Luotsi Joensuu organized a recruitment event on 26th of March, 2024 at Sokos Kimmel hotel. I, Ayeman Rahman, and my colleague Saul Hernandez Morales, went there on behalf of Pohjois-Karjalan ELY keskus (ELY Centre for North Karelia) to interview both companies and organizations to inquire how this type of events are useful for them and jobseekers and how they can benefit from this.
Different service & technology companies, public healthcare, educational, governmental Institutes, municipalities participated in that event. Some institutes came in search of personnel, and some to offer trainings which can help jobseekers to get a placement in the labour market. In this event we got the opportunity to interview some companies and a jobseeker about the purpose of visiting this kind of event, biggest challenges, advantages, feedback and many more.
Barona
Barona is a recruitment and staffing agency. The main purpose of visiting this event for Barona was to increase their visibility, so that jobseekers can learn about Barona and apply for jobs through them.
As a recruitment agency, they find lack of Finnish language skill as the biggest challenge in terms of hiring people. Other than that, due to political and economic reasons there is a shortage of vacancies. Also, they said companies needs to change their policies to accept international people as employees, they need to be open to different cultures, as there might be a shortage of Finnish employees in the near future, so if companies do not accept international employees now, they will suffer from employment shortage later on. Also, the new generation is more open to accept Internationals than the previous one.
Through this kind of events, Barona can advertise itself to people who don’t know about them, in short it is a marketing tool for them. To get jobs in this kind of events, Barona advice jobseekers to be active, to take initiative. Jobseekers should be alert to every kind of opportunities to get employed, also they need to be brave enough to ask for jobs from the employers.
Barona expects from jobseekers to learn Finnish language from their schools as it is required by most of the jobs, other than that, they also want jobseekers to learn communication skills from their educational institutes, to grow their network. Also, they want schools to collab with them, so they can know about the skills of the students and also, they can inform the schools about the required skills from the companies, so that schools can train their students according to that.
Eezy
Eezy came to the event with the expectations to find professionals. But unfortunately, they don’t have enough jobs in English, as not many companies are willing to take foreigners as employees.
To recruit people, Eezy demands correct qualifications, like different licenses; such as Hygiene Passport, Occupational Health Safety card, Alcohol Passport, which can be obtained from schools. Eezy tells jobseekers to be motivated and take initiatives to get employed. According to them, schools should also teach CV creation. They want to engage with the schools to learn about the international talent.
Eezy finds this kind of events very helpful, as they get to know about various experts and talents. Also they learn about new companies to work with them. In a nutshell, it is a great place to grow your network.
Youpret
Youpret was present at the event of Tyotä-Karnevaalit to expose their brand to jobseekers interested in the field of interpretation and programming as they are developing a software that does language interpretation.
They were quite satisfied with the number of applications they got in the event and also that their brand got some sort of advertisement in the spot. From their perspective there´s no obstacle to hire new people as they believe it only depends on the own initiative of the jobseeker to reach out.
They also pointed out that nowadays social and behavioural skills are very important to actively participate in the workplace and find the available options in the labour market.
Lastly, they commented that universities and other institutions could help jobseekers with events such as this one, and most importantly to constantly update their study curriculam to meet the needs of companies in various fields and ease the hiring process for them as well as creating more opportunities for the jobseekers.
Lidl
Lidl, as a supermarket franchisee, came to this event to offer jobs at their shops. Similar to other companies, Lidl requires Finnish language skills from the applicants to hire them. But Lidl gave us feedback that, it was a challenge for them to work in a such crowded event, as it gets hard to talk when there are huge number of applicants asking for information.
On the other hand, this event let them to inform people that there are vacancies in Lidl because most of the time applicants don’t even know about their vacancies. So, Lidl advice jobseekers to learn to search for information in the internet, and have the courage to ask and apply for the job.
Lidl requires applicants to be responsible, punctual, social, fit to corporate customs. And they want schools to organize events like this, so that, they can engage with students closely, and asks schools to teach their students about technical skills which are relevant to the job market.
RTK
RTK attended the event as a human resource agency, and they told us that it is possible to work all over the Finland through them which is a great opportunity for the jobseekers. But due to slow economic growth and recession they realize at the same time that how difficult it is to convince and to promote the hiring and integration of international talent, so they started a project named Talent Boost, Ylä Savo where they will attempt to incentivize over 200 companies and organizations alike to partake in the project to attract internationals to work and their progressive integration into the Finnish labour market. They are making the organizations and companies alike home country for the international jobseekers.
RTK was suggesting universities to arrange internships for the international students so that they can use it as a gateway to the Finnish labour market.
In the conversion with RTK specialist, it was concluded that there is yet a lot of work to do in terms of integration of international talent, however, they feel positive about the forecast that current project provide.
Riveria
Riveria participated that event to offer Finnish language courses for the international people, which is demanded by the almost all companies in the North Karelia region. Also they have some training programs in English only in Joensuu.
To make the path easier for international people to get into the Finnish taught programs, Riveria is collaborating with Kansanopisto, where they are arranging a language test equivalent to YKI testi, so international people can get admitted to these courses earlier as YKI testi is slow process according to them.
Finnish language is a challenge for jobseekers
In the event, we got the opportunity to interview a jobseeker, who studies at Karelia UAS. He came to this event, as it was compulsory for one of his courses, and he finds it really helpful as he gets to know about the companies and their requirements. But Finnish language becomes the biggest challenge for applicants like him to get a job from this companies, as they don’t have any English-speaking jobs. As he has lacking in Finnish fluency, he can’t see opportunities past that. So lack of Finnish skills stood as a wall between him and his future career.
According to him, there is a big gap between the students and teachers, as international students had a different study curriculum which makes it hard for them to understand the teaching, in his words, the teaching does not match according to the standard of immigrant teaching as they miss the dots. But he really appreciates the courses which helps them to learn about the companies and helps them to get into the labour market; such as mandatory internships, which is a gateways according to experts.
As a jobseeker, he advices others to showcase your best skills as you never know what is demanded by whom, and to be open for all opportunities as he is.
Saul Hernandez Morales & Ayeman Rahman
International Interns at ELY Centre for North Karelia
Pohjois-Karjalan ELY-keskuksen blogi 