Talent Boost Summit Provided Information and Tools for Recruiting International Talents
The event was held at Scandic Helsinki Aviacongress on 23rd of November 2023, and it brought together jobseekers, employers, public service providers and non-governmental organizations. The morning event was primarily aimed at companies and through the seminar and workshops concrete information and practical tools were presented and discussed regarding recruiting international talents and multicultural work communities. In addition to companies, key stakeholders and partners working on the topic of internationalization were also among important target groups of the summit. Whereas, in the afternoon, the TalentMatch recruitment fair brought together employers and highly educated international talents.
The theme of the day was “Boost your business with international talent”. The Summit included presentations from successful international Finnish companies. In addition to the company presentations, the event included four different workshops for companies on international recruitment, language awareness, cooperation with educational institutions and managing a diverse work community.
Mayor of the city of Vantaa, Pekka Timonen, in his opening speech emphasized that currently organizations and companies currently require international talents. Before, we used to focus on what we could provide to international talents. However, the situation has changed now, and we are on the receiving end, and they are offering their skills to us. Incoming international talents will strengthen and globalize internationalize our innovation efforts, attracting more international investment and creating additional jobs.
Moreover, the Mayor highlighted that the key objective of initiatives promoting international recruitment is to encourage employers to recruit international talent and they become well versed in the process. Additionally, such initiatives aim to make Finland an attractive place to do research, to work, to study, and become an entrepreneur.
In addition, He stressed the importance of having a diverse and culturally equal society to ensure the employability of immigrants already living here as well as to increase the settlement of international students and researchers who have graduated from Finland.
Lotte Koivulainen, a Project Specialist and one of the organizers of the event, says that studies that show a culturally diverse working life makes work communities more creative, while customers and employees are more satisfied. In addition, a multicultural workplace makes workplaces and brands more attractive and companies more profitable. She continues to stress that a truly diverse workplace means people representing different cultural backgrounds, genders, ages, experiences and ways of thinking.
Koivulainen also adds that increased diversity in companies corelates with nearly a 20% increase in productivity and over 30% higher profitability which is used as a leverage to attract even more talents to the company and that puts such companies many steps ahead of their peers on the road to future success.
Another speaker of the Summit was Roya Ranjbar, an Iranian who has worked in Finland for five years. She shared her experience of working life in Finland through the eyes of an international talent. Ranjbar, who studied industrial design at university in Iran and later worked as a lecturer, came to Finland to do her doctorate degree but ended up working at Aida, where she is now an operations manager. Similar to the other fellow keynote speakers, she called for the careful consideration of the Finnish language requirement in recruitment when looking for international talent.
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"It would be important not to require Finnish in recruitment, as this discourages many great talents. Many people come to work in Finland for short periods and learning Finnish can be challenging. In addition to work, it would be great if there were more leisure activities in English. It would be nice if, in addition to language studies, there were something to do together with Finns. It would help with integration.”
International Talent and Employers met at the TalentMatch Recruitment Fair
The afternoon's TalentMatch event was a recruitment and networking event that aimed to promote a concrete match between existing international skills with the companies' needs. Lately, there has been a lively debate in the media and in the public on how we can continue to safeguard our welfare state in the face of a radically shrinking working age population. And many experts agree that labor immigration and more employment of international talent and immigrants living in Finland is key to solving the skills shortage.
Unlike many other cities in Finland, Vantaa has a young, growing, and multicultural population. Director of the Vantaa city Vitality Tommo Koivusalo, in his opening speech stressed that that the city of Vantaa is taking diversity as an advantage and a great opportunity for the city and going forward, the city will focus on creating opportunities through concrete actions.
The TalentMatch event brought together highly skilled international talents and employers through a recruitment fair, one-to-one meeting and a pitching session. Companies presented their activities and career opportunities on the exhibition stands where ´talents can go through and explore existing opportunities. It was also possible for company representatives and talents to meet each other in one-to-one discussions. Around 150 professionals visited the fair and 25 companies and 10 organizations targeting international jobseekers residing in Finland participated in the fair.
There was also a pitching session at the TalentMatch event in which both talents and companies gave great pitches and participants had the opportunity to listen and vote the winner of the best pitch, in which a marketing expert Mengzhen Zhang, was voted by the audience as the winner.
Kirjoittanut: Ann-Mari Berlin, Lotte Koivulainen, Blen Hailu & Iida Ågren
Kuvat: Milja Veini
