Category: Students

Schibsted Connect – let the journey begin!

In early November we kicked off a new group of students and employees in our popular mentorship program Schibsted Connect.

We welcomed an enthusiastic group of 130 students and Schibsted employees from five different countries, all ready to embark on a learning journey.

What sets Schibsted Connect apart
Schibsted Connect is not a traditional mentorship program; it’s a platform for mutual growth and learning. Students and experienced employees within Schibsted have thoughtfully been paired, based on education and professional experience. Over a six-month journey they will step into a two-way street of knowledge exchange. Students gain invaluable industry insights and professional guidance, while our employees get fresh perspectives and new ideas brought by the younger generation.

Local meetups at our offices
What better way to start a mentorship journey than by inviting participants to our main offices? Here, they had the chance to meet their buddies in person, explore our dynamic offices, and connect with other Connect participants. 

A learning journey ahead
The program offers not just professional contacts but also local meetups and events aimed at sparking networking, discussions, and knowledge sharing. Schibsted Connect is a journey of sharing insights and achieving mutual growth. The combination of curiosity, collaboration, and the joy of sharing knowledge prepare participants for future opportunities.

The Connect participants will continue their journey until April 2024, we can’t wait to learn more about their unique stories.

Learn more about our student opportunities here! 

Follow a Schibsted Trainee in her first placement

Hi, my name is Thea and I’m a first-year trainee in the Schibsted Management Trainee Program. As I’m soon ending my first placement as a Project Lead in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, I want to share some of my highlights with you.

As it is getting closer to the end of my first placement in the Management Trainee Program there are a lot of exciting things happening. This week was extra exciting for me since the project I have been assigned to was first introduced to the rest of the company. In the picture you can see me and Johan, who is involved in both the project team and the steering committee, presenting to Svenska Dagbladet what we have been working on. The project will play an important role in Svenska Dagbladet’s upcoming three-year plan and will now, therefore, move forward into a more active phase.  

Presenting our project to Svenska Dagbladet.

Since we are getting closer to launching our project, the project team is having more and longer workshops to solve different issues. The team consists of members in different parts of the company which makes it extra fun to meet since I get so many new and different perspectives. Below you can see how our workshops can look like.

Workshop with members in different parts of Svenska Dagbladet.

Another exciting thing that happened this week was that we learned what placements are available for the next trainee rotation. Therefore, I met with my mentor Malin to get some guidance on what opportunities are best suited for me. According to me, the mentor program is one of the best perks in the management trainee program since I can always write to Malin when I need advice or just want to talk. 

My mentor, Malin.

And there you have a couple of highlights from a week as Project Lead in Svenska Dagbladet. If you are interested in knowing more about the Management Trainee Program at Schibsted – read more here or connect with me on LinkedIn. 

A year as a Student Ambassador

Hi, my name is Tone, and I study UX and informatics at the University of Oslo. During the last year I’ve been working as a student ambassador alongside my studies. I’ve learnt a lot about myself, future career opportunities, and the tech business. Let me take you through my year at Schibsted!

Usually, when applying for part time jobs or summer internships in tech I feel like you are asked to have “a master’s degree and 5 years of working experience”. How do you even start getting this? For me, that answer was the Student Ambassador role at Schibsted. Last year I had this position in Oslo. Looking back, this has given me a lot more experience and opened more doors than I thought it would. 

Firstly, what is a Student Ambassador? Well, it’s a kind of fancy name for a contact person between students and the company, with different responsibilities tied to the role. Mostly it’s about spreading the word about Schibsted as a potential workplace through different events and activities. During my year at Schibsted I have done a variety of different things such as organizing and facilitating company presentations and workshops, making Instagram takeovers, joining stands where I talk to loads of students and assisting in coding camps for children. 

My manager, Kamilla Abrahamsen and I.

When I first started, there was a lot of information to take in. Schibsted is a big tech company, with many small and big brands within itself and it might feel confusing at times. But I quickly (ish) got a grip of what Schibsted is, and how everything works thanks to my boss and coworkers who were happy to answer all my questions. These people stand out to me because they have all taken me in with open arms, encouraged me, gotten to know me, and helped me out from the very beginning. This has made it easy for me to sell Schibsted in as a great place to work when I talk with other students because I really believe in it myself.

I worked with the Schibsted Kids Coding Camp and teached kids how to code.

I was surprised at how quickly I gained trust, autonomy and encouragement from my superiors to initiate my own ideas. My competence as a student was really valued. They trusted that I knew what students would like. This trust was my greatest asset this year. If I found a cool event I wanted to join, contribute to or cover, the answer was very quickly, “of course, that sounds great!”. This enabled me to chase the opportunities I met along the way and made me feel like I was not simply doing a job but actually developing my own knowledge and experience simultaneously. It felt like it was only my personal capacity that set the limits for what initiatives I could make. Of course, I met many challenges along the way as well, but this gave me great experience in handling unforeseen events and thinking outside the box.

An example of a task that personally gave me a lot was when I was doing my first Instagram takeover. I thought it would be cool to cover something about UX designers because I myself study UX design. I got a thumbs up and some tips on who to contact. Soon I was actually following the UX designer Kévin Scotet and the whole VG Live team, and joining their research activities for a whole day. They were developing their football application at the time. I got to listen in on user tests and see how they analyzed and implemented the results of this. How cool is that!? It gave me real insight into what I hope will be my future career, and sparked my interest in and motivation for my studies. 

Some of my takeovers at the global Schibsted Instagram account.

Now I can see how all the big and small tasks I did during the last year, and the people I’ve met along the way have given me great experience and insight in the tech business and the subject of UX quite early on in my studies. Even though my time as a Student Ambassador is coming to an end I am fortunately not done with Schibsted!I have joined Schibsted Connect (Schibsteds mentorship program) where I have a fantastic mentor whom I can discuss subjects, career opportunities and participate in activities with. So even after my role in Schibsted, my experience building continues.

I will miss the people in Schibsted, but I really hope that other students get to see, grab a hold on and have the same experiences as I have had in this company for many years to come! And hopefully this will spark their interests and careers.

Read more about the Student Ambassador Program or Schibsted Connect.

 

“I grew a lot as a developer”

Elin Larsson is working as a Software Engineer at Schibsted and started her journey as a summer intern. She studied Web development at the Miduniversity in Sweden. 

Hi Elin? Why did you apply for an internship at Schibsted?
I was fresh out of school and it felt like a great opportunity to grow and learn.

Where in Schibsted did you do your internship?
Within the Aftonbladet brand team.

What was the best experience being an intern?
To get to work as a full team member and solve things hands-on.

What is your advice for other students who want to become an intern at Schibsted?
Have fun and ask a lot of questions! The people working at Schibsted know so much, use that as much as possible!

Where do you work today, and what is the difference between being an intern and a regular employee?
I still work within the AB Brand team in MPT. The difference might be that I have more confidence in my role now as a regular employee?

“Dare to ask questions and strive to be as flexible and as well-rounded as possible.”

Per Morten Halvorsen is a Machine Learning Engineer at Schibsted and started his journey with Schibsted as a summer intern. He studied Mathematics with Informatics (bachelor’s program) and Data Science (master’s program) at the University of Oslo.

Hi Per? Why did you apply for an internship at Schibsted?
I wanted to see what machine learning in the industry looked like and in what ways Schibsted was using language technologies

Where in Schibsted did you do your internship?
In the Predict Team, within Data Foundations. Me and another intern worked on improving the pretraining steps of a model currently running in production

What was the best experience being an intern?
Getting paid to work on complex machine learning problems all summer long

What did you learn from your internship period?
Being a relevant job candidate means more than just knowing the theory. Social and presentation skills are equally important!

Where do you work today, and what is the difference between being an intern and a regular employee?
I’m still working in the Predict team in Oslo. The only real difference between being an intern versus full-time is the level of responsibility expected of you. Our interns always feel like part of the team.

“In Schibsted you are accepted regardless whether you are an intern or senior employee”

Jacob Welander is a Data Scientist at Schibsted who started his journey as a summer intern. He studied Statistics and Machine Learning at Linköping University.

Hi Jacob ? Where in Schibsted did you do your internship?
I did my internship for Curate, the team that is responsible for the news recommendation system. During the internship, I worked together with the team in order to create a new personalization algorithm.

What was the best experience being an intern?
The mentorship and being able to work in a cross-functional team, where I could learn from both engineers and data scientists.

What did you learn from your internship period?
Applying the theory that I learned in my studies to solve real-world problems.

Where do you work today, and what is the difference between being an intern and a regular employee?
I’m still working at the Curate team as a Data Scientist. The largest difference of being a regular employee is that it often comes with more responsibility, where you help the team to reach its goals instead of working on a predefined task.

“Schibsted has found the balance between work and having fun”

I am Eleonora, and I am currently finishing my master’s thesis in Computer Science at KTH in Stockholm while working at Schibsted as a Data Engineer. During my first year of the master’s, I enjoyed taking classes focusing on the backend. Hence, I found the summer internship at Schibsted to be the perfect opportunity to explore further and gain more valuable experience.

During the summer of 2021 I worked as a Data Engineering Intern at Schibsted. It has not only been insightful and challenging but also fun! Our team project revolved around data aggregation and the presentation of insightful statistics. We got to play around with both the backend and the frontend, which made the internship even more interesting. Our fantastic four mentors helped us and guided us in the right direction. We could be transparent with them about our failures but also our successes.

What I have learned from my internship
This internship has helped me become a better programmer. I worked with languages (Scala and TypeScript), tools and libraries that I had no or little knowledge about. However, with teamwork and the right mindset, anything can be achieved. I worked with two other interns, so I have learned how to share tasks and communicate ideas with others. Our mentors pushed us to take ownership of our product and become more independent! They also held small workshops, taught us the basics of programming languages, and provided us with constructive feedback on our work, which I find invaluable when trying to get better at something.

The culture at Schibsted
I found the people and culture at Schibsted to be open, professional, and open-minded. There were many events scheduled during the weeks, one of my favourites was the music quiz! One can say that Schibsted has found the balance between work and having fun. The colleagues I interacted with were very passionate about their projects and were more than happy to share their knowledge!  

A piece of advice
Before an internship, I would suggest finding out what you will be working on and what tools or libraries you will use, and do some research beforehand. This can make the first weeks go smoother and less stressful!

 

? Apply for a summer internship at Schibsted ?