Suvi, who studied geography at the University of Helsinki, started working at the NLS as a summer trainee in 2018. After the end of the traineeship period, Suvi was able to continue working alongside her studies and got a permanent job as a geospatial data specialist shortly before graduation. As the tasks and responsibilities increased, her job title was changed from specialist to senior specialist.
At the moment, Suvi’s main task is to take care of the NLS’s geographic name register and the maintenance of its data with a team of specialists. In addition, Suvi has worked on the reform of the Topographic Map and has provided municipalities with an analysis service that supports the work on improving the quality of addresses. Suvi is also involved in updating Finland’s geospatial data sets for the international EuroGeographics geospatial data products.
Diverse work tasks and learning new things
In her studies, Suvi focused on geoinformatics, which studies efficient production, analysis and visualisation methods for geospatial data sets. The methods of geoinformatics can be used to monitor changes in the environment, for example. One of the minor subjects that Suvi studied was computer science, which has been very useful in geospatial data tasks. The minor subject studies have opened up the general thinking related to data processing and helped to better understand how well-functioning datasets should be compiled. Basic coding skills have also come in handy many times, making it possible to automate repetitive long work phases so that they can be accomplished at the touch of a button.
Suvi says that she likes her diverse and varying work tasks:
‘I get to process and think about things from many different perspectives, while learning new things all the time. We have a lot of development going on, which is really interesting. Together with the other specialists, I get to examine the current practices and thoroughly think about how things could be done better.’
Suvi was interested in working at the NLS already when she began her studies. Suvi has always been interested in the NLS’s Topographic Map service, and for her the most important incentive for joining the organisation was to see how a topographic map covering the whole of Finland is created. The NLS has seemed to be a diverse organisation offering interesting job opportunities. In addition, the employer’s flexibility is important:
‘I live an active everyday life, and it is important to me that work is flexible with respect to leisure time. In my opinion, combining work and leisure time has been made easy at the NLS.’