Schneider Electric's graduates share their experience

March 18, 2022

Yasemin Yavari & Camilla Pedersen are halfway through the Schneider Electric Graduate Program in the Nordics, a unique educational & social work experience that rotates through different departments, sites, & cultures. In this piece, they share how you can apply.

Camilla and Yasemin started in Schneider Electric’s Graduate Program together with 16 other graduates from the Nordics. So far, the Nordic Graduate Program has been a unique experience for them, both educationally and socially. In 5 months, they have been exposed to different departments, sites, cultures and lived together for six weeks in beautiful Copenhagen for their onboarding. Here, they want to shed some light on the experience since the recruitment for 2022 has commenced.

Introduction to the Nordic Graduate Program

The Nordic Graduate Program consists of graduates from all over the Nordics. This year, there are 18 graduates: 3 from Finland, 5 from Sweden, 6 from Denmark, and 4 from Norway from a variety of disciplines, both technically and commercially. For their onboarding, they all met and lived together for 6 weeks.

The duration is approximately one year, and the graduates are assigned to a position in the company from day 1. They deep dive into Schneider through their onboarding weeks, several learning immersions, field experience, and progress reviews, while assigned a permanent role – all to learn new elements and implement them into their roles as they go.

This structure allows them to gain exposure to several areas of Schneider Electric for them to decide which department and role to be enrolled in after the program. In this way, the program is more fluid allowing them to experience technical and commercial roles regardless of their educational background in a fast-track program.

6 weeks of onboarding in Copenhagen

For Camilla, Copenhagen was such a nice city to learn about Schneider Electric. As she studied for my Master’s degree in Denmark, she was looking forward to spending 6 weeks in Copenhagen again. Before they left Norway, Camilla got to meet the other three graduates from Norway and some of the members of the Norwegian organization including a brief introduction of the graduate program in Denmark.

Yasemin’s experience was a bit different. She's already been part of Schneider for two years; first a student job and a full-time position in the Marketing and Communication department. She applied for the Graduate program to gain a holistic view of the company with the aim of getting closer to the business itself, focusing on the customers by understanding how the company's solutions create value for them. She had already lived in Copenhagen in an apartment, however, still chose to move to the hotel for six weeks to get the full experience.

During the first days, they had a brief introduction to Schneider and did team building, which was a session of sheep herding. A fun way to interact with each other, where they really had to work as a team and connect the way of communicating to a normal day at work. Through the learnings, knowledge sharing sessions, and training at the office, they got a deep dive into the company, the business units and met multiple employees, presenting Schneider Electric from different angles.

In addition, they were also trained in presentation skills and consultative selling. They had the chance to go on off-site customer visits to experience Schneider solutions in real-world settings and to visit some of their own R&D factories both in Sweden and Denmark. All the 18 graduates lived at the same place at a hotel, where they socialized after work as well. During their free afternoons, they would go out and explore Copenhagen, eat dinner together and do different activities such as paddle tennis, running, board games, creative workshops, and shopping.

The graduate program is a great way to build a wider network by engaging with other graduates and colleagues that have been in the organization for multiple years, people from different fields such as Business, Marketing, and Solution Architects, to mention some.

Exciting roles at Schneider Electric

Camilla, technical background (Tender Engineering in Digital Energy) says: "After I got back to Norway from the onboarding in Copenhagen, the four of them decided to develop our network even further and scheduled meetings with colleagues in Norway, a great way to learn about the different positions and their tasks in a normal workday."

Camilla has been learning about her department in Digital Energy, and briefly started with the training for Tender Engineering that focuses on energy efficiency in Buildings.

As a Tender Engineer, she will do calculations of solutions in different projects. She now learns about the products, software tools that she uses in her position, and what kind of projects she will be involved in. Camilla is starting to get more responsibilities, which motivates her. Although she has a background in Sustainable Energy with a focus on wind energy, she can use some of her knowledge, in addition, to learning every day about automation in buildings.

Yasemin, commercial background (Digital Sales Enablement in Industrial Automation) says: "After six intense onboarding weeks in Copenhagen, I was ready to start her new role in Industrial Automation. Overall, this department is responsible for automated solutions towards smarter and more efficient manufacturing."

Being a marketer for three years at Schneider already, she had basic knowledge of the business unit, however in her new role she gets closer to customers, project managing their customer cases. She combines her Marketing and Communication background with new technical knowledge when learning a lot more about their smart solutions and customer relationship management to create effective case studies and testimonials. Also, Yasemin can leverage her network from the Graduate program across the Nordics to quickly gain access to certain information for better and faster processes.

Every second week, the graduates meet up on a call to catch up and have a virtual coffee together. To keep their connections and share our journey.

Sustainability Workshop in Stockholm

After seven weeks back in their own countries, they all met again for two days in Stockholm for a Sustainability Hackathon.

First, they played the game “Climate Fresk”, where they worked together in groups to understand the scientific bases underlying climate change. This gave them the possibility to train and facilitate the “Climate Fresk” workshop for other employees to raise climate science awareness as well.

The following day, a new sustainability challenge was given, where they in groups had to discuss how Schneider Electric can market their sustainability story in relation to their core offer of energy efficiency. Two intense and interesting days being together again.

Exciting learnings and off-site activities

There are many exciting learnings and off-site activities coming up for them. Just to highlight a few, they are going to the Netherlands and France to get more insights on their solutions in our R&D centers and get up to speed on how their products are developed.

When they finish the Graduate program, and together with their line manager, mentor, and the Zone HR VP, they will decide in which direction to go in the company, since the possibilities are endless.