According to the WiE survey results, the rather conventional way of sending applications to employers in response to vacancies advertised was still the main form of looking for work, even though the role of the Internet has in the recent years become more important than responding to job advertisements placed in lead-ing newspapers. Consultlead-ing different types of employment offices and recruitment agencies does provide help for the job seeker, but as noted above, the private agen-cies were used more than the public ones. Many of those who moved to the United Kingdom to look for work explained that one simply has to get used to operating with the private agencies, which belong to the for-profit branch of the European mobility industry. As this male respondent explains:
“To keep it short, in England, especially in London’s finance sector, there is a countless number of agencies that typically handle the recruitment processes. They come in many forms. Typically pretty superficial and slick operations, unbelievable bullshit.”56 (Survey respondent 993, b. 1968, MA in Economics from Finland.) One’s social network plays an important role in finding work: the weak ties to for-mer colleagues, contacts from university and one’s friends and extended family
pro-56. Lyhyesti, englannissa, eritoten lontoossa rahoitusalalla on lukematon maara agency:ja joiden kautta hakuprosessit yleensa hoidetaan. Naita on sitten moneen lahtoon. Yleensa hyvin pintapuolista ja lipe-vaa toimintaa, uskomatonta paskanjauhamista.
vide information on possible job openings. Weak ties are also used in headhunting:
being offered a job by a prospective employer or her representative was common especially with survey respondents working in the banking, finance, and consultancy sectors. Often career advancement opportunities came from a former colleague, as one of the interviewees, Tapio (b. 1977, UK), a lawyer working in London explains:
”... my current boss and I worked together at my previous workplace (...). He quit that job a couple of years ago and has since recruited a number of colleagues... or headhunted them from his former employer. (...) Headhunters are much, much more active here in London than they are in Finland, here the advertising of jobs on the open market is much more limited. (...) either the headhunter contacts you or you contact the headhunter, only a few jobs can be applied for directly.”57 Both Tapio and Mikael (b. 1976), an investment director at a bank in Luxembourg, were originally headhunted to companies abroad from their jobs in Helsinki. Net-works based on professional contacts and personal acquaintances have also aided the career of Mika (b. 1976, UK), a financial consultant who was headhunted into a dif-ferent field from his former London job. Also Susanna (b. 1978, UK), a consultant with a very international career, gets frequent calls from rival companies, due to her good reputation among the colleagues in her field. Even though she is not actively considering leaving the company in which she has worked for years, she says “…I always think about the situation for a while when a headhunter calls me. Would this offer be interesting? But on the other hand, I really like my work here.”58 Listening to what the headhunters are offering is her way of keeping track of what she calls
“the dynamic job market of her field.”59
The importance of understanding the operation of the local system in the destina-tion country was highlighted in the open-ended responses to quesdestina-tion 20 of the WiE survey: What was it like to look for work abroad? At least two major factors that vary from country to country can be identified: the channels one has to use to access information about vacancies and the kind of application one is supposed to hand in to be considered as a serious applicant. In some countries limited information on job openings can be an obstacle for finding work, as this female respondent from Spain explains:
57. ... mun nykynen pomo oli mun kanssa mun edellisessä työpaikassa töissä (...)hän lähti sieltä itte pari vuotta sitten pois ja sit… hän on hiljalleen muutamia tyyppejä rekrytoinu… tai headhuntannu sielt vanhasta putiikista (...) se täytyy sanoo täst Lontoon työmarkkinoista ylipäätäkin, että headhuntterit on paljon paljon aktiivisempia täällä kun Suomessa, et semmonen avoimien työpaikkojen haku on pal-jon palpal-jon rajotetumpaa kun mitä se on Suomessa, (...) et täällä joko headhuntteri ottaa suhun yhteyttä tai sä otat yhteyttä headhuntteriin, et harvoja paikkoja täällä haetaan suoraan.
58. mä aina mietin vähän aikaa kun ne headhuntterit soittaa, et voisko tää olla mielenkiintoista mut toisaalta mä kyl tykkään näistä mun duuneista
59. dynaaminen markkina
“In my current location it [looking for work] was difficult, because employment is mainly found via your connections to other people, and because I am foreign, getting into these networks takes time. I sent applications to a number of places and got my current job through my connections.”60 (Survey respondent 158, b.
1969, MA in social sciences from Finland, some doctoral studies in Spain.) Also Anna (b. 1980, Iceland61), one of the interviewees notes the same phenomenon on the importance of networks in Spain: “I would have had to start from zero. There the local networks and local experience are valued a lot: you simply do not get hired to a senior level position just like that.”62 For Anna the solution to the problem of lacking local contacts and social capital was found in choosing to stay outside of the actual local labour market. She had set up her own company as soon as she gradu-ated in Finland, and she continued to work for Finnish and international clients as a freelance journalist based in Spain. There is, however, considerable variation between different European destinations, as in some other countries the process of finding work seems to be much easier. The importance of dealing with private recruitment agencies was highlighted by many from both the United Kingdom and Ireland. As this female respondent explains:
“It is pretty easy to look for work in Ireland, there are plenty of jobs. All you have to do is send a CV to the recruitment agency and they arrange interviews and soon you start getting job offers.”63 (Survey respondent 55, b. 1983, BA in business and economics from a university of applied sciences from Finland.) Making an application that fits the local norm can be another difficulty, especially if one was educated abroad and did not become socialised into that particular job-seeking system as a student. As this female respondent from Belgium explains: “The job seekers’ ‘application pack’ for the job I applied for was demanding. When I filled in the form, it was about 20 pages long. This I have not encountered in Finland”64 (survey respondent 287, b. 1977, MA in social sciences from Finland). Despite the difference, she was successful in getting the job she applied for. Also those writing from Germany commented on how the format of the application seemed to be very
60. ”Nykyisessa asuinpaikassani se oli vaikeaa, silla tyosuhteet solmitaan lahinna suhteiden kautta ja ulko-maalaisena suhteiden solmiminen kestaa. Lahetin hakemuksia moniin eri paikkoihin, ja sain nykyisen tyopaikkani suhteiden kautta.
61. She lived in Spain during the first WiE survey in 2008 and later moved to Iceland, which is not a member of the EU, but does belong to the European Economic Area (EEA).
62. No Espanjassa olis pitäny alottaa täysin puhtaalta pöydältä, et siel ne paikalliset verkostot ja paikalli-nen kokemus, sitä arvostetaan tosi paljon, et sua ei heti palkata mikskään johtaja-päälliköks
63. Irlannissa tyonhaku on aika helppoa, toita on paljon. Ei tarvitse kuin lahettaa CV rekrytoimistoon ja he hoitavat haastatteluajat ja aika nopeasti saa jo tyotarjouksia
64. Työnhakijan “application pack” hakemaani tehtävään oli vaativa, lomakkeesta tuli täytettynä n. 20 sivua tekstiä. Sellaiseen en ole törmännyt Suomessa.
strict, and how important it was to include copies of all possible certificates, includ-ing those completed while still at school in Finland: “When I came here (only 6 years ago), electronic applications were not accepted, but you had to send these Ger-man application binders, where everything had to be exactly right”65 (survey respon-dent 108, b. 1966, MA in business administration and MA in German philology).
Also Emilia (b. 1980, Germany), one of the female interviewees, notes the same:
”(...) a German CV is pretty strict, you need a proper photograph for example (...) It has to be written very neatly and have that German punctuality, and usually it had to be sent by mail, not e-mailed, and have a real application binder with all possible certificates (...) It was quite a job to learn to do this a few years back.”66
Another factor to be taken into account is the range of jobs one can apply for with different qualifications and educational backgrounds. Having been used to the Finnish system of rather strict boundaries between disciplines and professions, the variety of jobs one could apply for, came as a surprise to many. As Minna (b. 1976, Ireland) an interviewee with a degree in Nordic philology, explains:
“The difference between England and Finland is that in Finland it is pretty fixed: if you study one field, you only work in that field; if you are a technician for example then you do not start wandering off into some other field, but you look for work in the field that you studied. In England you may have studied art history and end up working in public relations.”67
This flexibility is not unique to Britain. Pauliina (b. 1980, Denmark) observes the same thing from Denmark: “In Finland it is important that you have the right edu-cation, here it is important that you have an education (…) you can apply for a much wider range of jobs.68”
65. Siinä vaiheessa, kun tulin tänne (eli vain 6 vuotta sitten), sähköisiä hakemuksia ei hyväksytty vaan piti lähettää sellaisia saksalaisia hakemusmappeja, joissa kaikki piti olla jämptilleen oikein.
66. saksalainen CV on… siin on aika tiukat kriteerit, siinä pitää olla hyvä kuva esimerkiks. (...) Ja pi-tää olla hyvin jämpti hakemus ja saksalainen täsmällisyys, ja yleensä aina postitse piti lähetellä, et ei sähkö postitse ja aina sinne piti tehä semmonen kansio oikeen, missä kaikki todistuskopiot. (...) Oli siinä aika opettelua sillon muutamia vuosia sitten.
67. (...) minkä eron huomaa Englannin ja Suomen välillä on se, että ku Suomessa on aika lukkiutunu se, jos opiskelet jotain alaa, niin sit teet pelkästään sillä alalla niitä töitä, et ku oot joku teknikko ni et sit siitä lähde mihinkään muualle hoipertelemaan, et se on se ala mitä oot opiskellu ni siltä alalta myös-kin haet töitä, kun taas sit vaikka Englannissa, jos oot lukenu taidehistoriaa, niin sit ootmyös-kin PR:n parissa töissä (...)
68. Suomessa se on niin tärkeetä, et sulla on oikee koulutus, tääl on tärkeetä se, että sulla on joku koulutus (..) et tääl voi hakee vähän niinkun ehkä laajemmalla skaalalla juttuja.
The time spent: Duration of time before finding a highly skilled job
The gains and losses that transnational mobility causes to the career of the highly skilled migrant are not determined immediately upon arrival to the destination country. The possible up- or downgrading of the career is rather a process that takes place over time (Schittenhelm & Schmidtke 2010–2011, 132). Finding work in one’s own field may take a long time, but once the right job comes along, getting it may be surprisingly simple. The transition through the status passage can therefore be described as “difficult” and “easy” at the same time. The experience of a kindergarten teacher from Belgium works as an example: while still living in Finland, she found a job matching her degree when still studying, but in Belgium it took her some three to six months to find a suitable job at an international school. She explains:
“Looking for work was rather laborious. It depended a lot on how active you were, and on luck. I sent open applications to employers in my own field, and my current workplace contacted me on the day after I had sent them my application.”69 (Survey respondent 213, b. 1981, university of applied sciences BA from Finland.)
When asked how long it took for them to find employment that matched their degree in the new country, only four per cent of the WiE respondents reported that they had not found such a job, and a further four per cent said that they had been unem-ployed and had looked for work for longer than six months. 76 per cent had found work within just weeks: either before moving or immediately after it, or before or immediately after graduating from a local institution. The respondents were also asked to compare their current country with Finland on a number of claims related to their labour market position. The respondents were rather content with their situ-ation in the new country, as the share of “agree completely/somewhat agree” replies to the claim “I get a better salary than in Finland” was 70 per cent, to “I have a job that fits my qualifications” 79 per cent, “My degree is recognised” 77 per cent, and
“My previous job experience is recognised” 77 per cent. Being foreign had not been a major obstacle in finding work, as only 11 per cent reported having faced discrimi-nation (see also Koikkalainen 2009b).
69. Työnhaku oli melko työlästä. Riippui paljon omasta aktiivisuudesta sekä tuurista. Lähetin avoimia työhakemuksia oman alani työpaikkoihin, joista nykyinen työpaikkani otti minuun yhteyttä seuraava-na päivänä hakemuksen lähettämisestä.
9%
8%
3%
43%
12%
6%
4%
4%
10%
How soon did you find work that matched your degree in the country where you now live?
when studying at a local institution (31) right after graduating from a local institution (30) before I moved here (12)
right after having moved here (158)
after I had been unemployed for 1-2 mths (43) after I had been unemployed for 3-6 mths (23) I had been unemployed for over 6 mths (13) I have not found work (16)
Data missing (38)