Introduction of myself and being a trainee in Elkem

Hello! I'm a new blogger at Orklajobs.com so I will, just like my fellow bloggers, take the opportunity to introduce myself. I was hired as a trainee in Elkem in May 2007, shortly after graduating from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden with a degree in Industrial Engineering and management. The reason for me to apply for a position in Elkem was actually that Orkla was one of the few Norwegian companies I knew something about since before (and to all fellow clueless Swedes out there - Norway is actually a very nice country to work and live in= ) , but I also knew that I wanted to work in an industrial company. Hence, I looked up the industrial companies in the Orkla group and found that Elkem offered a 2-year trainee programme that sounded to fit me well. Scroll time ahead a couple of weeks and some interviews later, and I was already started at my first trainee position, in the business development department at the headquarters in Oslo.

The first eight months passed quickly with analyses of various customer segments, raw material markets, internal projects etc. At that time I changed to a position within the Aluminium division (for those not in the know, Elkem has 8 divisions: Silicon, Foundry, Solar, Energy, Research, Materials, Carbon and Aluminium, the latter just sold to Alcoa which leaves us with 7) where I worked with logistics projects, mainly in order to improve out-going logistics flows from the two Norwegian plants via the distribution centre in Rotterdam to the customers. Another eight months later it was time to change again, and I started in the Materials division where I am currently working, based in the sales & purchasing office in Shanghai.

I arrived in Shanghai early November last year, but I am still amazed by the size, the noise, the opportunities, the number of people everywhere... More about what it is like to work and live here, I will save for my next post. Let me just say a few things about myself since I claimed that I would introduce not only my job but also, yes right, myself in this post.

I'm 26 years old, grew up in the picturesque small village Kivik by the southeast coastline in Sweden, moved to Gothenburg when I was 18 to start at the technical university and lived there until I moved to Oslo in 2007, with the exception of an exchange year in lovely hot Singapore. And here comes the hard part when you are supposed to talk about your "hobbies"... so what should I say? I like travelling, spending time with friends and my boyfriend Carl (who "by co-incidence" is also working for Orkla, in Stabburet), reading books (now reading "Revolutions" by Nobel Prize winner J M Le Clézio, highly recommended!) the occasional visit to the gym... I also have a weakness for fashion magazines, sushi (and a lot of other good food) and red wine.

If you have any questions regarding Orkla, Elkem, some things I have written about or something completely else, feel free to make a comment below and I will answer it. Have a nice day and hope to see you here again!