“Give us a chance, you won’t be disappointed”–how do inter­na­tion­al experts and com­pa­nies find each oth­er?

Are you look­ing for an inter­na­tion­al expert for your com­pa­ny? It’s easy to employ a skilled work­er in the Oulu region, as var­i­ous sources offer sup­port in recruit­ing. ‘Addi­tion­al­ly, cir­ca 12 000 for­eign­ers live in Oulu, who have the enthu­si­asm and exper­tise to offer to local busi­ness­es’, says Sal­la Hir­vo­nen, Project Man­ag­er of Oulu Tal­ent Hub.

Flex­i­bil­i­ty and bal­ance. Among oth­ers, these two things come to Moustafa Khair’s mind regard­ing the Finnish work­ing cul­ture and its best char­ac­ter­is­tics, which he great­ly appre­ci­ates.

Moustafa, an Egypt­ian, moved to Oulu two years ago in Jan­u­ary 2021. He com­plet­ed a Master’s degree in Data Pro­cess­ing Sci­ence in just over a year at the Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty and spe­cial­ized in AI.

He already worked for Nokia dur­ing his stud­ies and also com­plet­ed his Pro Gradu the­sis with Nokia. After which, he has worked for a num­ber of Finnish com­pa­nies. At the moment, Moustafa is employed by Dentsu Fin­land.

– I got my first job six weeks after mov­ing to Fin­land. But I start­ed look­ing for work long before com­ing here. It’s impor­tant to research the labor mar­ket, and the required qual­i­fi­ca­tions before­hand, says Moustafa.

– Work­ing in the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try, not speak­ing the local lan­guage is def­i­nite­ly not the biggest bar­ri­er. The more inter­na­tion­al the com­pa­ny is, the less com­pe­tence in Finnish is required.

Net­work­ing plays an impor­tant part in job search­ing, he admits. He thinks it’s good to know the right peo­ple and to hear from them about so-called hid­den jobs, because not all job open­ings are adver­tised in pub­lic search­es.

– Look­ing for jobs with­in my field was chal­leng­ing, but a reward­ing process. The best thing about work life in Fin­land is the bal­ance between work and pri­vate life. My man­agers have always made sure I’m not over­bur­dened and that I get to rest enough.

Moustafa, dur­ing his stud­ies, also par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al recruit­ment fairs and net­work­ing events, and he found them to be cru­cial in help­ing him find work. These events were arranged by the edu­ca­tion­al insti­tutes, the City of Oulu, and Oulu Tal­ent Hub, he says.

“Con­cerns regard­ing the spous­es’ com­fort”

Sal­la Hir­vo­nen, Project Man­ag­er of Oulu Tal­ent Hub (OTH) has noticed in her work that inter­na­tion­al experts first and fore­most wish for trans­paren­cy from com­pa­nies in their job open­ing adver­tise­ments. They also wish for more net­work­ing events in Oulu, where they could meet with locals.

– Job open­ings are often adver­tised in Eng­lish, but the job may still require per­fect Finnish skills. It would be impor­tant to state in the job adver­tise­ment if the job requires com­pe­tence in Finnish and the lev­el of com­pe­tence required, says Sal­la Hir­vo­nen.

On the oth­er hand, for busi­ness­es in Oulu, find­ing a suit­able skilled work­er and the lack of lan­guage skills are often the biggest chal­lenges in inter­na­tion­al recruit­ments. There may not be a com­mon lan­guage, or chang­ing the lan­guage of busi­ness meet­ings to Eng­lish might be a big ask for the com­pa­ny, says Sal­la.

– In addi­tion, com­pa­nies are also con­cerned about the com­fort of the spous­es of inter­na­tion­al experts in Oulu. Will they be able to find work, friends or study places, and will the fam­i­ly find a suit­able school for the chil­dren?

– We are con­stant­ly devel­op­ing our ser­vices in Oulu and we are atten­tive to the needs of com­pa­nies. Around a 100 indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Oulu Tal­ent Hub activ­i­ties, and we have offered them, for instance, free-of-charge coach­ing, men­tor­ing as well as infor­ma­tion and recruit­ment events, Sal­la men­tions.

Nowa­days, there is a lot of sup­port avail­able for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ments – and they are made easy by focus­ing on the experts resid­ing with­in the Oulu region, Sal­la sug­gests.

– There are around 12 000 for­eign­ers liv­ing in Oulu. They have the enthu­si­asm, exper­tise and a great deal more to offer to local com­pa­nies. The pri­ma­ry mes­sage they usu­al­ly have for local employ­ers is “give us a chance, you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed.

Oulu Tal­ent Hub recent­ly com­piled a “Wel­come to Oulu” brochure for peo­ple who have just moved to Oulu or who are plan­ning to move here. The Oulu Tal­ent Hub web­pages also con­tain impor­tant infor­ma­tion for com­pa­nies and inter­na­tion­al experts con­cern­ing the dif­fer­ent ser­vices avail­able in Oulu. www.oulutalenthub.fi

– In the ear­ly spring of 2023, we will com­bine a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ser­vices under the “Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu” con­cept. The phys­i­cal loca­tion will be Busi­nes­sAs­e­ma. Like­wise, we are going to pub­lish com­pre­hen­sive web­pages, where both inter­na­tion­al peo­ple and com­pa­nies can eas­i­ly find infor­ma­tion under one roof.

Learn­ing from the men­tor­ing pro­gram

E. Helaakos­ki Oy is a lift­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny, who believes they will have more inter­na­tion­al work­ers in the future. Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er Iiris Helaakos­ki says that there is a short­age of vehi­cle crane dri­vers at the moment.

– We have recent­ly start­ed think­ing about recruit­ing inter­na­tion­al experts on a larg­er scale. Our goal is to find com­pe­tent crane dri­vers, and this is one option that we’re look­ing into, says Iiris Helaakos­ki.

– We have around 130 employ­ees at the moment. A few of them are inter­na­tion­al work­ers. The longest work con­tract with an inter­na­tion­al work­er has been ten years.

The com­pa­ny has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the joint men­tor­ing train­ing arranged by Oulu Tal­ent Hub and Oulun Kaup­paka­mari. Accord­ing to Iiris, the “Pohjoisen bis­ne­shalti­jat” men­tor­ing pro­gram has been very help­ful for their com­pa­ny.

Dur­ing the men­tor­ing pro­gram, they pon­dered, for exam­ple, on what the path for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment could look like for E. Helaakos­ki Oy and what prac­ti­cal changes would be required in the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture.

– At the moment all of our work­ers speak Finnish, but mov­ing for­ward we’ll have to think about whether we could par­tial­ly use Eng­lish as a lan­guage of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This, of course, depends a great deal on our cus­tomers and their demands.

Sup­port on an inter­na­tion­al lev­el

1. Sup­port ser­vices for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment have devel­oped at a light speed over the past cou­ple of years in Fin­land. Last year a so-called fast-track lane was opened for spe­cial­ists, through which it is pos­si­ble to get a res­i­dence per­mit in two weeks
2. Recent­ly a com­mon phone and email con­sul­ta­tion ser­vice was estab­lished for employ­ers, offer­ing low-cost con­sul­ta­tions on all inter­na­tion­al hir­ing-relat­ed issues.
3. A new ser­vice in 2023 will be a men­tor­ing pro­gram direct­ed at man­agers. Busi­ness Finland’s Tal­ent fund­ing is being updat­ed to sup­port com­pa­nies’ com­pe­tence in inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment and in lead­ing an inter­na­tion­al work­ing com­mu­ni­ty.
4. In addi­tion, the Työ­paik­ka Suo­mi ‑palvelu ser­vice for learn­ing the lan­guage is still avail­able.

The goal of Oulu Tal­ent Hub was to sup­port the employ­ment of inter­na­tion­al experts in the com­pa­nies of the Oulu region, for instance, through com­pa­ny vis­its, recruit­ment and infor­ma­tion events, as well as job search­ing work­shops. The enti­ties respon­si­ble for the project (1.2.2021–31.1.2023) were Business­Oulu, Oulun Kaup­paka­mari, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences and OSAO. The project was fund­ed by the Euro­pean Social Fund ESF.

You can read more pos­i­tive career sto­ries from inter­na­tion­al experts here.