Study&Stay paves the way to working life
The services are being developed by the International Tampere HUB, a project that began last summer, in cooperation with the Tampere Universities community, the City of Tampere and the Pirkanmaa TE Office.
The project is part of the national Talent Boost programme, which aims to make Finland a strong alternative for international talents and to encourage Finnish employers and increase their capacity to hire them.
“We have naturally already solved challenges related to finding employment for international students, but not to this extent or in such close collaboration. We have received new resources from the project especially for the career guidance of international students,” says Kaisa Keskitalo, Manager at Study Services at Tampere University.
Students would like to stay in Tampere
A new service platform called Study&Stay is being developed for international students, which will be launched next autumn. The platform will contain information, materials, coaching, mentoring, and various courses for students to improve their employment prospects or to prepare them for becoming an entrepreneur while they are still studying.
Employers’ needs are mapped directly from businesses and via such intermediary organisations as the Tampere Chamber of Commerce, the Technology Industries of Finland, the Finnish Association for Human Resource Management, and Business Tampere.
“The international talents are introduced to employers with campaigns and business fairs. Students are advised on job searching and enterprises in the recruitment of international employees. We published a guidebook on the latter recently,” says Nuppu Suvanto, Project Manager of International HUB Tampere.
According to Hanna Pihlajarinne, Manager, Business from Tampere University of Applied Sciences, the first results have been well received.
“Tampere is attractive as a place of residence, and many international students would like to stay here after graduation even though that might not have been the plan when they first arrived. However, they need a job first,” Pihlajarinne says.
A one-stop service model
Suvanto points out that over the years, the City of Tampere has been very active in the integration of immigrants into working life and collaborated to employ international talents most recently in the Talent Tampere programme and the Tampere Ambassador Network. Good experiences and networks have accumulated to be further transferred.
“The one-stop-shop service model has already been successfully implemented in Tampere, of which the International Tampere Skills Centre and the Migration Info Office Mainio are good examples,” Suvanto notes.
“In the International HUB, we counsel businesses especially. Counselling is available digitally and at a service point. The key is that the businesses do not need to know which organisation they should contact when they need their questions answered,” Suvanto says.
Read more!
Guidebook on recruiting an international employee in the Tampere region (in Finnish)
Text: Päivi Eskelinen
Photo: Jonne Renvall
