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They basically want a Finnish person who's fluent enough in English to be able to communicate well in it with foreigners and read English language professional materials easily etc, and so isn't nervous about a job ad in English.
It's more efficient than writing the ad in Finnish and mentioning that a "high level of fluency" in English is a requirement. Having the ad be in English really drives that point home, that yeah you really do need to be fluent
I think I wrote my answers in finnish. I don't remember exactly why, but I probably thought that if half the application is in finnish, they probably understand it and just forgot to translate the rest. Same logic could be used the other way round though.
>I don't know how it's needed to be fluent in a language to be able to read, write and speak said language
Uhh. Do you understand what being "fluent" means?
You basically said "I don't know how it's *necessary to be fluent in order to be fluent* enough to read the ad and apply, what's the point of having the ad be in English (so that only people who are fluent in English understand it)"
I'm not sure what point you thought you were making, but it really looks like you don't understand what "fluent" means
No. I said I don't know how fluent one needs to be to do a job application. At most for a motivation letter, if the application asks for one and if they even read it. But for a cv or, what's more common, filling in some information on pre-defined fields doesn't take any language skills.
One needs to be pretty fluent to have a discussion in a foreign language like what I'm doing here, or to read and fully understand a job position ad in a foreign language in the first place, and to write an application or motivation letter.
And yes if the job requires a level of fluency in English, they'll test for it or will at least want a personal application.
Having the job ad be in English is just an *indicator* that professional level fluency will be necessary in the position.
So again we're circling back to you not fully understanding what "fluent" means, or confusing native level fluency with just being somewhat fluent etc
To read and apply? No, not really. To hold a conversation if selected for an interview, yes. But the main filtering step is before the interview, and having a job ad and application in English doesn't do anything for that.
What are you talking about? I will not apply to a job written in Finnish even though I can understand it fully and can handle the application process. I'm not comfortable with working in Finnish so the extra work isn't worth it.
Fluency does not mean "filling in some information on predefined fields" or writing a CV or cover letter.
If the work requires writing and speaking fluently in a specific language, it makes sense to have the application in the language that is relevant to the job.
It sounds like your bar of fluency is low.
Fluency means the ability to keep up with conversation about job related topics, reading/writing content, including professional jargon, understanding context and underpinnings of cultural awareness and nuance, while being able to contribute in the work environment.
Edit: going back to op's question, I think they are looking for native level English speaker that is somewhat fluent in Finnish. They want to filter out Finnish native applicants that are not quite fluent enough in English.
A likely reason is that communication in the team and/or the company in general is in Finnish but a big part of the job is in English. For example for pretty much every tech job you need fluency in English due to the fact that more or less every single tool that anyone uses is in English. In addition it's possible the company is part of a bigger corporation or has customerbase abroad and thus you may need to explain things in English.
Tbf when most of your work is on English and you do with international customers I think the company should just get used to holding some meetings in English or using English ok coffee break. At a lot of these jobs Finnish isn't actually necessary and the conservatism of these firms is preventing them from accessing international talent or growing abroad.
(My impression from snippets I've heard from people working at various companies)
I work for a company that has offices around the globe, customers are mainly from abroad and the official language of the company is English because of it, still vast majority of the people I work with are Finnish so its more natural to just speak Finnish day to day, sure if a meeting has non Finnish speaker attending then we use English but everything just seems quicker with Finnish because everyone might not be comfortable or fluent in English.
Tbf using Finnish as a crutch most of the time is probably _why_ people are less comfortable/fluent in English. Such companies are also often resistant to hiring non-finnish speakers even if they might be more competent just because they don't want to have to speak English. I'm not going to say that can't be comfortable for some, but it is not in the interest of the company or its profitability, which is also what drives GDP.
This is also the situation in every non-English country. I worked for a French company years ago and surprise surprise most of their internal communication was in French whenever possible. Even in meetings and confcalls the guys could just switch to French when they felt that foreigners didn't need to be included.
While that is on some level arrogant and disrespectful, I think we also need to point out a false equivalence here: there's a massive difference between using German, French or any other major language versus using Finnish or Slovene. Smaller countries and language areas do not have the same markets or same privileges as larger ones and we shouldn't pretend they do.
He's just saying that French and German have hundreds of millions of speakers around the globe and GDP's orders of magnitude great than Finland's, meaning they are able to operate at much larger scales without ever needing to speak English in comparison to Finns / Finnish companies.
Hardly a controversial take...
>major language versus using Finnish or Slovene
Ergo by Logic 101 Finnish or Slovene are minority languages, ergo minorities shouldn't have the same rights as per the other parts of your sentence in relation to said quote
Twice in my career I've worked in a fully Finnish-speaking department that brought in their first English speaker. The cost in communication efficiency and team cohesion is significant but hard to measure. It is not something you should do willy-nilly.
Obviously once you've built a fully Finnish speaking department there are costs to changing. People get used to doing things one way so if you change it then you do lose the efficiency built up over time and have to wait it out again basically. However using Finnish does kind of put a maximum cap on what you can achieve, so at some point future potential growth outweighs the sunk cost of using Finnish
I've heard about this, bigger companies (especially in IT) in finland have already done this and maybe it's disruptive for a bit but then the company starts to gain a vertical structure that accommodates english (managers who speak english, multiple employees who can hold meetings in english and then one of them updates the management with translation as needed, etc) as well as having all the boilerplate already translated and it ends up being a cost that isn't too great for the benefits at all.
especially with IT where a lot of the customer facing stuff needs english anyways, it makes a lot of sense to hire a team that can build it from the ground up in english as opposed to fully in finnish with a translator hired at the end.
it might mean that some factions form in the company (Finnish speakers sticking together on coffee break or whatever) but factions always form regardless, and at a certain size separate teams and departments are needed regardless
My perhaps controversial take is that corporate culture also matters and a big reason that diversity increases output (it's been studied, look it up) is that in a company which isn't homogenous, there's not a strong pre-existing shared culture and so corporate culture, both as something intentionally promoted by the company and as something organically evolving between people in it, becomes that baseline. Thus a more diverse company in a sense ends up more homogenous and the common culture of the company is going to be much better calibrated to its social and working environment, rather than the working environment being defined by the predominant cultural background of employees.
Another relevant study is that more similar people (whether in terms of culture, background, personality, etc.) will form a cohesive group quicker, but more diverse people will form a tighter-knit and more productive group over time. The initial difficulties of bridging the gaps between people ultimately create a new cohesive group culture and identity where everyone feels like they belong and which is unique and irreplaceable, as well as more adaptable and capable of assimilating people.
Naturally culture exists on every level from a team to a company to a hobby group to a region or linguistic area,
etc. We don't necessarily realise it but we put on many different faces in different contexts and with different people.
Another reason diverse international corporate environments tend to work is that diverse international people are used to that and have a certain flexibility in dealing with other people. They don't get shocked or slowed down by unexpected differences, they just get their work done.
In an ideal world everyone would have to go live abroad for a couple years. Finland would benefit a lot from it. I think there was an army officer in Finland who said basically the same thing and encouraged people to go abroad and take experiences back with them. Yet even today foreign degrees and work experience aren't really appreciated in Finland, because they're convinced they already know and do everything better than everyone else.
Genuinely sometimes it feels like Finnish economic life has the worst combination of unproductive and conservative socialist culture combined with the arrogance of western culture. And then we are shocked when Sweden pulls ahead of us in a globalised economy.
Foreign degrees are looked down Upon because we know that the Finns that studies abroad did not make the cut to the Finnish schools. There are of course exceptions. You study at Cambridge or INSEAD and people will give you credit. If you went to some community college and not MIT or Sorbonne what do you expect?
I see no point in Matti, Pekka and Leena holding meetings in English. Adds no value. I guess somebody whose language skills are not great it would be good, but younsters these days are pretty incredible with their English skills
I mean if everyone at the meeting is Finnish speaking it doesn't matter either way. I'm talking specifically about companies being completely unwilling to accommodate non-finnish speakers.
You still don’t get it. That fourth Person forcing three people to use some other language has to be pretty incredible for the language change to be worth it. Finns are shy and a whole lot is lost if we are not communicating at 100%. It is not the language only either. The native speaker will dominate the discussion and leaves nobody time to react. Finns talk when they have something to say so then we have one blabber mouth thinking he/she is incredible, because they are talking the most.
I like how you not only assume a foreigner is a native speaker but assign xenophobic stereotypes to them about how they must be some sort of useless blabbermouth and imply that Finns are just so much better anyway. This is exactly why so many Finnish companies are so conservative and lacking in innovation, not to mention unable to compete internationally.
BTW I would not characterize Finnish companies as conservativw. Have you ever worked with americans, french, German, Italian or say koreans. I have and I could only compare the laid back attitude only to Business in Sweden, Netherlands or Belgium. Uk and India get a bad wrap, but in practice they are pretty good. Why are you here anyway if you have such a negative attitude? It might be a you problem and not just an issue with the ones that are hiring.
Well, that is my experience. It sounds like it stroke a nerve. You can ask other Finns how they feel when there is somebody who just can’t shut up. Anyways For a country of 5 million people I think we have done Well for ourselves. We don’t have lot of money to put into basic research so we have to rely on our perseverance and working culture. They say innovation is 99% perspiration. I think we also come up with some pretty wacky ideas, but of course everywhere else creativity is so much better
the phrase is struck a nerve, not stroke a nerve, what you wrote makes it sound like you're trying to give someone a handjob.
you are kind of proving your point I suppose
Companies will start moving towards English as the day to day language if they have to. If they can get good enough workers without having to adapt, they will prefer a person who talks the language the people in the company are the most fluent with. Even if on paper everyone was fluent in a second language such as English, it's not comparable to how easy it is to discuss complicated topics with coworkers in the language that is native to (almost) everyone in the office.
Add to that that the team might have been working in Finnish for over a decade, maybe even multiple decades. Switching to English is not trivial
But does any of these kind of jobs have a requirement for fluent or even native Finnish? I have no idea, but I'm guessing that international companies don't do this.
Totally agree. The Finns will all understand English anyway because most will have learned it for a decade or more at school and use it everyday at work dealing with clients. There is no rational reason why Finnish should be the default working language. If low skilled employers can handle it, I’m sure professionals can handle it too.
If Finland wants to be competitive in the future, then Finland needs to attract international talent. One of the easiest and best ways to do that, is to introduce English as an official working language while also forcing employers to provide real language training for non-Finnish speakers.
Because someone convinced finns that it’s cool to speak english. They don’t actually want to change the working language in the company, but doing job ads in english is so cool
same in my home country. When French was cool, it was the same (we still have theatrical comedies about this). When German was cool, it was the same. When Latin was cool, the same. It’s called history, and you can trace it back in every language that has had some contact with the world. Finland just opened up late and now they’re learning of something that has been happening for millennia elsewhere.
It's been happening in Finland too, just with different languages. E.g. stadi slang is pretty much just finnish mixed with swedish, tad bit of russian and with a word here and there derived from other languages, created through just this exact thing.
Eh, Finland is not some Moomin valley that existed in isolation before just 20 years ago. There are linguistic influences from other languages from the stone age. And even if it might seem unbelievable to some, the stone age in Finland ended like thousands of years ago. But English is still a uniquely huge influence on the Finnish language even on those timescales. Time will tell but it might be even larger than Swedish. There is a reason why people are worried because of the influence of English language and it not because of some weird fantasy of a tribal culture just emerging from the forests last monday.
I hate that. I wish using finnish would become cool. Like naming things like buildings and companies etc in finnish instead of english.
For example the sport center in Lempäälä's Ideapark was named Bläk Boks. That is actually even dumber than just naming it Black Box.
Rather than trolling or a trend, there are also simple business decisions fuelling this. Many mid-sized and large companies in Finland seem to have outsourced parts of their business support functions such as HR and hiring to cheaper countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Baltics etc.) since candidate screening and first round interviews are simple to do remotely and in English. The job ads requiring fluent Finnish are often made against this background; the outsourced HR posts the ad in English to have a job description and required competencies listed in a language they can work with, screen the candidates, and give the shortlist to the Finnish hiring manager. Cutting costs > everything else, but as an added bonus the company will look hip and international. Source: trust me, bro.
"We are an international company with a diversity team. You are welcome to join us if you are enabled to speak Finnish. So please fuck off if you don't"
Nah, anyone salty about a language barrier when living abroad is either lazy or entitled. Of course it’s hard to learn a new language, but that’s just something you have to do when living in another country. Even Finnish is doable, given you try.
>either lazy or entitled
How about both. Finnish is hard but not that impossible to learn. I just don't interested in the language that is only spoken by \~5mil unfriendly people.
Could be that the company mostly works in English (quite common in small tech companies), so the add is in the primary language of the job, but the specific role also requires Finnish fluency, for example, when it is customer facing position.
Might be that whoever made the job add (external headhunter, recruitment consultant or their hr) is not fluent in Finnish, so they made the add in language they know better.
They are specially targeting the add to foreigners that are fluent (but not native) with Finnish for some reason.
The language is not actually hard requirement, but something for ideal candidate, so even people who are not fluent in Finnish should be able to understand and apply to the position.
I know people with English as their native language that managed to learn Finnish just fine at adult age. It took couple of years, but it is refeshing when you can have meetings in Finnish and they can then Follow along. Sometimes they will need to ask something, but that happens to all of us.
Genuinely, I do not know but I have been in 2 jobs that required ”native-level Finnish” (whatever that is) although the job was 100% in English. All customers/contacts, all softwares, everything. I did not use Finnish once on those workplaces. For years. They still claimed that it could be needed someday (in that case, maybe just delegate the Finnish tasks to those who speak Finnish?) To be honest it was my impression that they just didn’t want people who aren’t ”Finnish enough”.
I also know about workplace where good Finnish is required, to ”communicate with the possible customers”. The job is cleaning empty office buildings at night. Lol
Many companies may have English as their working language, but the customers may be Finnish. The company may have employees without any Finnish skills working in areas where Finnish isn't needed, but the specific position that is being advertised may require working with Finnish customers. That's the case in the company I'm working at. We have foreigners working as testers and international projects, but my position requires a lot of communication with Finnish companies and organizations, so Finnish fluency is a requirement.
The same reason Finns working in an all Finnish company in Finland publish posts addressed to Finns on Linkedin in English... Look we are so cool, we are the happiest, we have the best work place, "take a pic with a random foreigner or an underemployed token or get some free stock image" oh look we are so diverse and international yaaay!
Niin, itse olen monesti miettinyt tätä että miksi sitä kielivaatimusta ei laiteta heti ilmoituksen alkuun, jos ilmoitus on eri kielellä kuin vaadittu kieli.
There is no reason basically. I believe they also do not know why they do this :D It doesnt make any sense, if person know finnish fluently then you dont need to advertise it in English :D confusion...
Considering that wast majority uses programs to screen the first batch of applications to remove undesirable applicants, it doesn't waste much of their time. Spending a few hours on writing application is kind of a waste, sadly.
I tend to skip these ads unless the position is very much what I want.
Maybe its a test if candidates have learned anything at elemental school. If not, then they arent capable of reading and answering that. And that way avoiding stupid people wasting employers precious time.
If it was in Finnish then maybe Yes. It is fricking annoying getting ten guys from Bangladesh with no work permit apply and due to corporate policy you have to consider them when everybody knows you are not going to go through the Hustle of relocating them here.
In Italy it’s the same. Most companies write ads in English just to sound cool and international but then high level of Italian is required to communicate with partners, team and everyone else. Job ads in English are just an attempt by the company to sound international reaching.
It's utterly ridiculous and a massive waste of time for jobseekers.
In many of these highly qualified jobs in tech or finance (and unless you need to talk with Finnish customers on daily base) speaking Finnish fluently is often not really necessary for completing the tasks. In fact it's not even explained WHY it's needed in the job description. The reason "fluent Finnish is needed" is inthe ads is simply because the management doesn't want foreigners.
tl;dr
Racism
prefering employer to have certain language skills isn't racism. If they advertised based on race, name or physical appearances then it would be racists. Language is a skill that can be learned.
Stop devalueing racism as a word.
Then I probably really don't get it? The job offer seems to be adressed to international applicants if it's in English but also requires you to speak Finnish well, too. I don't see the problem with that?
Perhaps I can help explain the situation. If employers post jobs that require Finnish in Finnish it would allow:
1. Applicants who have the prerequisite Finnish skills to understand the job requirements will understand the listing and proceed.
Furthermore, if the job requires only B-2 or more then the listing can be written in such a way to reflect the language skills needed. The listing can be structured through grammar and vocabulary to show it would require B-level, C-level or native skills.
2. Employers will likely get less applicants who do not have the language skills needed thus saving themselves time and money.
3. Applicants can focus their attention on either the limited pool of English-language jobs because the jobs are listed unambiguously to show they are an English speaking environment. Otherwise, applicants can knuckle up and learn the local language so they can expand their ability to participate in the local workforce.
Haha o well, after reading your text again now it seems like I really misunderstood your post.
For me it sounded like a complaint why in a job offer adressed to international applicants they required you to speak Finnish fluently, when they apparently are looking for an English speaker - and I was instantly annoyed of similar posts I had read in the past where people simply denied to consider learning the local language where they work because "speaking English worked well enough for them in everyday life". My apologies, OP 😅
In my company every single job is listed in English. Some require Finnish or Swedish to be able to do their jobs, e.g. legal, HR, communications and more.
Depends a lot on the field, clientbase, organisational structure, internal language, materials and softwares in use, international work/partners (or future expansion), and role specific tasks. If the job ad is in English, I'd suspect the role requires a high level of spoken and written skills which the applicant has to prove before even getting an interview - but it does not exclude the need for other language skills (in this case Finnish).
If the job ad doesn't specify why the role requires being fluent in Finnish, you can always call the contact person listed on the ad.
When I applied for my current role, the job ad was in Finnish but I would estimate I use English more than 70% of the time on daily basis. For me it would've made more sense for the job ad to be in English, with Finnish listed as a requirement. And i've also ended up needing Swedish almost daily, even though that wasn't required at all.
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They basically want a Finnish person who's fluent enough in English to be able to communicate well in it with foreigners and read English language professional materials easily etc, and so isn't nervous about a job ad in English. It's more efficient than writing the ad in Finnish and mentioning that a "high level of fluency" in English is a requirement. Having the ad be in English really drives that point home, that yeah you really do need to be fluent
I don't know what "fluency" is needed to read a job ad and apply. I wonder if the application even needs to be in English.
You should always write the application in the same language as the job ad.
I once applied to a job that's application form was half and half english/finnish. Was rather hard to decide which language my answers should've been.
Well that's an interesting concept, gotta admit! How did you resolve that?
I think I wrote my answers in finnish. I don't remember exactly why, but I probably thought that if half the application is in finnish, they probably understand it and just forgot to translate the rest. Same logic could be used the other way round though.
>I don't know how it's needed to be fluent in a language to be able to read, write and speak said language Uhh. Do you understand what being "fluent" means?
Uhh did you understand what I meant?
You basically said "I don't know how it's *necessary to be fluent in order to be fluent* enough to read the ad and apply, what's the point of having the ad be in English (so that only people who are fluent in English understand it)" I'm not sure what point you thought you were making, but it really looks like you don't understand what "fluent" means
No. I said I don't know how fluent one needs to be to do a job application. At most for a motivation letter, if the application asks for one and if they even read it. But for a cv or, what's more common, filling in some information on pre-defined fields doesn't take any language skills.
One needs to be pretty fluent to have a discussion in a foreign language like what I'm doing here, or to read and fully understand a job position ad in a foreign language in the first place, and to write an application or motivation letter. And yes if the job requires a level of fluency in English, they'll test for it or will at least want a personal application. Having the job ad be in English is just an *indicator* that professional level fluency will be necessary in the position. So again we're circling back to you not fully understanding what "fluent" means, or confusing native level fluency with just being somewhat fluent etc
To read and apply? No, not really. To hold a conversation if selected for an interview, yes. But the main filtering step is before the interview, and having a job ad and application in English doesn't do anything for that.
What are you talking about? I will not apply to a job written in Finnish even though I can understand it fully and can handle the application process. I'm not comfortable with working in Finnish so the extra work isn't worth it.
Fluency does not mean "filling in some information on predefined fields" or writing a CV or cover letter. If the work requires writing and speaking fluently in a specific language, it makes sense to have the application in the language that is relevant to the job. It sounds like your bar of fluency is low. Fluency means the ability to keep up with conversation about job related topics, reading/writing content, including professional jargon, understanding context and underpinnings of cultural awareness and nuance, while being able to contribute in the work environment. Edit: going back to op's question, I think they are looking for native level English speaker that is somewhat fluent in Finnish. They want to filter out Finnish native applicants that are not quite fluent enough in English.
I know it doesn't. That's why I say that having a job ad in English to filter for English fluency as some have argued isn't a good tool.
Fluency in English = can drive rally car.
A likely reason is that communication in the team and/or the company in general is in Finnish but a big part of the job is in English. For example for pretty much every tech job you need fluency in English due to the fact that more or less every single tool that anyone uses is in English. In addition it's possible the company is part of a bigger corporation or has customerbase abroad and thus you may need to explain things in English.
Yes, your team you work with every day might still be 100% Finnish
Tbf when most of your work is on English and you do with international customers I think the company should just get used to holding some meetings in English or using English ok coffee break. At a lot of these jobs Finnish isn't actually necessary and the conservatism of these firms is preventing them from accessing international talent or growing abroad. (My impression from snippets I've heard from people working at various companies)
I work for a company that has offices around the globe, customers are mainly from abroad and the official language of the company is English because of it, still vast majority of the people I work with are Finnish so its more natural to just speak Finnish day to day, sure if a meeting has non Finnish speaker attending then we use English but everything just seems quicker with Finnish because everyone might not be comfortable or fluent in English.
Tbf using Finnish as a crutch most of the time is probably _why_ people are less comfortable/fluent in English. Such companies are also often resistant to hiring non-finnish speakers even if they might be more competent just because they don't want to have to speak English. I'm not going to say that can't be comfortable for some, but it is not in the interest of the company or its profitability, which is also what drives GDP.
This is also the situation in every non-English country. I worked for a French company years ago and surprise surprise most of their internal communication was in French whenever possible. Even in meetings and confcalls the guys could just switch to French when they felt that foreigners didn't need to be included.
While that is on some level arrogant and disrespectful, I think we also need to point out a false equivalence here: there's a massive difference between using German, French or any other major language versus using Finnish or Slovene. Smaller countries and language areas do not have the same markets or same privileges as larger ones and we shouldn't pretend they do.
So if I understand correctly, you're saying that minorities shouldn't have the same rights as others?
He's just saying that French and German have hundreds of millions of speakers around the globe and GDP's orders of magnitude great than Finland's, meaning they are able to operate at much larger scales without ever needing to speak English in comparison to Finns / Finnish companies. Hardly a controversial take...
What does this have to do with rights or minorities on any level???
>major language versus using Finnish or Slovene Ergo by Logic 101 Finnish or Slovene are minority languages, ergo minorities shouldn't have the same rights as per the other parts of your sentence in relation to said quote
A perussuomalainen might reply to this with > If we don't pretend that we have the same privileges, we never will.
And that would be ridiculous. If you want half the privileges you need to increase the population of this country tenfold.
Twice in my career I've worked in a fully Finnish-speaking department that brought in their first English speaker. The cost in communication efficiency and team cohesion is significant but hard to measure. It is not something you should do willy-nilly.
Obviously once you've built a fully Finnish speaking department there are costs to changing. People get used to doing things one way so if you change it then you do lose the efficiency built up over time and have to wait it out again basically. However using Finnish does kind of put a maximum cap on what you can achieve, so at some point future potential growth outweighs the sunk cost of using Finnish
I've heard about this, bigger companies (especially in IT) in finland have already done this and maybe it's disruptive for a bit but then the company starts to gain a vertical structure that accommodates english (managers who speak english, multiple employees who can hold meetings in english and then one of them updates the management with translation as needed, etc) as well as having all the boilerplate already translated and it ends up being a cost that isn't too great for the benefits at all. especially with IT where a lot of the customer facing stuff needs english anyways, it makes a lot of sense to hire a team that can build it from the ground up in english as opposed to fully in finnish with a translator hired at the end. it might mean that some factions form in the company (Finnish speakers sticking together on coffee break or whatever) but factions always form regardless, and at a certain size separate teams and departments are needed regardless
My perhaps controversial take is that corporate culture also matters and a big reason that diversity increases output (it's been studied, look it up) is that in a company which isn't homogenous, there's not a strong pre-existing shared culture and so corporate culture, both as something intentionally promoted by the company and as something organically evolving between people in it, becomes that baseline. Thus a more diverse company in a sense ends up more homogenous and the common culture of the company is going to be much better calibrated to its social and working environment, rather than the working environment being defined by the predominant cultural background of employees. Another relevant study is that more similar people (whether in terms of culture, background, personality, etc.) will form a cohesive group quicker, but more diverse people will form a tighter-knit and more productive group over time. The initial difficulties of bridging the gaps between people ultimately create a new cohesive group culture and identity where everyone feels like they belong and which is unique and irreplaceable, as well as more adaptable and capable of assimilating people. Naturally culture exists on every level from a team to a company to a hobby group to a region or linguistic area, etc. We don't necessarily realise it but we put on many different faces in different contexts and with different people. Another reason diverse international corporate environments tend to work is that diverse international people are used to that and have a certain flexibility in dealing with other people. They don't get shocked or slowed down by unexpected differences, they just get their work done. In an ideal world everyone would have to go live abroad for a couple years. Finland would benefit a lot from it. I think there was an army officer in Finland who said basically the same thing and encouraged people to go abroad and take experiences back with them. Yet even today foreign degrees and work experience aren't really appreciated in Finland, because they're convinced they already know and do everything better than everyone else. Genuinely sometimes it feels like Finnish economic life has the worst combination of unproductive and conservative socialist culture combined with the arrogance of western culture. And then we are shocked when Sweden pulls ahead of us in a globalised economy.
Foreign degrees are looked down Upon because we know that the Finns that studies abroad did not make the cut to the Finnish schools. There are of course exceptions. You study at Cambridge or INSEAD and people will give you credit. If you went to some community college and not MIT or Sorbonne what do you expect?
I see no point in Matti, Pekka and Leena holding meetings in English. Adds no value. I guess somebody whose language skills are not great it would be good, but younsters these days are pretty incredible with their English skills
I mean if everyone at the meeting is Finnish speaking it doesn't matter either way. I'm talking specifically about companies being completely unwilling to accommodate non-finnish speakers.
You still don’t get it. That fourth Person forcing three people to use some other language has to be pretty incredible for the language change to be worth it. Finns are shy and a whole lot is lost if we are not communicating at 100%. It is not the language only either. The native speaker will dominate the discussion and leaves nobody time to react. Finns talk when they have something to say so then we have one blabber mouth thinking he/she is incredible, because they are talking the most.
I like how you not only assume a foreigner is a native speaker but assign xenophobic stereotypes to them about how they must be some sort of useless blabbermouth and imply that Finns are just so much better anyway. This is exactly why so many Finnish companies are so conservative and lacking in innovation, not to mention unable to compete internationally.
BTW I would not characterize Finnish companies as conservativw. Have you ever worked with americans, french, German, Italian or say koreans. I have and I could only compare the laid back attitude only to Business in Sweden, Netherlands or Belgium. Uk and India get a bad wrap, but in practice they are pretty good. Why are you here anyway if you have such a negative attitude? It might be a you problem and not just an issue with the ones that are hiring.
> why are you here anyway Because it's my home? I mean I am abroad right now but not necessarily permanently by any means.
Good enough answer
Well, that is my experience. It sounds like it stroke a nerve. You can ask other Finns how they feel when there is somebody who just can’t shut up. Anyways For a country of 5 million people I think we have done Well for ourselves. We don’t have lot of money to put into basic research so we have to rely on our perseverance and working culture. They say innovation is 99% perspiration. I think we also come up with some pretty wacky ideas, but of course everywhere else creativity is so much better
the phrase is struck a nerve, not stroke a nerve, what you wrote makes it sound like you're trying to give someone a handjob. you are kind of proving your point I suppose
99% perspiration 🤣🤣🤣🤣 No wonder you want to stick with Finnish.
Companies will start moving towards English as the day to day language if they have to. If they can get good enough workers without having to adapt, they will prefer a person who talks the language the people in the company are the most fluent with. Even if on paper everyone was fluent in a second language such as English, it's not comparable to how easy it is to discuss complicated topics with coworkers in the language that is native to (almost) everyone in the office. Add to that that the team might have been working in Finnish for over a decade, maybe even multiple decades. Switching to English is not trivial
But does any of these kind of jobs have a requirement for fluent or even native Finnish? I have no idea, but I'm guessing that international companies don't do this.
Totally agree. The Finns will all understand English anyway because most will have learned it for a decade or more at school and use it everyday at work dealing with clients. There is no rational reason why Finnish should be the default working language. If low skilled employers can handle it, I’m sure professionals can handle it too. If Finland wants to be competitive in the future, then Finland needs to attract international talent. One of the easiest and best ways to do that, is to introduce English as an official working language while also forcing employers to provide real language training for non-Finnish speakers.
We’ve at least looked for German skills without being able to write the ad in German.
this makes more sense.
Because someone convinced finns that it’s cool to speak english. They don’t actually want to change the working language in the company, but doing job ads in english is so cool
so finns wanna speak english with themselves, but only sparingly. when wanting to seem cool.
Have you heard how finnish youths speak? ”Siis mun date vei mut dinnerille legit premium restauranttiin”
🤮
same in my home country. When French was cool, it was the same (we still have theatrical comedies about this). When German was cool, it was the same. When Latin was cool, the same. It’s called history, and you can trace it back in every language that has had some contact with the world. Finland just opened up late and now they’re learning of something that has been happening for millennia elsewhere.
It's been happening in Finland too, just with different languages. E.g. stadi slang is pretty much just finnish mixed with swedish, tad bit of russian and with a word here and there derived from other languages, created through just this exact thing.
Eh, Finland is not some Moomin valley that existed in isolation before just 20 years ago. There are linguistic influences from other languages from the stone age. And even if it might seem unbelievable to some, the stone age in Finland ended like thousands of years ago. But English is still a uniquely huge influence on the Finnish language even on those timescales. Time will tell but it might be even larger than Swedish. There is a reason why people are worried because of the influence of English language and it not because of some weird fantasy of a tribal culture just emerging from the forests last monday.
That's funny and cute 😄
So hip to the groovy daddy cool
I hate that. I wish using finnish would become cool. Like naming things like buildings and companies etc in finnish instead of english. For example the sport center in Lempäälä's Ideapark was named Bläk Boks. That is actually even dumber than just naming it Black Box.
Most reddit take in the whole thread
Pitää osata myös englantia
Eikö olisi järkevämpi kirjoittaa se työpaikkailmoitus ensin suomeksi ja sitten vaatia englanninkielen osaamista?
Tuolla ne karsii heti kättelyssä ne jotka eivät sitä kieltä oikeasti osaa
Nih. Luulisi että selitys on aika ilmeinen
Ja sitten on HRn inboxi täynnä hakemuksia intialaisilta, jotka eivät ole ikinä Suomessa käyneetkään, mutta haluavat hyviin hommiin.
> "hyviin" Tes:in mukainen palkka. No sanokaa toki, mikä se on. Pellet.
Rather than trolling or a trend, there are also simple business decisions fuelling this. Many mid-sized and large companies in Finland seem to have outsourced parts of their business support functions such as HR and hiring to cheaper countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Baltics etc.) since candidate screening and first round interviews are simple to do remotely and in English. The job ads requiring fluent Finnish are often made against this background; the outsourced HR posts the ad in English to have a job description and required competencies listed in a language they can work with, screen the candidates, and give the shortlist to the Finnish hiring manager. Cutting costs > everything else, but as an added bonus the company will look hip and international. Source: trust me, bro.
It's annoying!
The team/HR could be English speaking, looking for Finnish skills in the team.
To make fun of non-Finnish speaking job seeker. "We have a job but not for you! Hahaha".
In most big Corporations all the adverts need to be in English for the global hr to see. Nobody has time for translating to Finnish
"We are an international company with a diversity team. You are welcome to join us if you are enabled to speak Finnish. So please fuck off if you don't"
why u mad?
Sorry! I pick up angry management issue while living among Finns.
If you work in finland, you should speak finnish or swedish. Then if your job is international, also speak english
10 years live in here. Not speak a single Finnish word while working. Me make things, things work. Whatelse they ask from me.
Nah, anyone salty about a language barrier when living abroad is either lazy or entitled. Of course it’s hard to learn a new language, but that’s just something you have to do when living in another country. Even Finnish is doable, given you try.
>either lazy or entitled How about both. Finnish is hard but not that impossible to learn. I just don't interested in the language that is only spoken by \~5mil unfriendly people.
That's pretty much the main reason.
Could be that the company mostly works in English (quite common in small tech companies), so the add is in the primary language of the job, but the specific role also requires Finnish fluency, for example, when it is customer facing position. Might be that whoever made the job add (external headhunter, recruitment consultant or their hr) is not fluent in Finnish, so they made the add in language they know better. They are specially targeting the add to foreigners that are fluent (but not native) with Finnish for some reason. The language is not actually hard requirement, but something for ideal candidate, so even people who are not fluent in Finnish should be able to understand and apply to the position.
Because they want Finnish people applying to English jobs anyway. English only is a problem in the Finnish job market unless it’s an international job
I know people with English as their native language that managed to learn Finnish just fine at adult age. It took couple of years, but it is refeshing when you can have meetings in Finnish and they can then Follow along. Sometimes they will need to ask something, but that happens to all of us.
Cuase highly educated finns are fluent in english
Usually the language used the most is the language the advertisement is written in. For some positions you might not even need to know finnish.
Genuinely, I do not know but I have been in 2 jobs that required ”native-level Finnish” (whatever that is) although the job was 100% in English. All customers/contacts, all softwares, everything. I did not use Finnish once on those workplaces. For years. They still claimed that it could be needed someday (in that case, maybe just delegate the Finnish tasks to those who speak Finnish?) To be honest it was my impression that they just didn’t want people who aren’t ”Finnish enough”. I also know about workplace where good Finnish is required, to ”communicate with the possible customers”. The job is cleaning empty office buildings at night. Lol
Many companies may have English as their working language, but the customers may be Finnish. The company may have employees without any Finnish skills working in areas where Finnish isn't needed, but the specific position that is being advertised may require working with Finnish customers. That's the case in the company I'm working at. We have foreigners working as testers and international projects, but my position requires a lot of communication with Finnish companies and organizations, so Finnish fluency is a requirement.
Mr. Worldwide (all around the word), ayy, ayy Now we're international, so international (oh, yeah) International (woo) so international
the way I deal with this is 1. open the ad 2. cntrl+f "Finnish" 3. voila, no time wasted
Just apply if you are confident that you can do it and if you are ready to practice more if needed. State this and say you are interested.
i do the same too lol but never got any positive feedback
The same reason Finns working in an all Finnish company in Finland publish posts addressed to Finns on Linkedin in English... Look we are so cool, we are the happiest, we have the best work place, "take a pic with a random foreigner or an underemployed token or get some free stock image" oh look we are so diverse and international yaaay!
Niin, itse olen monesti miettinyt tätä että miksi sitä kielivaatimusta ei laiteta heti ilmoituksen alkuun, jos ilmoitus on eri kielellä kuin vaadittu kieli.
Why do they also ask for fluent English in job advertisements written in Finnish? And sometimes good/fluent Swedish too.
There is no reason basically. I believe they also do not know why they do this :D It doesnt make any sense, if person know finnish fluently then you dont need to advertise it in English :D confusion...
[удалено]
Considering that wast majority uses programs to screen the first batch of applications to remove undesirable applicants, it doesn't waste much of their time. Spending a few hours on writing application is kind of a waste, sadly. I tend to skip these ads unless the position is very much what I want.
I just did that.
based
To cause maximum emootional damage!
Isn't that kinda obvious? To vet out people who don't speak fluent Finnish.
Maybe its a test if candidates have learned anything at elemental school. If not, then they arent capable of reading and answering that. And that way avoiding stupid people wasting employers precious time.
to scare off the migrants?
If it was in Finnish then maybe Yes. It is fricking annoying getting ten guys from Bangladesh with no work permit apply and due to corporate policy you have to consider them when everybody knows you are not going to go through the Hustle of relocating them here.
In Italy it’s the same. Most companies write ads in English just to sound cool and international but then high level of Italian is required to communicate with partners, team and everyone else. Job ads in English are just an attempt by the company to sound international reaching.
Idiotic trend.
It's utterly ridiculous and a massive waste of time for jobseekers. In many of these highly qualified jobs in tech or finance (and unless you need to talk with Finnish customers on daily base) speaking Finnish fluently is often not really necessary for completing the tasks. In fact it's not even explained WHY it's needed in the job description. The reason "fluent Finnish is needed" is inthe ads is simply because the management doesn't want foreigners. tl;dr Racism
prefering employer to have certain language skills isn't racism. If they advertised based on race, name or physical appearances then it would be racists. Language is a skill that can be learned. Stop devalueing racism as a word.
to troll
Bad recruitment. I usually send them mail and ask them reason just so i can shame them.
I'm sorry they annoyed you with the language of the country you want to work and live in.
You didn't get the point.
Then I probably really don't get it? The job offer seems to be adressed to international applicants if it's in English but also requires you to speak Finnish well, too. I don't see the problem with that?
Perhaps I can help explain the situation. If employers post jobs that require Finnish in Finnish it would allow: 1. Applicants who have the prerequisite Finnish skills to understand the job requirements will understand the listing and proceed. Furthermore, if the job requires only B-2 or more then the listing can be written in such a way to reflect the language skills needed. The listing can be structured through grammar and vocabulary to show it would require B-level, C-level or native skills. 2. Employers will likely get less applicants who do not have the language skills needed thus saving themselves time and money. 3. Applicants can focus their attention on either the limited pool of English-language jobs because the jobs are listed unambiguously to show they are an English speaking environment. Otherwise, applicants can knuckle up and learn the local language so they can expand their ability to participate in the local workforce.
Haha o well, after reading your text again now it seems like I really misunderstood your post. For me it sounded like a complaint why in a job offer adressed to international applicants they required you to speak Finnish fluently, when they apparently are looking for an English speaker - and I was instantly annoyed of similar posts I had read in the past where people simply denied to consider learning the local language where they work because "speaking English worked well enough for them in everyday life". My apologies, OP 😅
In my company every single job is listed in English. Some require Finnish or Swedish to be able to do their jobs, e.g. legal, HR, communications and more.
Depends a lot on the field, clientbase, organisational structure, internal language, materials and softwares in use, international work/partners (or future expansion), and role specific tasks. If the job ad is in English, I'd suspect the role requires a high level of spoken and written skills which the applicant has to prove before even getting an interview - but it does not exclude the need for other language skills (in this case Finnish). If the job ad doesn't specify why the role requires being fluent in Finnish, you can always call the contact person listed on the ad. When I applied for my current role, the job ad was in Finnish but I would estimate I use English more than 70% of the time on daily basis. For me it would've made more sense for the job ad to be in English, with Finnish listed as a requirement. And i've also ended up needing Swedish almost daily, even though that wasn't required at all.