Meet the Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sadors!

Chiara, Moustafa, Sharmin and Niy­ati are Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sadors 2022. Get a glimpse of their life and thoughts!

Niy­ati Kandikan­ti, India

“Namaste! I am Niy­ati Kandikan­ti, a phar­ma­cist, a bio­chemist, an Inter­na­tion­al Dou­ble-Degree Mas­ters’ stu­dent and an Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sador, who hails from India and cur­rent­ly lives in the beau­ti­ful city of Oulu.

While I’m com­plet­ing my pro gradu, which is the final master’s the­sis here in Fin­land, I am also an active stu­dent at Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu – as an OYY stu­dent mem­ber rep­re­sen­ta­tive in sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tive com­mit­tees, an ambas­sador, a well­be­ing tutor etc.

Oulu is a very hap­pen­ing place and for some­one like me who enjoys being a part of events, I have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to organ­ise well­be­ing and cul­tur­al activ­i­ties.”

Moustafa Khairi, Egypt

“Moi! It is Moustafa Khairi from Alexan­dria, Egypt. I came to Oulu in Jan­u­ary 2021 to pur­sue my mas­ter’s degree in Com­put­er Sci­ence with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing as a cloud engi­neer at Nord­cloud and I am also an Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sador.

Since I came to Fin­land, I have been part of dif­fer­ent enti­ties and stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions and I am the founder and lead of Google DSC at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu. Liv­ing, study­ing, and work­ing in Oulu have been an excit­ing and reward­ing expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ly and on my per­son­al lev­el. Oulu’s high-qual­i­ty life and the extra beau­ti­ful nature make it one of the most unique places in the world!”

Chiara Boset­ti, Italy

“Hel­lo, my name is Chiara and I am Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sador com­ing from Italy. I work as Doc­tor­al Researcher at Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu at its Pro­tein and Struc­tur­al Biol­o­gy Research Unit.

I came to Oulu one year ago and imme­di­ate­ly felt like this was the per­fect place to start my career and where to begin an amaz­ing jour­ney of per­son­al growth.

Today, I think of Oulu as my home. What I like the most is to bike around the city to explore and enjoy every cor­ner. I love the snow, paint­ing and be around peo­ple!”

Check out Chiara’s sto­ry, too.

Sharmin Farah, Bangladesh

“Salam. I am Sharmin Farah. I am an Inter­na­tion­al Tal­ent liv­ing in Oulu, work­ing as a Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Visidon Oy. A cou­ple of days back, I got a Green Award from Green Inge­nious Busi­ness Pvt. Ltd., India for my con­tri­bu­tion to pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able and finan­cial­ly viable solu­tions for tack­ling glob­al issues through my par­tic­i­pa­tion in #socialstorm2016 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu. Though it is a lit­tle con­tri­bu­tion, every lit­tle thing mat­ters, right?

Recent­ly, I have got select­ed as an Oulu Tal­ent Hub ambas­sador. The main idea is for join­ing this ambas­sador pro­gram to be a part of the Oulu Tal­ent Hub net­work and build con­nec­tions between inter­na­tion­al tal­ent and local com­pa­nies.

When any inter­na­tion­al tal­ent comes to a dif­fer­ent coun­try, they get an envi­ron­men­tal and cul­tur­al shock. That hap­pened to me as well. While com­ing to Fin­land, my first impres­sion was why there are not so many build­ings but trees! Lat­er, I came to know that Fin­land is a coun­try of trees and nev­er-end­ing forests. Accord­ing to rough esti­mates, there are about ten trees per every per­son in the world in the Finnish forests. As I love nature, it was a bless­ing to come here!

If I want to talk about the cul­tur­al shock, you can­not be able to see so many peo­ple in the street. And peo­ple always make dis­tance from each oth­er in the bus sta­tion. That is also not a com­mon thing in my home coun­try! You can adjust but it needs time.

Finnish peo­ple do not ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion at first, but you can talk about any­thing with them when it is start­ed. They even respect any pro­fes­sion­al per­son whether they are deliv­ery work­ers or clean­ers. That is the best thing I found on them!

Oulu’s weath­er is full of sur­pris­es. It is dark and extreme cold in win­ter while it is sun­ny and hot in sum­mer. If some­one comes from a trop­i­cal coun­try, it will be hard at first to adjust to the win­ter weath­er but if you dress up well, you can still enjoy the snow and the beau­ti­ful and calm win­ter weath­er. The light peri­od of the North is known for its long sum­mer day and short win­ter day. In Oulu, sum­mer days are nice and beau­ti­ful. You can see 22 hours of light in sum­mer and enjoy the beau­ty of the bright sky!

Final­ly, there is a con­cept called ‘sisu’ which means strength of will. In my 5 years roller-coast­er jour­ney, I have devel­oped this atti­tude, thanks to my par­ents who have always moti­vat­ed me through this jour­ney. Any per­son can eas­i­ly devel­op ‘sisu’ after com­ing here, which will help them to adjust to any sit­u­a­tion and over­come any kind of shock!”

Read more about Sharmin Farah.

Oulu Tal­ent Hub

• Oulu Tal­ent Hub brings togeth­er and devel­ops region­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and ser­vices for inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub offers tal­ents, for exam­ple, con­tacts with local com­pa­nies, match­mak­ing events and info ses­sions, com­pa­ny vis­its, a tan­dem mod­el for intern­ship pro­grammes and career coun­selling. For Oulu Tal­ent Hub, inter­na­tion­al tal­ent is defined as inter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ists, employ­ees, researchers and stu­dents.
• Four ambas­sadors start­ed with Oulu Tal­ent Hub’s ambas­sador pro­gramme in April and it will last until the end of year 2022.
  Ambas­sadors will share their expe­ri­ences of liv­ing, study­ing and work­ing in Fin­land and in Oulu.
• Oulu Tal­ent Hub aims to pro­mote inter­na­tion­al tal­ent employ­ment to com­pa­nies in the Oulu region and open up employ­ment paths for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent.
• Project part­ners are Business­Oulu, Oulu Cham­ber of Com­merce, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences and Oulu Voca­tion­al Col­lege.
• The project is fund­ed by The Euro­pean Social Fund, ESF.
• Learn more about Oulu Tal­ent Hub at oulutalenthub.fi.