Finnish Trade Unions

While working in Finland, the question of joining or not a trade union will likely come up. According to your university education, you might have already been approached by the union according to your profession.

Here is an introduction to the topic:
What every employee should know about Finnish Trade Unions (PDF).

Top three benefits of belonging to a union, according to me:

• In the case of becoming unemployed, the wage received for unemployment is significantly higher than if you don't belong; i.e. Kela pays approximately 30€/day, whilst belonging to the union will allow you to receive ~70-80€/day (according to your previous salary.
• Different kinds of assistance: career , legal, salary , etc.
• The membership fee is tax free (still to be confirmed in practice)

Fair salaries in Finland

Have you ever been in the situation that you go to a job interview in Finland and have absolutely no idea what is a normal salary level to ask for? How to know what a fair when negotiating salary?

Here in Finland its not very common for people to share how much money they are making. However, you might have already heard about some figures from your university's Career Services' center or from your open finnish friends.

If you have not had such luck in finding relevant information for you, here I will present some information that might help you:

Every year the workers union of economics students (SEFE) publishes a Palkkatutkimus (salary research/investigation). By joining this asociation you get access to several services, most of which are unkown to me and mostly in Finnish, but one that has been very helpful is the Palkkaneuvonta (salary advisory services). When you call the salary specialist they will advise you on how to use the interactive tool and find data about employees with similar conditions as you and tell you how much they earn. The report is only published in Finnish and Swedish.

In the report about salaries in 2010, there were more than 5000 people who participated. Out of which the median salary reported was 4520€ and the average was 5278€. These figures change widely according to your date of graduation, your level in the organisation, your specialization and if you live in the Helsinki area.

As another example you should know that students wo have one year since their graduation have a median salary of 3000€ and an average salary of 3163€, but 25% of them make over 3400€.

To see the full report you can see an article by SEFE and register to their pages.

Additionally, if you want to know more about salaries in Finland and elsewhere. You can visit Glassdoor.com a site were people state their salaries and companies. The information is anonymous, so be aware of the level of seriousness.

Tired of queuing at the Poliisi

I you have ever had to go to the Helsingin Ulkumalaispoliisi to renew your student or working resident permit you know that you have to spend a long time waiting in lines. Sometimes we talk about many hours.

Waiting is a sign of social inefficiency, especially if you are making workers wait (as opposed to unemployed), because those hunders of hours equal a loose-loose situation both in salary and tax for people and government repesptively. I decided to complain about this, and suggested that they have some sort of time reservation system.  To my surprise, they replied to my letter by stating t hat such a system already exists.

The problem was that if you use the English version of the Poliisi.fi site, then you will never see the link. In any case, if you want to reserve time with the poliisi for any police matter, you are able to do so through this page:

https://www.ajanvaraus.fi/isl/rms.do?url=poliisi

Some job hunting best practices

In general, I consider that the job hunting process is tough and it might require you to spend several hours a day for the applications. In my case, I followed some advices from career coordinators and other successful job hunters. I can share some of the best practices I used:

• Create different versions of your CV and cover letter, this means, you should shape them according to the description of the job your are applying to, describing your previous achievements, studies and experiences that are more relevant to the position. Try to keep your CV as simple as possible. Be precise.

• Make short phone calls to companies before applying and show your interest by asking questions related to the job ad. Sometimes it helps, sometimes is doesn't, but probabilities increase for sure.

• Register all your applications in an excel file, google doc, etc. and save all the information you need, eg. company names, job descriptions, dates, contacts. Most of the companies remove their job ads from their websites after the application's deadlines. It will also help you to keep track of your applications and if an employer calls you, it would likely easy to remember why they are calling you.

• If you have a job interview, make a previous research about the company. Try to research case studies, financial reports, products or services. This would definitely give you a plus from your competition. And always show you are interested in the position, if you really are.

• After a job interview, try to register the questions they have asked you. This would work as a feedback for other interviews.

• Learn Finnish. It is always positive that you have at least some basic skills of the language. In both interviews I had with the Finnish SMEs, they asked about my level of Finnish (in Finnish). Even if you still have basic skills, this definitely shows your interest in the country in a long-term basis.

Another job hunting experience in Finland (2011)

I have heard many successful and unsuccessful stories about the job hunting process in Finland. Some people send hundreds of applications and are invited to only a few interviews and finally they don't get any job; others send less than hundreds and are invited to many interviews or none; others send few applications and are invited to few interviews and they get the job. There is every situation for each person...

I sent around 50 applications from december 2010 to april 2011, which is a really low amount comparing to other experiences. I applied to different finnish companies including SMEs and multinationals. I started with the big ones such as Nokia, Basware, UPM, Tieto, Metso, Wärtsilä, Kone, and so on. Then, I started looking for job positions in small and medium companies by checking job ads posted in mol.fi and aarresaari.net.

During that time, I have only received 3 responses: 1 phone interview by a multinational company based in London with offices in Helsinki, 1 email invitation to an interview and 1 phone invitation to an interview. This two last responses were from small companies in Finland, one of them in Turku and the other one in Helsinki. I finally got a full-time job in the last one.

From my experience, the advantage of small and medium companies is that the recruitment process is usually simpler than bigger ones. As you might notice in previous posts, in big companies the recruitment process is hard and stressful, involves many interviews with different people and many pyschological and personal tests. In SMEs, there is usually one interview, and some of them might require you to do a technical test according to the requirements of the job ad.

• My first interview was by an international phone call from London. It lasted approximately half an hour and asked many typical things such as my studies and past experiences, why I am applying for the company, what is my ideal job position, if I am prepared for travel and at the end they asked me if I had some questions for them. After that call, I didn't received any calls from them again. I tried to make a follow-up of the application, but unfortunately I couldn't contact the interviewer.

• My second interview from another application lasted about two hours and I basically were asked to explain about my education and previous working experiences. They also asked a few typical things such as strengths, weakness, hobbies, interests in general. Not big deal, just try to be precise. Unfortunately, after two weeks from that interview, they sent me an email saying that they have selected another person.

• In my third interview from another company (the one I am happily working for nowadays) lasted about three hours. They started with a basic technical test which last for one hour. Then, they went through my CV and asked me about my studies and previous experiences. Suddenly, they started explaining about the projects they have in mind and giving more deep details about the job. After two hours, they just went out of the meeting room for a while and when they came back, they started saying they are really interested in my profile and they would like me to start working for them immediately. I was really surprised. We started talking about salary and dates. They even started introducing me other colleagues and explaining some basic stuff in Finnish (so they can also test my language skills).

I believed that being persistent is the key. I know sometimes it is hard to keep the motivation up, specially when you mostly receive negative responses or no response at all. But remember to apply as much as your availability allows you, so you can increase the probabilities to be the chosen one.

How the pyramid is divided in Finland

In my journey to understand the finnish bureaucracy I became curious of how the taxes in Finland are classified according to income. In this image you can find them.

*Source: Finland's tax office  http://www.vero.fi/

It was also very interesting for me to observe how many people in Finland are in each category.

Job search in Finland 2010

When the time for making summer/permanent job applications again (january-march) I kind of expected to get a little more luck than the previous year. Especially since now I had work experience in a large well-known Finnish company.

My approach was similar as the previous year, that is to begin with Finland's largest companies. My favorites, in no particular order, are:

Ericsson, Metso, Outokumpu,Teliasonera, Wärtsilä, Accenture, Capgemeni, Kone, Nice Solutions, Stora Enso, UPM-Kymmene, Elcoteq, Cerion, Nokia, Ernst & Young, Nordea, amongst others.

Working in Finland for the first time

After approximately 70+ applications for different job positions in 2009 I was lucky enough to get one interview that led to a summer job (the interview and preparation is explained in a previous post). This was my first work experience in Finland. The summer internship lasted for a total of four months and took place in Helsinki.