences). In addition, cooperation is established with international higher education institutions, such as the University of Iceland, Jönköping University, Aalto University, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences and Vilnius College, among others.

International opportunities

Sulg noted that Ülemiste City’s wish was to offer help to the companies of the city in mediating international talents, as it was obvious that we did not have enough workforce in every field in Estonia. Therefore, it is important to look more broadly and try to find different ways to bring companies and students together to create new cooperation, whether in the form of internships, job vacancies, jobs or cooperation projects.

Companies thus receive a wider choice of potential interns and find new employees or forms of cooperation. Over the years, ABB, Kühne+Nagel IT Service Centre, Forus (former Securitas Estonia) and other companies have found interns in this way.

Internship is an opportunity for a student to gain real work experience in a top company

Marge Rehepapp, HR Manager at Ericsson Estonia, pointed out that Ericsson offers internships for 70 interns in 27 positions in eight departments.

“We offer real work, i.e., these are real-life jobs, not observers or beginners,” said Rehepapp, adding that the team members at Ericsson people are caring, professional and ready to support interns.

Ericsson has around 70 interns each year and our teams are extremely experienced in supporting new employees and interns. The internship is paid, and each intern has his or her own personal supervisor who supports, coaches and mentors him or her.

Rehepapp pointed out that the fields were different, but that Ericsson people and teams were characterised by multiculturalism. She noted that working in different languages added a nice spice to the internship and specified that Ericsson had three working languages – Estonian, English and Russian.

“Working in such a team is an exciting experience that we encourage students to try – it is not available in every company.”

Students’ value lies in passion and innovative ideas

According to Rehepapp, students, like new employees, bring a lot of new ideas to the company – they identify aspects for improvement and they have fresh theoretical knowledge that supports the creation of new things in practice and in the company’s laboratories.

“Interns allow our internship supervisors to develop into even better supervising coaches,” said Rehepapp. “For us, interns are talents whom we need as offspring and with whom cooperation is developing and enriching.”

Intern will receive an overview of the company, departments and processes, including the on-site steps taken to preserve and save the environment, as well as the global organisation. Much depends on the intern and his or her aspirations and skills – as like anywhere else, those who shine will be given greater challenges.

“Many of our previous interns have created solutions that have brought added value to the business. Almost half of last year’s good interns are now Ericsson employees.”

A young talent got permanent work and a dream job

The experience of Veronika Zamakhova, a young talent, proves that the Road Trip to Ülemiste City Hub really can find young active students. Veronika got an internship at Kühne+Nagel and later stayed to work there. She has now worked for the company for three years.