Last week the Finnish Government launched a new website called 'Jobs in Finland', which was presented to the public as the first online platform offering a summary of vacancies that do not require to speak Finnish.
'Jobs in Finland' says in its terms of use that it intends to be the first digital service for Finnish companies to "show open jobs for international talents." And, at the same time, the first online platform where international job seekers can filter vacancies geographically, by industry or work area without being excluded by the impassable barrier that for many is the Finnish language.
On Tuesday, 21 January, Foreigner.fi was the first journal that reported the creation of this platform. And the initiative, which is part of the Business Finland network, was enthusiastically received by many foreigners who rushed to search for vacancies on its pages.
However, enthusiasm cooled soon. In few hours, job seekers learned that, despite the promises made, some of the vacancies advertised on the website also require good knowledge of Finnish to be applied.
Georgina Fogas wrote on her LinkedIn wall: "When I found out that the Government launched a website to advertise English job offers for non-Finnish speakers I was quite thrilled that I could put to rest my CMD/CTRL+F skills and webscrapping tendencies. But so it seems that, as a true developer soul, I was made to find a bug on the first job posting I looked at: they ask for Finnish. And of course, the eternal situation with advert written in English... Am I missing some tiny detail here?"
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The most wanted professionals
According to the Linkedin profile, the disappointed Georgina is a software developer. Supposedly, she is the kind of professional most wanted right now by Finnish IT companies.
Other international users criticized on social media this situation and also the fact that in some of the categories advertised there is not even one single vacancy. Some of them expressed those complaints through comments at Foreigner.fi Facebook posts.
Government officials said that the job advertisements are posted and/or handled through cities, Talent Hub employers and selected staff in TE offices.
Although at least two job ads demanding "good communications skills in Finnish" exist on the website, one can still find many other job ads that do not require Finnish language skills.
