In the morning of my very first work day in August 2015, I drove to the Scania headquarters, nervous and excited to meet the other trainees. The only information that I had gotten was what place and time I should be there and that I should take sports clothes with me for an outdoor activity. The meeting point was the Scania museum, where the trainees of 2015 gathered to start the day with a Fika.

In 2015, Scania hired 26 trainees (10 female and 16 male trainees), all of them recent university graduates with a maximum of one year’s working experience. The trainees had been recruited by different functional departments; hence we are nine Production trainees, six within R&D, two in Sales & Marketing, two in Commercial Operations, two in Purchasing, two in Business Control, two in Finance, and one in IT. Besides me, there is one other trainee, who is originally from Germany, as well as one trainee from Estonia, while the rest of the trainees are Swedes.

On that first day at Scania, it was very easy to start a conversation with the other trainees. It seemed like we were on the same wavelength, since we all have similar backgrounds and are rather outgoing people who like to socialize. After the Fika, we were welcomed by the trainee coordinators, who gave us more information on the structure of the introductory program and the trainee program as a whole.

In the afternoon, we went to Scania’s own health and fitness club, which is just a few minutes’ drive away from Scania’s headquarters. We were asked to change to our sportswear and to put on a blue work overall and helmet. Putting on the helmet, we became a little anxious what Scania had in store for us. What followed was an outside teambuilding activity, during which we had to execute different tasks and solve problems in smaller teams. The weather was beautiful and it was a lot of fun and definitely helped us trainees to get to know each other better as well as bond as a team.

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In the evening, I was exhausted from all the new impressions that I had gained on that first day, but I was also very happy to be part of such a nice group of trainees and excited to go back to work the next day in order to continue the trainee journey together with the other trainees.

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