Desponia likes her Scania team

Pre-assembly operator Despoina Symeonidou works in the production flow of gearboxes for electric trucks and buses at Scania. “What I love about Scania is that we believe in a gender balanced workforce. Scania offers equal career opportunities, regardless of background, gender, or culture.”

“I am proud to work for a company that cares about the environment in all parts of the organisation,” says pre-assembly operator Despoina Symeonidou, who turned 25 this summer. A couple of years ago she heard about Scania and Sweden from her friends back in Greece. And after 15 months with Scania, she does not regret the move one bit. “What I love about Scania is that we believe in a gender balanced workforce. Scania offers equal career opportunities, regardless of background, gender, or culture.”

She is also impressed with Scania’s global engagement in long-term projects about diversity, equality, and freedom. “I read about the project Women moving the city where Scania let women into the truck- and bus driving business in African cities. That was very inspiring.”

Despoina used to work within hotel and hospitality and had also done studies in programming. But she did not see many opportunities for herself to grow in her native town Thessaloniki, so she dared to change both career and country. But it was not easy in the beginning. She struggled to learn the new language fast enough to be able to work in Sweden. “I took my exam at the mandatory Swedish for immigrants course (SFI) one week before I was hired. During my interview I actually asked for another three months of Swedish studies before I was ready to start. And they waited for me, for which I am incredibly grateful!”

Despoina feels well taken care of at Scania, and she likes working in her team of seven colleagues. They work in the production flow of gearboxes for electric trucks and buses. The team members circulate between different assembly positions on their station. The working environment is quite technical, and different from her previous work, but she was positively surprised after being introduced to her new job. “Apart from better possibilities to evolve and grow as a person, there are also major advantages in ergonomics compared to my previous line of work.”

She lives with her partner in Huddinge, located between Stockholm City and Södertälje. It takes her half an hour of travel to go to work. She enjoys her new Swedish life and her work at Scania and sees bright future possibilities within the company. “I am happy where I am right now, I really like my team. Further on I might look for internships to develop my programming skills, but that’s for later.”