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.
