Category: Schibsted stories

Join our meetup as we share our insights in order to empower more women to excel in the tech world.

For this session, we have invited Women in Tech Sweden to shine their light on the importance of having more women joining, and staying, in the tech industry. We will learn how it is to navigate the tech industry as a female tech reporter at Svenska Dagbladet, and we will dig into the ever-so-hot topic of AI.

When? January 23, 5:00 – 7:30 PM
Where? At the Schibsted office, Kungsgatan 13, Stockholm

Please note that the number of places is limited and the event will be held in English.

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Agenda

Why do we need to include more women in the tech industry? with Elin Eriksson, Director of Women in Tech Sweden.

Elin will discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, emphasizing the critical need for equal representation, empowerment, and opportunities for everyone.

Navigating the tech industry as a female reporter: how to change the cons to pros, with Sophia Sinclair, Tech reporter in Svenska Dagbladet.

Sophia will uncover the critical issues surrounding the underrepresentation of female tech reporters and explore strategies to increase their presence in this dynamic field. She will also shine a light on female founders and leaders, emphasizing the urgent need for broader, more inclusive coverage of influential figures in tech. We’ll also delve into the realm of diverse readership and its profound importance. Discover how Svenska Dagbladet is leading the way in creating a more inclusive tech community, and why this endeavor is pivotal in shaping the future of tech journalism.

Navigating AI’s potential: The Schibsted journey and how you can embark on yours, with Åsa Andersson, IT Project Manager in Schibsted

Get ready for a journey through the evolution of Schibsted. Åsa will uncover the vision, the hurdles faced, and the achievements that have propelled Schibsted’s AI maturity to new heights. We will dive into the world of AI, unraveling the mysteries of this transformative technology. Why is AI a game-changer, and why should we approach Generative AI with caution? Åsa will also equip you with the knowledge and best practices you need to cultivate AI maturity in your own sphere.

After each session, we will have a Q&A session. Snacks, food and drinks are on us! ??

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Drink & Mingle

Tech Talks are not only about tech. We take care of social aspects of the event as well. During breaks, and after the presentations you can meet new people with different backgrounds, share your experience or… talk with our employees from the Schibsted family of brands.

About Schibsted Tech Talks

Tech Talks is a series of free meetups and workshops to share knowledge, exchange experience and meet like-minded people.

Please note that during the event, we might take general photos that will be published on our social networks and website Schibsted.com for promotional and marketing purposes. For portraits and more individualistic photos, we will ask your consent before taking the photo. The data controller of your shared personal information is Schibsted. You can find more information about processing this data on our Privacy Policy page: schibsted.com/privacy. If you want to object to the use of a photograph in a certain way or you would like to withdraw your consent, you may do so any time by contacting us via this email: ta@schibsted.com

Join our meetup to discover how conflicts can spark innovation and gain valuable insights on self-leadership, conquering Imposter Syndrome, and navigating your career effectively!

When? November 16, 5:00 – 7:30 PM CET
Where? At the Schibsted office, Akersgata 55, Oslo

Please note that the number of places is limited and the event will be held in English.

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?‍? Talk #1 “Not having conflicts is not an option… let’s have good ones?” – by Marion Løken – Engineering and Product Manager Mobility Data & AI products.

“Have you ever been part of a team or workplace where there was no conflict at all? If you haven’t, it’s probably because you don’t live in a utopia! Conflict is an inevitable part of any team or organisation, and it’s actually a good thing. That’s because conflict can lead to innovation and progress by allowing people to challenge the status quo and think creatively. However, conflict can also be uncomfortable and even scary for some people. Do you tend to avoid conflict by burying your head in the sand or quitting when things get tough? Or do you handle conflict in a more dramatic way, like exploding or slamming doors? There is a better way to handle conflict – a way that is productive and leads to positive outcomes. In this session, you’ll learn what good conflict looks like, what factors contribute to tension in a conflict, and how you can improve your conflict resolution skills in the workplace and in your personal life. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn how to navigate conflict effectively!”

?‍??‍??‍? Talk #2 “Strategies for Women to Thrive in Tech” – by Anca Molodet – Product Collaboration Manager, Pooja Jha – Engineering Manager and Ingvild Nerås – Engineering Manager.

“Join this panel discussion as we share our insights, in order to empower more women to excel in the tech world. Our conversation delves into crucial themes including self-leadership, overcoming Imposter Syndrome, and effective career navigation in the dynamic world of tech.”

Meet the speakers

Marion Løken – Engineering and Product Manager Mobility Data & AI products

Her motivation in work is to inspire people and organisations to build engaged and sustainable communities through data and technology ?‍???? She excels in Data Science and leadership and has a unique commitment to sustainability, having refrained from buying clothes for the past 24 months and crafting new pieces from secondhand fabrics. In her free time, Marion enjoys outdoor activities, daily training sessions, and finds laughter to be essential for unwinding and enjoying life ???️‍♀️

Ingvild Nerås, Engineering Manager

Ingvild thrives on personal challenges and is an advocate for self-leadership! She is a people-person, fostering collaboration and ensuring everyone feels valued. Ingvild humorously claims to have an uncanny connection with birds in the sky, making her the “chosen one” for their special attention! In her free time, she’s a social butterfly, enjoying quality moments with family and friends, and during the warmer months, you’ll find her nurturing her garden ??

Pooja Jha – Engineering Manager

Pooja’s greatest motivation is the opportunity to create impact and value for society through her work. She’s a strategic genius in leadership and a system design expert on the technical front. Surprisingly, Pooja finds joy in the simplicity of a “boring” day, and in her free time, she indulges in the relaxing pleasures of yoga, books, delicious food, and catching up on some well-deserved sleep – not necessarily in that order! ????

Anca Molodet  – Product Collaboration Manager

Anca is fueled by the simple joys of connecting dots in discussions, simplifying complex topics, and providing clarity in processes. Her skills span versatile communication, fearless questioning, and keen bug detection. On a lighter note, Anca humorously admits she often struggles with spacial orientation even while using maps. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, yoga, and doodling. ?️?‍♀️?

The meetup will take place on the 16th of November in our office in Oslo – Akersgata 55. Please note that the number of places is limited and the event will be held in English. We’re looking forward to meeting you!

? Sign up  ?

Drink & Mingle

Tech Talks are not only about tech. We take care of social aspects of the event as well. During breaks, and after the presentations you can meet new people with different backgrounds, share your experience or… talk with our employees from the Schibsted family of brands.

About Schibsted Tech Talks

Tech Talks is a series of free meetups and workshops to share knowledge, exchange experience and meet like-minded people.

Please note that during the event, we might take general photos that will be published on our social networks and website Schibsted.com for promotional and marketing purposes. For portraits and more individualistic photos, we will ask your consent before taking the photo. The data controller of your shared personal information is Schibsted. You can find more information about processing this data on our Privacy Policy page: schibsted.com/privacy. If you want to object to the use of a photograph in a certain way or you would like to withdraw your consent, you may do so any time by contacting us via this email: ta@schibsted.com

Siri Holstad Johannessen has a reputation as a passionate leader in team development and performance management. Her team has been systematically working on this for the past year and a half, producing impressive results. We had a coffee chat with her to ask for her best insights.

Hi Siri, how long have you been working at Schibsted?
I have worked here since June 2013. My first position was as a Subscription Manager in Aftenposten. I then worked as a Sales and Marketing Manager in Schibsted. Since then, we have reorganised several times, and there have been several different roles over the years. Now I work as Head of Sales and Marketing for Common Schibsted Products, and I also sit on the board of Schibsted Distribusjon Øst.

Tell us about your background.
Early on, I knew I wanted to do something unconventional and go my own way. I, therefore, took an education in Relations Management. We were the first class in Norway to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in that field. I wanted to go further in that direction and build on it with a master’s degree, but it didn’t exist over twenty years ago since this was a completely new field of study. My passion is building teams and creating magic between people to produce results together. At the same time, I am a competitive person, which made me want to combine Relations Management with commercial responsibility. Therefore, part of my education is in marketing, and I love the combination of working commercial and relational.

What does your job entail?
I lead the Sales and Marketing Department that works with all the different brands in News Media towards both the private and corporate markets. A characteristic of our department is that we work very innovatively. Our task is to commercialise new products and ensure that we reach the revenue and subscription base targets we have set ourselves. Among other things, we have built up News Media’s portfolio for the corporate market, with a revenue of around NOK 130 million a year. Many people have probably noticed that Common Schibsted Products recently launched the “All Access” bundle subscription in the B2C market. “All Access” started as a product in our portfolio for the B2B market almost three years ago. Today, this product has more than 22 000 business customers.

How do you create a winning team?
It is about creating a performance culture – a culture where everyone wants to perform. I believe it is impossible to achieve by presenting only a few ambitious goals for an entire division or company. In my experience that’s not why people go to work, unless they’re just looking to get paid. I want to create a culture where my team goes to work because they love the team they are part of and that they have a clear picture of what they have to do every day for us to reach the goals we have set ourselves. I am fortunate to have several people on my team who are passionate about working with team development, so I have certainly not done this alone.

What changes have you and your team made, specifically?
When we started working systematically with this two years ago, we set a very specific qualitative goal: We will create an environment for innovation and world-class performance through psychological safety, self-management and a strong feedback culture. When the goal was set, we made a concrete plan and a scheme for achieving it. The work has consisted of working overall with psychological safety through, among other things, personality tests, feedback training, self-reflection, insight into each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and concrete training on being outside the comfort zone.

What is the concept of psychological security?
It is about investing time and energy in becoming aware of yourself and those you work with. Then you usually start by carrying out personality tests that clearly indicate how we are wired as humans. We can understand how we influence each other and the team by gaining insight into our differences and peculiarities. Then it becomes easier to see how we can complement each other’s weaknesses and build on each other’s strengths.

What are the biggest pitfalls for a manager?
That many people consciously or unconsciously hire a group that is exactly like themselves. It’s great to hang out with people who think and feel the same as you, but it doesn’t provide good opportunities to bring out your maximum potential in terms of achieving success. I can use an analogy from football: Having a team that consists exclusively of quick and tactical strikers who will score goals is no use, you need midfielders and defenders too. Homogeneous groups do not have a good starting point for being innovative and succeeding together.

Some managers may think they don’t have time for team development. What would you say to them?
I would say that being able to build a good team will have a direct impact on both the performance and motivation of your employees and the success of the department. It is a simple prioritisation and investment. It’s more than just our employee surveys that have improved since we started working systematically on this. We have doubled our digital revenue at the same time. Working relationships are like all other relationships in life; you have to invest time in relationships for them to flourish. I usually say to my colleagues that they do the work, not me. I am much more dependent on their performance than they are on mine, and it’s their efforts every day that creates results for our department.

After travelling the world while competing in ballroom dancing, Mikael Leppänen started working in Lendo, Finland. A couple of years and several different roles later, an opportunity for his role opened up in Portugal. As the Head of Product, Mikael strives to make the products even better, and says that the culture is one of the main reasons why he enjoys his time at Lendo so much.

Hi Mikael Leppänen, Head of Product in Lendo Portugal, tell us about your background and what you work with.
I am a 32 years old sports enthusiast who started doing sports before learning to walk. This shaped me to be a very competitive personality. I have travelled the world while competing in ballroom dancing. After high school I was wondering what I wanted to do with my life and natural path was to continue within the sports and ended up graduating as a physiotherapist. Right after graduation I realised it wasn’t for me and had to do some soul-searching to understand my interests. Soon after, it was crystal clear I was interested in different areas in business, finance and data. I ended up studying finance as my major meanwhile I found this interesting opportunity to work at Lendo in Finland. 

Tell us about your Lendo journey; you previously worked in Lendo, Finland and then moved to Lendo, Portugal?
I have worked in several different roles at Lendo since 2015 such as a Customer Service Agent, a Customer Service Team Lead and as a Product Manager. A really interesting opportunity turned out in Portugal for my role. This was a great opportunity both to expand my knowledge on different products and broaden my horizon. I joined the team this year in January and it’s been very exciting to learn about new products.

What does the team in Portugal look like? Which roles do you work with the most?
We have such a great team in Portugal and I’m surrounded by amazing people; give or take 40 total. It’s very difficult to say who I work closest with because we have a very strong team who collaborates closely. If I would mention a few names I would say that the CTO and Data Science Lead are my daily go-to-persons who help me everyday to resolve the product challenges and together we shape the product to be the best in the market. You might think that by knowing the Finnish product you wouldn’t learn anything new in this private loan sector. I couldn’t be more wrong. Our Head of Credit has been extremely helpful and guided me through to learn all these new market specific aspects and new nuances with the bank partners. 

What is the most interesting feature you are currently working on?
I would say our energy vertical and building a new feature in that vertical has been an extremely interesting learning curve for me. Let’s call the feature a bill upload feature where customers need to upload their energy bill in order for us to generate the saving results and calculate estimates based on customer data with machine learning. 

That said, I’m really looking forward to making our products even better to help even more customers. 

How would you describe the work culture in Lendo?
I believe this is one of the main reasons why I have enjoyed my time so much working at Lendo; the culture. To build a culture is a long process and requires everyone to participate in this joint mission. One of our core values at Lendo, “Win as a Team”, is an important factor to build a strong and solid culture where everyone is equal, everyone is being seen and heard and where help is always out there whoever needs it. 

I started my Lendo journey when Lendo had only a handful of employees and we have outgrown a company operating in several markets with almost 300 employees. We have tried and failed. We have tried and succeeded. We have always done this as one team by embracing the fact that we have a one joint goal.

In our digitised society, where we spend more time online than offline, an advanced kind of lawlessness has developed. Cyber criminality has come to a level where it is best to assume that you will be a target and start with precautions from an early stage. Schibsted, home of digital brands all over Europe, is working hard to protect sensitive information and dismantle attacks before they happen.

October is not only known for breast cancer awareness and Halloween, but also the EU and U.S. established the month of cyber security. The concept of highlighting the importance of strong data protection is something that Schibsted has adopted through all company levels. 

“Cyber security is a broad term, but what it means is that we need to protect our digital assets because without those, we have no business. For a large company like Schibsted, with many journalists handling source-protected information, protecting our data is of utmost importance. That is why we have gone full swing introducing a whole Cyber Security Month in October,” Knarik Avetisyan, Security Awareness & Compliance Specialist at Schibsted, says. 

Equally important for all employees
This past October was the third annual Cyber Security Month at Schibsted. During the four weeks, every employee – from journalists and photographers to data specialists and developers – was invited to participate in seminars, lectures and workshops about security. Events that have attracted a large audience in all countries where Schibsted has offices. 

“During the pandemic, the events were all online. Because we are a digital brands company, we had the right infrastructure to support that setup. This year, we tried a hybrid arrangement, where some workshops were held live. For example, we did a lock-picking workshop, which was very popular. It showed that it’s important not to forget about physical security as we talk more and more about our digital security,” Knarik says. 

“Hack me if you can”
The event that drew considerable interest was titled “Hack me if you can”. The event, inspired by the well-known Leonardo DiCaprio swindler movie, let the participants take on the role of a hacker trying to find weaknesses in a few dedicated internal domains.

“We gave the participants a two-week time frame and basic guidelines not to break anything or put us out of business. Using ethical hackers, or bug bounty programs, is common within cyber security, but doing it internally was a fun experience that has never been done before. We crowned three winners, whose findings we could recreate and use to strengthen our security,” Knarik says.

High focus during a lock picking workshop – an internal event during the Cyber Security Month.

Making it easy for the employees
One big challenge being a large company consisting of many different brands across several countries is to align the security. With more developed digital infrastructures, hackers get more sophisticated in their attacks. They find and penetrate any weak spots they can. 

“Our Data Security team runs a large security program which includes training employees in technical solutions. The human factor is a soft spot in cyber security. There is a common cognitive bias to feel that hackers would not be interested in me and my information. That false sense of optimism can lead to us being uncareful online, which can have immense negative consequences – both personal and professional. By standardising and implementing security services through all the Schibsted brands and employee levels, we strengthen ourselves and minimise the effects of cyber attacks. We are all possible targets, and having a healthy level of paranoia keeps us on our toes,” Knarik says. 

Knarik’s three easy steps to a more data-secure life:

• Use multifactor authentication (MFA) on your accounts. The best MFA options are using your fingerprint reader or facial recognition on your smartphone or laptop. By using those MFA methods, you can make your accounts un-phishable.
• Do not save your passwords in your browser. Instead, use a password manager to keep track of all your accounts and to generate new passwords. And remember, all passwords should be unique. 
• Update your devices straight away when prompted to. Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in previous updates. By keeping your devices and software up to date with security updates, your data will be safe.

Are you curious to know what life at Schibsted is all about? Click here!

While it may seem that, in the 20th century, everyone is fully entitled to feel free to be themselves, there are still people among us who are being refused that right. Every day Schibsted works towards our mission to empower people in their daily lives, but we also have an important mission to empower people to be themselves.

In a company with 6000 employees, you will find a wide variety of people. The sense of belonging for everyone in the organisation is a subject that is on top of the agenda for many employees. One of them is Paweł Szonecki, Employer Branding Specialist at Schibsted, who organised Pride Month at Schibsted in June this year.

How did the idea of celebrating Pride first come to your mind?

The overall story is pretty prosaic. On 1 July 2021, I joined Schibsted Poland. At that time, due to the pandemic, all parades in Poland were postponed until August and I found out that we weren’t planning on being involved. I truly believe in the importance of supporting the LGBTQ+ community by participating in equality parades and raising its voice, so I took it upon myself to change that. After discussions internally we were granted permission and a budget to participate in two parades organised in cities where Schibsted Tech Polska has offices – Krakow and Gdansk. I was unaware that these would be the first equality parades for the entire Schibsted.

And what is the reason behind the decision to take this initiative globally?

Following the local success in Poland we decided to come up with a way to organise Pride Month globally for our entire organisation. Since our company operates in 5 countries (Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland) and covers more than 60 brands, it became a large project. We involved colleagues from different areas of the company to participate in the project to do something that would make our company demonstrate solidarity and support for the LGBTQ+ community.

The project has a personal meaning for me. As a homosexual person in Poland, I know that only by increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ people in the public space, are we able to improve the current situation.

Will you tell us more about the initiatives?

Our objective was to attend parades in some of the major cities where Schibsted has its seat: Krakow, Gdansk, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. At each, a representation of the company appeared in branded T-shirts and banners. In the course of the work, we also came up with the idea to organise the first Schibsted Pride Day – a day to educate employees about equality and LGBTQ+ rights. But not only – it was also a time for our colleagues who belong to this community could share their stories, experiences and be heard. All employees stood up to their responsibility, not only by demonstrating their support but also by celebrating this meaningful month together with Schibsted’s LGBTQ+ community.

For example, in Stockholm, our project turned into a big party on the roof of the office building to celebrate the first day of summer and Pride Month at the same time, and in the Oslo office there was a banner several metres high with the theme of our action. We carried out all activities under the common motto: ‘Empowering people to be themselves’.

It was an important milestone to show solidarity towards the LGBTQ+ community and show everyone that there is a place for them within the structures of Schibsted – we can be who we want to be regardless of our feelings or who we love. We had a great time while feeling grateful and happy to be part of this together.