Strong inter­est in inter­na­tion­al way of think­ing – Fin­ger­soft builds inter­na­tion­al home

Because games are fun, cre­at­ing them should be enjoy­able too. This is the ide­ol­o­gy behind Fingersoft’s cul­ture and way of doing things. Fin­ger­soft is one of the most well-known names in the rac­ing genre of mobile games. In 10 years, it has tak­en its place among the largest game devel­op­ers and pub­lish­ers in Fin­land. What is behind this suc­cess from the HR per­spec­tive?

There is some­thing famil­iar about Hill Climb Racing’s main char­ac­ter Bill New­ton – the red-check­ered flan­nel shirt, the back­wards worn base­ball cap and so on. A sim­i­lar resem­blance can be seen in the shirt worn by Alek­san­dar Lep­o­je­vic dur­ing this inter­view. He has been work­ing as a 3D artist at Fin­ger­soft for two years now. He moved from Ser­bia to Oulu.

– In 2022 my stu­dio was clos­ing, so I was apply­ing to jobs in and out­side of Ser­bia. Luck­i­ly, I saw an ad on LinkedIn about an open posi­tion for a 3D artist at Fin­ger­soft. I remem­bered play­ing way too much Hill Climb Rac­ing in high school, so I was eager to apply.

Alek­san­dar had received job offers from Ger­many and the US, but after some research, he thought Oulu and Fin­ger­soft would be the best fit for him. With pri­or expe­ri­ence liv­ing abroad, he was open to the oppor­tu­ni­ty.

– The recruit­ment process was easy. We had a few inter­views and an art test, and with­in a few months I was already in Fin­land. After com­plet­ing the paper­work, it took only a cou­ple of weeks to get a work per­mit, and we were good to go. It was smooth, quite dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from apply­ing for a US work visa, which was pret­ty much more com­pli­cat­ed.

Fin­ger­soft has 118 employ­ees, approx­i­mate­ly 20 % of whom are inter­na­tion­al. They have had inter­na­tion­al employ­ees almost from the begin­ning. How­ev­er, the first recruit­ment from abroad was com­plet­ed in 2020. Since then, they have recruit­ed peo­ple from 8 differ­ent coun­tries.

– The first case was the trick­i­est, not only because I didn’t have pri­or expe­ri­ence in inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment, but also because the world was upside down due to COVID-19. I had to turn every sin­gle stone to push the recruit­ment for­ward since the embassies weren’t open or they weren’t accept­ing new res­i­dence per­mit appli­ca­tions, HR Man­ag­er Eli­na Yrt­ti­a­ho rem­i­nisces about that first case.

– When we final­ly man­aged to get the new recruits to Fin­land, they need­ed to under­go the covid quar­an­tine accord­ing to the pro­to­col. We did their gro­cery shop­ping for them and tried to keep them enter­tained some­how.

Cer­tain­ly, inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment has felt a lot eas­i­er after the COVID restric­tions and spe­cial cas­es.

Path to becom­ing a 3D artist

Alek­san­dar has always been inter­est­ed in dig­i­tal art. He start­ed out with an online forum, where he drew ani­mat­ed stick fig­ures fight­ing each oth­er. He remem­bers that there used to be a big com­mu­ni­ty for that back in those days.

– I earned my bachelor’s degree in graph­ic design and worked in var­i­ous voca­tions, such as pho­tog­ra­phy, ani­ma­tion, web design, and graph­ic design. How­ev­er, I always knew I want­ed to work in the gam­ing indus­try. At some point I fell in love with 3D art and just nev­er looked back. Since then, I’ve worked with THQ Nordic, Robot Enter­tain­ment, Chi­nese Room, Sumo Dig­i­tal, and Room8 on numer­ous projects, pri­mar­i­ly focus­ing on styl­ized art.

Game artists design the visu­al con­text of the game, which affects the gam­ing expe­ri­ence and how suc­cess­ful the game can be. 3D artists use 3D graph­ics soft­ware to cre­ate and design all the ele­ments and sur­round­ings in the game.

– My role involves cre­at­ing styl­ized worlds. We con­cep­tu­al­ize dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios for our games and then I bring them to life in 3D space. We try our best to make our worlds imag­i­na­tive, while ensur­ing opti­mal per­for­mance on mobile devices, describes Alek­san­dar, explain­ing the work of visu­al design­ers.

Open mind for diver­si­ty and learn­ing

Eli­na states that they have learned new things from each recruit­ment. She explains that by pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty at Fin­ger­soft, they sup­port cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. At the same time, they cre­ate an atmos­phere of learn­ing from differ­ent cul­tures and back­grounds.

– We have found great tal­ents through inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment. The more diverse our com­pa­ny is, the bet­ter we can cre­ate fun games that are loved all around the world.

It’s tru­ly an advan­tage to have inter­na­tion­al tal­ents, when try­ing to attract an inter­na­tion­al tar­get audi­ence. Dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and cul­tur­al bases cre­ate more ver­sa­tile out­comes – also when it comes to visu­al ideas.

Alek­san­dar appre­ci­ates the amount of auton­o­my that they have in their work at Fin­ger­soft.

– In gen­er­al lev­el, we have an inde­pen­dent work­ing cul­ture, and we trust our peo­ple that they are spe­cial­ists in their own field, and they are capa­ble of mak­ing deci­sions that benefits their project and the com­pa­ny. Our peo­ple are expect­ed to take ini­tia­tive and own­er­ship of their work. We empha­size the impor­tance of trust, respect and respon­si­bil­i­ty, Eli­na explains.

Are inde­pen­dence and trust empha­sized more in the gam­ing indus­try or are they typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of Finnish work­ing life? Prob­a­bly it is a com­bi­na­tion of gen­er­al trends of Finnish work­ing life and free­ness of the gam­ing busi­ness.

– One thing that’s real­ly differ­ent com­pared to Ser­bia is how qui­et the work­place is in com­par­i­son. Which was odd at first, but I have come to like it.

Has the so-called Finnish quiet­ness start­ed to kick in?

Mobile gam­ing is a niche with its own spe­cial­ists

Fin­ger­soft has a mas­sive audi­ence with over 2 bil­lion down­loads of Hill Climb Rac­ing games. This cre­ates a sol­id foun­da­tion for adver­tis­ing their open posi­tions world­wide.

– Since our games have such a huge audi­ence and they are well known all over the world, it makes recruit­ing eas­i­er. We par­tic­i­pate in the gam­ing industry’s recruit­ment events such as the Games Jobs Fair and use oth­er gam­ing indus­try spe­cif­ic recruit­ment plat­forms as well as social media to reach tal­ents, Eli­na expli­cates.

Eli­na believes that Fin­ger­soft con­tin­ues hir­ing both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al tal­ents and stu­dents. Tak­ing care of the new­com­ers has a major impact on keep­ing the great tal­ents on board.

– In the future, I would like to imple­ment a Bud­dy pro­gram when recruit­ing from abroad. And of course, we will offer the same inte­gra­tion pack­age as before: paid flights, find­ing a fur­nished apart­ment for the first cou­ple of months, rent sup­port dur­ing the first months, full sup­port with all the bureau­cra­cy and offer­ing Finnish cours­es.

Accord­ing to Eli­na the best advice for nail­ing inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment would be to sup­port the inter­na­tion­al employ­ee with all the bureau­cra­cy along the way and give assis­tance with set­tling into a new coun­try.

– When the new hire gets help, they can bet­ter focus on their new job, and they feel secure. We orga­nize a Finnish class for all inter­est­ed expats since we think learn­ing Finnish will help with inte­gra­tion. The teacher comes to our office once a week and our peo­ple can use their work­ing hours to learn Finnish. We also orga­nize casu­al events in which spous­es are wel­come to find new friends and con­tacts.

Life in Oulu as a for­eign­er

Alek­san­dar feels that he has adapt­ed well to life in Oulu by form­ing his dai­ly rou­tines. He finds it amaz­ing to see the city trans­form from sea­son to sea­son.

– Pros of liv­ing in Oulu would include nature, but also real­ly nice peo­ple and the bike cul­ture for sure. For cons, as some­one who comes from south­east­ern Europe, the Novem­ber and Decem­ber night cycle can get pret­ty difficult. No real sun expo­sure for that long some­times gets to me.

– I think the great thing about Oulu is that it’s just urban enough. You’re nev­er more than a short walk away from nature, even though it has all the things you would expect from a city. 99% per­cent of peo­ple speak Eng­lish, which is great, espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning.

“Oulu is urban enough.”

Thera are a lot of cul­tur­al and art events, that Alek­san­dar likes as his favorites.

– I go to the art muse­um pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly and vis­it the var­i­ous small gal­leries around town when­ev­er they change reper­toires.

Being a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in set­tling in.

– There is a good inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in Oulu, but it can seem a bit scat­tered. I would love to see the com­mu­ni­ty come togeth­er more, which is why it’s great to have the Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu there. I’ve been to a few events, and it’s been pret­ty fun. Peo­ple seem to real­ly be down to chat there.

When Alek­san­dar is asked about the future expec­ta­tions of the work­ing life in Oulu, he replies:

– I just hope things con­tin­ue as they are, to be hon­est. It’s been great so far.

Our ser­vices for com­pa­nies seek­ing inter­na­tion­al tal­ents

We here at Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu assist com­pa­nies with find­ing suit­able inter­na­tion­al employ­ees or interns through our exten­sive net­work of con­tacts. We specif­i­cal­ly tar­get inter­na­tion­al tal­ent already liv­ing in Fin­land or Oulu. Busi­nes­sOulu’s job seek­er data­base con­tains many indi­vid­u­als with for­eign back­grounds and exper­tise across var­i­ous fields of busi­ness.

Addi­tion­al­ly, we orga­nize recruit­ment events and cam­paigns that your com­pa­ny can par­tic­i­pate in, for exam­ple, check out the free Job­Corner. We also orga­nize infor­ma­tion ses­sions and coach­ing ses­sions on inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Sal­la Hir­vo­nen, salla.hirvonen@businessoulu.com