“Dig Deep Into Your Con­nec­tions”

The Mega­Match­mak­ing, a pre­mier recruit­ment fair where recruiters and job­seek­ers have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act, was held on the 14th of Sep­tem­ber at Tullisal­li in Oulu.

One of the major high­lights of the event was the pan­el dis­cus­sion host­ed by Kamal Singh from ELY Cen­tre. The pan­el dis­cussed how to inter­na­tion­al­ize the job mar­ket in North Ostro­both­nia and the impor­tance of Finnish lan­guage skills.

Read Kamal’s sto­ry: “What I love about the peo­ple here is that they are great lis­ten­ers”

The dis­cus­sion fea­tured four pan­elists: Pekka Pau­ro­la an entre­pre­neur and own­er of 1Bar, Sari Päivärin­ta from OP Finan­cial Group, She­fat Islam, Busi­ness Advi­sor from Business­Oulu and Arek Cwiek from Osu­uskaup­pa Ari­na. Pekka and Sari are locals but have migrat­ed to Oulu at some point in their lives, left for oth­er coun­tries, and then hap­pi­ly found their way back to the city.

She­fat found her­self in Oulu after hear­ing of the great Finnish edu­ca­tion sto­ry from a col­league. Com­ing as a master’s stu­dent in autumn 2021, she came, she saw, and she stayed. Arek, on the oth­er hand, gave in to his wife’s pres­sure to move to Fin­land, final­ly set­tling in Oulu in Sep­tem­ber 2020, as he could not find 101 rea­sons why they should not move to Fin­land from Poland.

Talks in the cor­ri­dors point to a very tough job mar­ket for the inter­na­tion­al tal­ents in Oulu, but She­fat had a rel­a­tive­ly fair expe­ri­ence. Hav­ing sent out about twen­ty appli­ca­tions nation­wide, she set­tled for a posi­tion at Business­Oulu – thanks to the net­works she made dur­ing her intern­ship in the same orga­ni­za­tion the pre­vi­ous year.

Arek, who appar­ent­ly hates send­ing out CVs, moved to Fin­land and main­tained his Pol­ish job posi­tion only to call it quits lat­er deter­mined to immerse him­self in the Finnish lan­guage and cul­ture via the job mar­ket. Although explic­it­ly will­ing to take up a vol­un­teer posi­tion in the com­pa­ny where his wife worked, he was sur­prised to get a paid job, an oppor­tu­ni­ty that pow­ered his desire to learn the Finnish lan­guage.

Pekka Pau­ro­la.

For Pekka run­ning a hos­pi­tal­i­ty busi­ness, inter­na­tion­al tal­ent is a no brain­er, and he took up the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed to him in 2022 when the city received a high num­ber of immi­grants from Ukraine. And from this, he now val­ues the expe­ri­ences that inter­na­tion­al tal­ents may bring into an orga­ni­za­tion. Asked on how his com­pa­ny has man­aged to inte­grate inter­na­tion­al tal­ent in the wake of the tra­di­tion­al­ly hard to learn Finnish lan­guage, he was quick to point out that; he had a hard time at school, hav­ing spent time in Nor­way and how he thinks, as the leg­end goes that Finns love beer, he’s pret­ty sure that the per­son who con­struct­ed Finnish gram­mat­i­cal rules was under the influ­ence!

In all this, he empha­sized how mind­set shift from the employ­er to try inter­na­tion­al tal­ent, and the employ­ee to learn­ing the Finnish lan­guage is the way to go.

With her expe­ri­ence at OP Finan­cial Group in Cul­ture and Change Man­age­ment, Sari, who appre­ci­ates inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion, had a few tips to share for inter­na­tion­al tal­ents, such as the need to search for com­pa­nies that have both Eng­lish and Finnish web­sites. Pekka’s tip is to min­gle with the right peo­ple in your field of inter­est, which leads to a social set­ting and build­ing the social cap­i­tal that can pro­pel you to your next posi­tion. To the stu­dents, he encour­aged intern­ships in strate­gic orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies that may serve as the next employ­er or will be a good rec­om­men­da­tion for a job after grad­u­a­tion.

“Dig deep into your con­nec­tions. Do what you can do, not what you want to do.”

Asked on the best tips for find­ing jobs, Arek and She­fat shared sim­i­lar tips stress­ing the impor­tance of build­ing a net­work. “Dig deep into your con­nec­tions. Do what you can do, not what you want to do.” Arek stressed, point­ing out how impor­tant one needs to always ask, as keep­ing qui­et will also leave you with neg­a­tive answers. She­fat was emphat­ic that one should not dis­re­gard their pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences as they are “part of you…and to be your­self” and for stu­dents to use the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu’s Career Cen­tre for jobs, intern­ships and sum­mer posi­tions.

When it came to Finnish lan­guage, which is arguably one of the main bar­ri­ers for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent to get their appro­pri­ate job posi­tions, Arek was quick to point out that “If you want to get into a person’s head, use the lan­guage they under­stand, if you want to get into their heart, use their native lan­guage.”

She­fat point­ed out that as much as her col­leagues are very accom­moda­tive, she is eager to learn the lan­guage. Kamal under­scored the impor­tance of tak­ing the lan­guage as a skill that can open doors. Pekka and Sari were in har­mo­ny with cement­ing that there are orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with chang­ing the lan­guage cul­ture in com­pa­nies overnight. How­ev­er, they were opti­mistic that times are chang­ing, and Fin­land is open­ing up to using Eng­lish as a work­ing lan­guage wher­ev­er nec­es­sary.

Talk­ing about his expe­ri­ence in the restau­rant indus­try, Pekka point­ed out how work­ing with Finnish clients is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn the lan­guage for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent while orga­ni­za­tions should view inter­na­tion­al tal­ents as assets that bring diver­si­ty in deci­sion mak­ing and prob­lem solv­ing. “Learn to inte­grate inter­na­tion­al­i­ty in your busi­ness or watch your com­pa­ny die” Pekka con­clud­ed. For Sari, embrac­ing inter­na­tion­al tal­ent can­not be overem­pha­sized as she called for recruiters to “wake up as you are miss­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties…” She fur­ther stressed that there is a need for edu­ca­tion and moti­va­tion, a lit­tle push­ing to encour­age inter­na­tion­al­i­ty.

The con­sen­sus among the pan­elists was that there is a need for con­ver­gence between the inter­na­tion­al job seek­ers and employ­ers to meet­ing halfway. For inter­na­tion­al tal­ent, acquir­ing Finnish lan­guage skills should be seen as a pro­fes­sion­al skill or lin­guis­tic cap­i­tal, while employ­ers were called upon to view inter­na­tion­al tal­ent as assets that can spur the busi­ness growth.

Text: Jobert Ngwenya

Sari Päivärin­ta, Arek Cwiek, Kamal Singh, Pekka Pau­ro­la and She­fat Islam.