A substantial IT-education and ten years working experience give Christer Westin a lot of experience. Now he is newly employed at CGI, an IT consultancy company with an office in Umeå. In 2008 Christer lost his job at Volvo and decided to start his university studies. First he took a bachelor in system science and then a one year master in IT Management.
After my years at Volvo I have a good understanding of organizations and their permanent improvement work, new investments and quality issues. I spent a lot of time at Volvo working on investigating quality issues, planning quality improvements and other improvements in production. As a consultant he has benefit of that.
Christer praise the master in IT Management that he studied after his bachelor studies. -We gained a lot of good examples of how businesses and customer meetings in practice. I appreciate that a lot, says Christer and he wants to specially thank Johan Hellström, one of the lecturers, normally working as CIO at T3 that gave him many insights on everyday issues in consultancy work.
As a student you should make us of the companies that you meet during your education. Try to get to know people in the branch and add something to your studies that make you unique, is his advice to current students.
Christer also think it is important for companies to build relations with students. Meet them during career days and identify thesis projects together with your customers that are real. During our meeting Sara Winqvist is attending. She is consultancy manager at the office and thinks it is important that Christer will be part of the team. –We have recruited a lot of people. We get people with new competencies and views, says Sara.
Christer and Sara is now working on a plan for his further competence development and he also get the opportunity to meet customers in real projects. –This week I had my first job as a project leader, says Christer and looks happy.
