How does a company evolve into such a success?

….I wish I had the formula:)…. But obviously, there are some external influences - the economic growth in Ukraine has contributed to a fast growing business. And surely, choices of Kyivstar concerning brand positioning, its operational knowledge and business efficiency have contributed turning Kyivstar into having a distinctive comparative advantage in the market: services with the best quality. In addition Kyivstar has been the market leader -driving the Ukrainian Telco market forward. 

The Kyivstar employees

First and foremost I believe it is the people, the Kyivstar employees, who have created and driven this success story. The employees are proud of working in Kyivstar. Also, it is the people I first and foremost will remember from my stay; welcoming, knowledgeable, and inspiring. 

The international experience

As trainees we are supposed to get a broad platform of experience throughout the period.  During the months in Kiev I have worked in two different departments which have given me the opportunity to get a deeper dive into different segments in addition to working with corporate strategy. The trainee programme gives you a unique opportunity to test your own competencies, to find what motivates you and what interest you the most. And for sure my stay in Kyivstar has given me a good the taste of working abroad!

It has been finalized, I will stay in Hungary and Pannon for the next 5 months as well! :)  Feels awe-some for me as my girlfriend is living here nowdays but also because it’ll give me the chance to stay on and be able to follow through on a lot my work here.  

So of course this happy turn of events required some celebrating.  Friday was spent in a house party, 20 people and 12 nationalities. Mexican burritos, hungarian snacks and italians wines. Most importantly however, I finally found some guys who are as soccer interested as I am, a big corner stone for the quality of my life… Probably for my girlfriend as well as she will now not be forced to watch champions league every second tuesday and wednesday…

Saturday was dinner at my bosses place with a bunch of couples, again a whole range of nationalities. Spent a long time discussing what it is like having a relationship with someone from a different culture, a topic that lies close to me as my girlfriend is Mexican. We got input from a Norweigan couple, a Slovenian couple, an Hungarian, Perubian and a Dutch and a Romanian one… a very interesting perspective to use for exploration of different cultures!

Machine-to-machine takes me travelling

On top of staying and working for Pannon i will also work 50% for Telenor Connexion, the newly started M2M company within the Telenor family. As M2M is one of the areas I find most interesting within Telenor, I am really excited about it. Being a part of setting up this totally new company is going to be a lot of fun! First job was to go to Denmark and attend a 2-day workshop trying to map out the demands this company will be facing from various stakeholders. A really nice workshop and fun being back in Demark again, been a while since I was there.

In addition to that my job within M2M has also taken me to Rome and Amsterdam the last couple of weeks. Rome was really interesting, a conference on how to use mobile communications to improve health care quality. As it happens, Pannon is pretty far within this area already having launched a mobile EKG which was met with a lot of enthusiasm.

Well, that was all for now… You’ll be hearing from we soon again I suppose as my Hungarian adventure continues.

/Niklas

Recap on Budapest
So this post is somewhat back-dated but I think Budapest still deserves a mention. It has been a week of reflections and learnings in Budapest, like all other trainee gatherings have been so far. The best part about these gatherings is always about being able to meet all the trainees again at one place, especially since we have been away in different countries and companies during our 2nd module. During our seminar this time in Budapest, we learned about communication and coaching. On one of the days we visited Pannon, and were updated about 3G, content providers and Mobile Broadband in Hungary. I definately agree that Marius and Niklas did a great job with inviting the speakers and organising the practicalities for us. Thanks guys!

Work aside, the city Budapest is absolutely beautiful! I love the art culture in the people and the buildings in Budapest. If you plan to visit Budapest, you must not miss visiting the Parliament I also managed to squeeze in some time to do some sight-seeing and to try out typical Hungarian meals (they’re very good!).

We also had the oppurtunity to meet up with the Hungarian trainees from Pannon. They were great fun and we shared experiences from our work, career plans after our trainee program and cultural backgrounds. Hungarians are always so cool people!

Telenor R&I
As much as I enjoyed my traineeship in Stockholm and Karlskrona, it was time for me to ‘check-out’ from Telenor Sweden and ‘check-in’ at Telenor R&I.

Telenor Research and Innovation (R&I) is an innovation hub for Telenor with particular focus on strategically driven innovations with a long-term perspective. We have offices in Fornebu, Trondheim, Tromsø in Norway and also a newly established hub in Malaysia known as TRICAP. I am now working in the unit Business Models in R&I, and thanks to the great liberty of my boss I was allowed to also work on a project in New Business. It has been full speed from day 1! Extreme learning curves, diving into projects and plenty of brain-storming.

Aside from learning about work itself, it is also a lot about managing priorities, deliverables and balancing time. My colleagues at R&I are fun and outgoing and I am grateful to them for the warm welcome here which instantly made me feel at home. It is also always interesting to meet new people here everyday and listen to the kinds of projects they are working with - ideas that we once thought were only possible in fiction films or books.

And now…back to work! I’ll write more next time about what I’m working with

Postcard from Budapest
Top left: Mariann and I at Pannon
Top right: István, Mariann, OJ and myself enjoying the local Hungarian dish for dinner
Middle left: At the Parliament
Middle right: Heroes’ Square
Bottom left: The Parliament (left) and the Buda Castle Hill (right) on the banks of The Danube River
Bottom right: Szent István Bazilika

The Trainee Programmes
A number of traineeships of different scope are available in Norway and internationally. A quick search on the word “trainee” will give you more than 20 million hits. You can choose between multitudes of both national and international programmes in any number of industries. Career pages promise intensive on-the-job training schemes, exciting opportunities with competitive benefits.

Take some time to browse through companies’ websites and consider how each programme matches your expectations and goals. The large companies tend to offer similar package deals; hands-on-experience from different work areas, international placements, seminars on soft and hard skills and continuous support. The main differentiator is whether you apply for a specific trainee position (e.g. a technical or communication position) or if you can shape the programme according to your preferences.

This also holds true for Telenor. During the programme you will have three work rotations lasting six months each; one placement abroad and seminars with the other trainees. According to the career pages your future will look pretty bright. In short, the same story as for other programmes. However, the key is the flexibility in choosing your work placements. In my opinion, a trainee programme should encourage you to push your limits in allowing you to try something new.

Opportunities
Even if you read the career pages and the different trainee blogs it still might be hard to grasp exactly what you would do if you were selected. Telenor is comprised of several companies both in Norway and abroad, and the programme enables you to rotate within and between the various companies.

Once selected, your background is of little importance as your inherent task is to be trained. For instance, you can test your entrepreneurial skills working on new concepts and services, your analytical abilities within business development, your creativity working on marketing or your communications skills within governmental relations. I have had the pleasure of working on business development of TV services in Hungary and Norway and development of new financial services in Malaysia. During the next six months I will work for the CEO of Conax, a company working on conditional access for digital TV.  In my next blogs I will give you a glimpse into my experiences working in the different companies and functions.

Selection Process
The next trainee programme starts September 2009, and the online application will be available early next year (10.01- 01.02 2009). The procedure might differ from the previous iterations but rest assured all the main elements will be there. It begins with the online application, and if you aply sell yourself there you get the chance to prove your stock at a personal interview and at an assessment centre with other candidates. At the interview you will be bombarded with behavior questions related to all aspects of life, your motivation to join Telenor and a short section on your knowledge of the telecom sector.

The assessment centre was the most challenging and in my opinion the most fun part. Together with candidates from Sweden, Pakistan, Hungary, Malaysia and Norway I got to test my abilities in group assignments, presentations and another interview. Get past all that, and welcome to Telenor!

Back in DiGi

DiGi however has changed tremendously over the last 6 months. There are more new faces in the organisation then there were before and new division/department. Sadly to say some of my colleagues have left to seek new opportunities elsewhere.

This time round I will be working with the Corporate Responsibility team of Digi. I have already been given task to accomplish. My work would revolve around DiGi’s inclusion as a signatory into United Nations Global Compact. I will not elaborate further into my task as it is still too early to say much about it. But be rest assured that I will provide a detailed scope of my task in 2 months time.

Adieus amigos for now! Tune in for more information in the coming weeks!

I wish some of our blog readers would challenge me on certain issues, once in a while. I remember when the blog was made public I received queries like”What do you think of the telecommunication industry”. It was fun giving challenging answers to challenging questions!

Mala

(more…)

Trainees are gathered
A good thing about being back is to be closer to most of the trainee group. The majority of the trainees are working in Oslo now, so we can meet up for lunch every now and then. They all have exiting stories to tell from the previous outplacement so there is a lot of experience to be shared.

That’s it for now. Catch you later.

Now, it feels good to be back in Oslo and know that things will be more stable and hopefully quieter in the coming months, at least that was what I expected…

New job, new division 

My introduction to my new unit could not have been better. Now, I am working in Telenor Finance, in a unit called Strategy and Business plan. With the financial turmoil’s we see today, one would expect that the finance departments have quite busy days, and I can definitely confirm that. Since I started two and a half week ago, time hasn’t been standing still for a moment.

As the name suggest, my unit develops strategies which are implemented throughout the Telenor Norway organization. My day to day work this far has been mainly; competitor analysis, risk assessment of Telenor Norway and external analysis of the market and its implications for Telenor Norway. It is really challenging and interesting work.

Back at the headquarters
Anyway, although it is sad to leave your new friends and exciting tasks at work behind, the good news is that it is usually something great around the next corner as well! Apart from the obvious (once again living with my better half) it feels great to be around so many of the other trainees again as well.

New colleagues and new challenges
Coming home also means returning to a new position. Having been inspired by the Vice President of Corporate Responsibility during my first week at Telenor, this area was an obvious choice for me for my last six months of the programme, and luckily the guys in the department were happy to have me (you see it is not only up to us trainees). After working half a year with Service Development I can promise you the change is significant as the nature of this work area is quite different. However, that being said I definitely believe my stay here will be great both in respect to the social part and the learning aspect of it!

Beautiful Budapest for a week
Only a few days after I arrived in Oslo, the journey continued; and this time to Budapest in Hungary for another trainee gathering. The theme for the week was Communication which I think was rather interesting. Revealing different communication styles within the trainee group, and helping each other adjusting to the preferred styles was very useful. We also had a visit to Pannon during the week to learn about some of their focus areas at the moment. The evenings were spent discovering Budapest, a spectacular city!

Global Trainee – Global Coordination
My new position is in Telenor Global Coordination TV, a unit with the ambition to create attractive TV opportunities outside the Nordic region. The objective of Telenor Global Coordination is “to add significant value to our operating companies by further improving their local competitiveness by leveraging global scale and capabilities”. It sounds like a very interesting area of Telenor to me, and I am really exited to be a part of it.

I will definitively miss Kuala Lumpur in many ways, and especially my colleagues in DiGi, but somehow it feels good to be back too. And now it’s back to work and new challenges…

Above is the view from my new desk at Fornebu. It is indeed a beautiful autumn day with clear skies and fantastic colours along the Oslo fjord.

It took some days for all of us to “check in” the seminar programme. Almost everybody was moving from one country to another, one position to another, one task to another and probably from one state of mind to another. This is definatly something what we got with the programme: an opportunity to continuos change. It is always time to change! However, it feels good sometimes to sit down, lay back and reflect a bit on what has happened in the last six months. Talking with the others, sharing some toughts, experiences, having some fun help us to see things from a different point of view.

Meeting with the Hungarian trainees

After a couple of days of trainings and endless talks we spent a really good time in a Hungarian restaurant together with the Hungarian trainees. We had the chance to meet and share experiences besides huge portions of meals. Not only the dinner was brilliant, but our colleagues showed their talent in adapting to our culture. Till the end of the evening everybody managed to learn the meaning of some hungarian key words, such as “pálinka,  gulyás and egészségedre”. After the dinner some of us took part in an alternative crash course about Budapest nightlife and gained some deeper experience with the above mentioned focus areas

Anyway, I was really glad to have the seminar in Budapest. On one hand I felt good about sharing “my” city with the trainees, on the other hand it was nice to meet my friends or just watch people walking on “körút”, speak finally in hungarian, feel the autumn sun and gaze at the Danube…hmmm. I was relaxed and ready to leave “the transit” and start on Monday.