Stora Enso is the renewable materials company with the purpose of doing good for the people and planet by replacing non-renewable materials with renewable products. StoraEnso’s values are “Lead” and “Do what’s right”, which reflects and impacts all the employees in the company. Unicus is a consultancy company with a different angle, as they only offer autistic talents. Unicus sees this as a great advantage for the companies to find extraordinary talent, while helping talents from autism spectre to find their job match in the it-field. One of these talents is Joonas Lindberg, who is an autistic developer.
Before collaborating with Unicus, Joonas had been working in multiple it-companies in short-term positions. Joonas found job searching to be extremely exhausting and partly frustrating. “It was undoubtedly a hard journey before I came across Unicus. It wasn’t easy, but I still didn’t feel discouraged”, Joonas sighs. Joonas has been very satisfied with Unicus and their active approach on job searching. “I hit a bull’s eye when I was hired through them” Joonas says excitedly. He started working with Unicus in September 2021 and they found a match in Stora Enso quickly, as he started working for them in November. He is currently developing a sales planning system for Stora Enso.
Stora Enso Packaging Solutions division decided to partner up with Unicus as Stora Enso promotes diversity as one of their values and Reetta Nofal, Business IT manager for the division´s Data Services Team wanted to try something different. When it came to finding the right talent, qualifications of the applicants had to be fit for the purpose. It was also important how the team sees the person fitting in. “Hiring a talent through Unicus is no different to hiring a talent through anywhere else”, says Evgeny Sidorov, a digitalisation manager in supply chain at Stora Enso. Evgeny’s colleague, data analyst Oiva Skytén agrees with him, stating that the team has new additions with great talent and the autism plays no role in the team.
Joonas enjoys working for Stora Enso. “My colleagues are nice and very helpful, and my tasks are interesting, challenging and versatile” Joonas explains. He gives special thanks to Stora Enso Packaging Solutions for the extensive training he received when he started. Joonas plans to continue with the team, and he is happy with the way everything turned out.
Joonas is now working fully in the role which was planned for him and develops and maintains the sales planning system rather independently based on the requirements given by the business. Since Unicus and Stora Enso have had such a successful collaboration so far, they recently added a second autistic consultant through Unicus to their team. “Finding a resource through Unicus is really quick and all the practicalities around a new hire worked very efficiently and flexibly”, says Evgeny.
From Unicus’s point of view, there’s no difference in hiring an autistic talent in comparison to neurotypical talent, especially in the IT field. In most cases companies will highly benefit in embracing a talent with extreme dedication and attention to details. And Stora Enso agrees. “Definitely go and try Unicus. You can win a lottery”, Evgeny laughs and concludes.