You studied business administration at DeVry University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. How did you end up at this business and technology–focused university, focusing on fields of study traditionally seen as male disciplines?
I grew up on a farm in Canada in very modest circumstances. I wanted to improve my life through education. My life on the farm was never about who did the work; it was about getting the work done. My folks gave us a list of chores, and my brother and I were able to choose who did what. I preferred driving the tractor and being with the animals. I didn’t grow up with any notion of man vs. woman work. The value was always in getting things done and done well.
No one in my family had attended university, so my search was organic, and DeVry seemed a good fit.
You’ve also lived and worked in Belgium and England. How did you end up in Europe and finally in Helsinki?
I started my career in the boom of SAP. I had a unique skillset in that area. The elevators and escalators company KONE headhunted me to their European headquarters in Belgium in 2002, to work on the global SAP rollout. As the company is headquartered in Finland, I almost immediately started to travel to Finland.
I will not forget the first time I visited Finland. I landed on the tarmac at Helsinki Airport at midnight – bright sky, clean air. It reminded me of Canada, and I felt at home immediately.
In 2009, my family decided to move to Finland. We had young children and knew the blessings that being here would bring. My partner was Finnish, so we came here more like returning Finns than foreigners. Our privileges led to a softer landing for me, but they actually hampered my professional integration immensely. There are many paths to coming to Finland, and depending on your situation, you end up with different services available. In my opinion, regardless of how you come to Finland, everyone should be offered the same services for integration.
As the CEO of The Shortcut, your mission is to help highly educated unemployed or underemployed foreigners to integrate into Finland professionally. What have you learned about the Finnish job market? Has gender equality been achieved in the Finnish job market, and why is gender equality important?
For the most part, I haven’t felt that my gender is a problem in Finland, and I have mostly been treated as an equal to men. I have historically worked mainly with men. A Fortune 500 coach told me once that being the only woman in a room full of men was my super power. I use the same logic with being a foreigner. I then started to think about my gender and foreignness as benefits: sometimes power roles are determined by my speaking English, at other times by my gender.
If there is no diversity at a workplace, there is no innovation, no product development and no new thinking. We often assume in Finland that gender equality has been achieved here, but occupations are divided on gender lines, so we need more work to achieve gender equality. Especially immigrant women should be employed to a higher degree. Otherwise businesses lose their ability to fully understand their customers and thereby their ability to expand.
How does The Shortcut help foreigners and Finns moving from abroad back to Finland?
The Shortcut is a Helsinki-based organisation that works with 2 000 people annually. We help them to find employment using events, training, coaching and networking. We thus seek to expedite their integration into society and to ensure that they want to stay here.
I experience success in my work every day. This year we have already helped 83 people to find employment and helped an additional 14 to create businesses. Our team well reflects the people we represent: we come from seven countries, together we speak 11 languages, and we all have experience in living the life of an immigrant.
How have you experienced the Finnish job market, and how would you describe the Finnish workplace culture?
When I started to look for work in Finland, I expected to find a job easily – after all, I had worked for KONE in senior management roles. I was surprised when it wasn’t easy after all. I had too much experience for mid- to lower-level jobs and not enough Finnish skills to lead small Finnish firms. As it often happens, my path found me, and I found my place in this non-profit organisation.
The aspects of the Finnish workplace culture that I appreciate above all are that things function as expected, people say what they mean, and you have access to almost everybody in the organisation.
As a parent, I can give my children a better quality of life in Finland than elsewhere. Canada has one of the best social welfare systems in the world, but Finland’s system is even better. I highly recommend, especially to families, moving to Helsinki or to a neighbouring city, as it’s safe and clean here, education is excellent, and health care works. There is a good work-life balance here. I always say that if the weather were better, this country would be a utopia.
Kristina Sweet’s recommendations for working life in Finland
1. As soon as you arrive in Finland, you should register with the local employment office (which is called TE Office), even if you’re not looking for a job. Thus you gain access to various integration services and language instruction. I didn’t register as a jobless jobseeker when I moved to Finland, because I was planning to have a child. As a result, I wasn’t entitled to the various services available to TE Office customers.
2. It’s essential to network in Helsinki. Such organisations as The Shortcut are good places to start social and professional networking. Networking helps you to start navigating the local job market and to learn to understand the market’s nuances.
3. A move to a new country and life there as a foreigner can be a very lonely experience, so the sooner you create connections, the easier it is for you. It’s increasingly difficult to make friends the older you are, so you should be prepared to work hard to make friends. It’s easy to surround yourself with other foreigners, but the more Finns you know, the easier it is to understand the local culture.