Articles
Me & My City gives the first experience of working life
February 05, 2016 11:08 CET 6 min read
“Me & MyCity was such a nice place to work that even during my free time I was still doing business with customers!”
Rasmus Hiltunen, a sixth grader at Ritaharju school in Oulu, can now write on his CV that he served as SSAB’s sales manager for one day at Me & MyCity. Rasmus, together with other “SSAB employees”, managed to accumulate €10,000 profit for SSAB’s virtual cash register in one day.
“I just went to get a lot of customers to visit our stand and asked whether they needed a new steel roof,” Rasmus explains his sales strategy.
Located in Oulu, Me & MyCity North Ostrobothia is the northernmost city and is one of eight Me & MyCities across Finland. Me & MyCity is a Finnish education innovation that has received international prizes. It is a learning environment, a miniature city, where around 50 sixth graders work in an occupation and function as consumers and citizens as part of society for a one day. During the school year 2015-2016, Me & MyCity will be visited by more than 40,000 students in Finland.
SSAB is a partner of Me & MyCity North Ostrobothnia. Each day, five sixth graders are acting in SSAB jobs, from factory manager to laboratory employee.
Rasmus thought that the day got off to a bit of a slow start since everything was new and somewhat strange, but once the biggest excitement was over, the business started to work.
“I knew that selling is one of my strengths, and I didn’t hesitate for a moment whether or not I would be successful in my job. A good team spirit was important, we had to work together like a sports team,” Rasmus recalls.
Rasmus clearly has some salesman’s characteristics
“I was happy to close so many sales,” he says. On the other hand, Rasmus understands that there might be bigger challenges in real life. “When I grow up, I could imagine myself as a sales manager, though it might be a little trickier than here at Me & MyCity.”