We are proud to announce the City of Copenhagen (Københavns Kommune) as this year’s partner of our RISE Case Competition taking place on Sunday the 14th of March. We had a talk with Alexander Mariager Nedergaard, who is a team lead at the City of Copenhagen’s Finance Administration.
Alexander is cand.polit from the University of Copenhagen. As an economist with great experience, we wanted to know what he finds attractive about working at the City of Copenhagen.
“The job as an economist at the City of Copenhagen is a diverse job with exciting and challenging tasks.”
He says: “The City of Copenhagen is a large organization, but the influence of one’s work is very tangible as projects are often relatable to your own everyday life in Copenhagen”.
He emphasizes that this gives the employee a sense of purpose and responsibility: “The job as an economist at the City of Copenhagen is a diverse job with exciting and challenging tasks.”
Furthermore, Alexander finds that the City of Copenhagen is a great and fun workplace with very talented colleagues. There is a great atmosphere and social events. He would therefore highly recommend a job at the City of Copenhagen.
In our interview, we were interested in learning which skills are particularly important to master if you want to pursue a career in the City of Copenhagen. Alexander explained the City of Copenhagen is a dynamic organization with many branches. He emphases that being able to communicate complex analyses to persons with varying insight on a subject is a very important skill. He says: “The wide range of analytic skills obtained in the field of economics is very useful when you work at the City of Copenhagen. As an economist at the City of Copenhagen you have a possibility to apply the theoretical framework and techniques from the university to important real-life challenges that affect growth, sustainability and the everyday life of thousands of peoples.”
We also wanted to know why he considers Polit Case Competition as a great opportunity for students. He says: “Polit Case Competition gives students first-hand experience of case solving. This way of approaching a problem is highly relevant in a real-life work environment.”
He explained how students gain insight of the work as an economist in the City of Copenhagen and obtain more knowledge of possible career paths at our workplace.
“In the Rise Case, the students get to process a real-life problem by using concrete, technical knowledge from university courses”
We asked Alexander in what ways he thinks that Polit Case Competition equips students with tools useful in a position as yours. He says: “Polit Case competition presents the students with a problem. This enables the students to gain experience of initiating and completing a project as a team. Likewise, an important part of the case competition is presenting the answers analytically and well-founded through slides as well as an oral presentation.”
He described how this makes participants of Polit Case Competition become acquainted with both project management, dissemination, and professional cooperation. Alexander then added how these are all tools that are useful in his job at the City of Copenhagen. To how he finds the Rise Case a perfect opportunity for non-seasoned participant to try case-solving in practice Alexander answered: “In the Rise Case, the students get to process a real-life problem by using concrete, technical knowledge from university courses. This might clarify how tools learned at the university can be used to analyze real issues and thereby enabling students to add a professional perspective to skills acquired at future courses. Participants will gain valuable insight.”
Finally, we wanted to know why the City of Copenhagen is an interesting workplace for an economist. Alexander explained how Copenhagen plays a central role in the Danish economy. 40 percent of the output in Denmark is produced in the capital region and more than 600,000 people live in Copenhagen. Therefore, the decisions made by the City Council need a strong and well-founded economic foundation and highly professional solutions. Alexander describes how an economist at the City of Copenhagen is faced with diverse tasks: “Copenhagen is a city in growth and one of the best places in the world to live. Despite this, there are still room for improvement and interesting topics for an economist to deal with.It also gives you an opportunity to work with political subjects and important matters of the society.”