“If you want to work in Oulu, believe in your­self and push hard”

Vik­tors Sobolevs came to Oulu from Latvia, and stud­ied at Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences. Now, he works as a busi­ness prod­uct man­ag­er at Polar.

Who

My name is Vik­tors Sobolevs, 28, and I was born in Riga, Latvia. At the age of 16, I moved to Fin­land to study at Sotkamo IB High School.

Why

I chose to attend Degree Pro­gramme in Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness at Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (Oamk) over the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu because Oamk pri­ori­tis­es prac­ti­cal skills.

In 2014, my girl­friend and I moved from Sotkamo to Oulu to study at Oamk. She was accept­ed to the health care cam­pus, while I got accept­ed to the busi­ness cam­pus to study inter­na­tion­al busi­ness. We want­ed to move to a city that was rel­a­tive­ly com­pact and had all the essen­tials; hence, Oulu was the first choice for us.

While study­ing at Oamk, I gave many pre­sen­ta­tions with my class­mates. This undoubt­ed­ly helped me to devel­op the abil­i­ty to col­lect my thoughts and find­ings into a short and pre­sentable form. At my cur­rent work­place, Polar, I give many pre­sen­ta­tions to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers.

I took a few begin­ner Finnish cours­es in Sotkamo, and sev­er­al more at Oamk. To be fair, despite pass­ing all my cours­es with good grades, I didn’t progress much in learn­ing and under­stand­ing Finnish; this was part­ly my fault, as I didn’t have a strong moti­va­tion to learn the lan­guage at that point.

My most sig­nif­i­cant progress while learn­ing Finnish hap­pened when I start­ed lis­ten­ing and inter­act­ing with my col­leagues dur­ing morn­ing cof­fee and lunch breaks. Despite Eng­lish being our com­pa­ny lan­guage, the major­i­ty of peo­ple who speak the same moth­er tongue switch to it when­ev­er they have a chance.

What

Oulu is a com­pact city where you can find almost every­thing you need in dai­ly life. My girlfriend’s and my cam­pus­es were locat­ed one kilo­me­tre away from our dor­mi­to­ry in Välkkylä stu­dent vil­lage, which was very con­ve­nient.

The most shock­ing thing I dis­cov­ered about Oulu was that peo­ple cycle in it all year, even when it’s ‑15 degrees or cold­er out­side. The cycling infra­struc­ture in Oulu is excel­lent; you can eas­i­ly get from one side of the city to anoth­er by bike at any time of the year.

I’m very much into sports – cur­rent­ly, triathlon. I also like avi­a­tion and trav­el­ling. When I lived in Oulu, I played at Oulun Reipas as part of a foot­ball team that com­pet­ed in the local fourth divi­sion.

Regard­ing Fin­land in gen­er­al, I appre­ci­ate the hon­esty dis­played by most Finnish peo­ple. I also want to high­light the country’s clean tap water; this was new to me when I moved from Latvia.

Where

While study­ing in Oulu, I worked at SOL as a clean­er. Polar Elec­tro, the place where I did my study-relat­ed prac­ti­cal train­ing, was one of SOL’s clients, and I washed the win­dows at Polar’s HQ a few times while dream­ing about get­ting a job there.

After fin­ish­ing my prac­ti­cal train­ing, I was offered a per­ma­nent posi­tion at Polar. My cur­rent job title is busi­ness prod­uct man­ag­er. In this posi­tion, I’m respon­si­ble for Polar’s high-end sports and out­door watch­es.

In my posi­tion, I work with the Research & Devel­op­ment, Mar­ket­ing, Sales, Cus­tomer Care and many oth­er teams, and I’m involved in prod­uct con­cept­ing from Day 1 all the way to the ramp-down at the end of the product’s life­cy­cle.

This posi­tion is new to me, as I just moved to the Busi­ness Prod­uct Man­age­ment team a few months ago. Pre­vi­ous­ly, I led Polar’s glob­al social media team, as well as worked in var­i­ous oth­er mar­ket­ing-spe­cif­ic posi­tions.

Cur­rent­ly, my girl­friend and I live in Espoo. We moved there in 2019 after both of us grad­u­at­ed.

How

My first job in Fin­land was deliv­er­ing adver­tise­ments dur­ing my first year of high school. My first full-time job came through Polar after I fin­ished my prac­ti­cal train­ing.

If you are cur­rent­ly think­ing about where to do your prac­ti­cal train­ing, I strong­ly rec­om­mend choos­ing a place where you’d be inter­est­ed in work­ing much longer than your prac­ti­cal training’s dura­tion.

If you real­ly want to live and work in Oulu, believe in your­self, push hard and don’t for­get about net­work­ing. Try to attend var­i­ous work-relat­ed meet-ups organ­ised by Business­Oulu.

Like stu­dent life, work life is a con­stant learn­ing process. First and fore­most, no one expects you to know every­thing. Don’t hes­i­tate to ask ques­tions and edu­cate your­self using the inter­net and oth­er infor­ma­tion sources.

At Polar, my onboard­ing process was a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, and all the col­leagues with whom I’ve been work­ing over the past six years have been cheer­ful and help­ful.

I came to Polar as a for­eign stu­dent with­out any work expe­ri­ence in mar­ket­ing, so I had to prove to both the team and myself that I’m a valu­able team mem­ber.

The abil­i­ties to quick­ly find infor­ma­tion and lis­ten to oth­er opin­ions, even if they dif­fer from my own, are skills that have helped me in my pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment.

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.
• 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.

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Tama­ra Louis: “Oulu is a per­fect envi­ron­ment for fam­i­lies”

Sharmin Farah: “North­ern Lights – the best thing to expe­ri­ence while liv­ing in Oulu”