Hello! My name is Syed Ahsan Faraz and I joined Roshan Packages last week as a Management Trainee Officer for Plant Operations. I’m writing this blog to share my first week’s experience as a trainee at Roshan Packages and to give an overview of the management trainee program at Roshan Packages.

Two weeks ago after considerable waiting for a good opportunity to provide my professional career the takeoff it needed, I came to know about the MTO program being offered by Roshan Packages. Of course, I was familiar with the name as Roshan Packages is one of the renowned packaging companies of Pakistan but what I didn’t know was the fact that Roshan is the second largest packaging manufacturing company in Pakistan and is in a process of exponential growth with every passing day. Later that week, I was extremely excited when I found out that after a rigorous selection process I was selected to join the company from next week. I was further delighted to learn that the management at Roshan Packages has planned a three-day orientation for the newly hired MTOs to guide and educate about the insights and growth opportunities in the Packaging Industry and at Roshan Packages Limited. Another purpose of the orientation was to enlighten the fresh minds regarding how things work behind the scenes in big industries and also to introduce us to different departments and senior management.

In the morning, butterflies were fluttering in my stomach as I got ready for this new journey. A little nervous, I arrived at the corporate office of Roshan Packages located in Johar Town. We are about fifteen Management Trainees this year, some of us have engineering backgrounds, some are from IT and finance; all destined for different departments within the company. Shortly, we all were guided to the conference room where we took our seats. Once settled in the conference room, the HR team provided us with a detailed orientation plan for the next three days. The Orientation began with the introduction of the HR team and after that, we got to know the ‘Roshan’ as a company, what they do, and their journey over the years. It was quite an amazing experience to learn about its legacy and how much Roshan Packages has achieved in such a short time span. Being a fresh graduate I didn’t have much experience working for large companies, so there was a lot of information to take in. In the evening, the C.E.O of Roshan Packages called us over a cup of tea, where we all had a very interesting round of talks. These talks were the highlights of my day.

On the second day, the management had planned a full day visit of Roshan’s Corrugation Plant for us. We departed early in the morning for Sundar Industrial Estate and upon reaching we were warmly welcomed by the administration. We were then provided with all the safety gear that was needed to be on the plant’s floor. I was glad to see that the safety and wellbeing of the employees is one of Roshan’s top priorities. We settled in the plant’s conference room where the head of plant operations briefed us. After the briefing, we were split into two groups and were accompanied by different site engineers for a very detailed plant visit. The on-ground visit and seeing the things happening personally by ourselves helped make us understand the process.

The activities from the third and last day of orientation were also scheduled on the corrugation plant. The company’s shuttle service took us from head office to plant. Over the day, heads of different departments briefed us about their department and how they work. Every department head and their team made us feel extremely welcome and each of them allowed us to experience an insight into their role within the company. I was introduced to my department on the fourth day, upon reaching the department my manager and assistant manager welcomed me and introduced me to the rest of the staff. I was also provided with a complete road map of my trainee program.

I’m the newest member of the electrical maintenance team. Our team is committed to making sure that the plant’s production doesn’t get hampered by any electrical fault in machines. Not only am I new to the company, but I’m pretty new to the “real world”, too, having graduated from an engineering university last October. So not surprisingly, I was nervous for my first official day on the job and naturally had many questions. I initially was afraid to ask but thanks to the team’s cooperative attitude and the learning environment of the company, I found there was no such thing as a stupid question and I had an unlimited number of questions I could ask which the team would always gladly answer.

Over the week, I took part in many interesting things such as learning and completing small tasks. I know I have many exciting days ahead of me as a management trainee for plant operations at Roshan Packages. In the last, I would like to thank everyone at the Roshan Packages for being so welcoming, considerate, kind, and helpful. Over this week I got a realistic overview of what life in this industry is really like from more than one perspective and from all of the different departments, I am having the best time and would definitely recommend it to anyone thinking of doing work experience at Roshan Packages Limited.

-Ahsan Faraz, Management Trainee Officer, Roshan Packages Limited