Looking for successful work placement - choose Finland

Nova Talent, Vesa Laakso

Sending a trainee to a foreign country for further education and new skills requires solid competence from the sending organisation. Whether the placement turns out to be successful and the country well chosen depends on numerous issues. Finland is a well-functioning and solution-oriented country with a superb schooling system. Education, knowledge and skills are among the best in the world. By choosing Finland as the work placement country has already proven to be an investment that pays off for all parties. 

Finland is a very favorable option for international working placement for several reasons. The country is actually ranked as #3 in the English proficiency ranking of 100 countries and regions in the world (source: EF EPI 2020 Ranking of Countries and Regions). This usually guarantees smooth communication in the company. The working culture in Finland is very equal with a low hierarchy and straight-forward attitude with respect for all employees and trainees. The companies are usually smaller than the huge multinational companies which facilitates the decision-making and paves way for smooth daily operations.


“I can truly recommend this to everyone else”


What distinguishes Finnish companies from the others to the Finns’ advantage? Several things, according to the feedback Nova Talent has received from their trainees and the companies involved in their mobility activities. The arrangements with Nova Talent’s work placement are regarded as good by all the trainees taking part in the survey. 80 % of the respondents regarded their work placement as being totally beneficial to them. 80 % of them also considered the tasks they were given were relevant to their profession. This is a highly valued outcome and Nova Talent is dedicated to the best possible quality to everyone involved. 

The Finnish companies hosting a foreign trainee have also shown to regard the arrangement as very positive. As many as 93,33 % of these express in the survey their strong interest in welcoming a foreign trainee again. In addition, the companies have shown to be very pleased (73-80 %) with their trainee’s activity and initiative courage and attitude towards working. 


“New ideas and practices emerged”


According to the surveys and Nova Talent’s experiences, the work placement in Finland is a true win-win concept for all parties. The trainees stated that they felt more confident with their professional skills after the work placement period. The companies on their behalf were pleased to learn new techniques and expand their job-related perspectives. For sending organizations results like this are a clear indication of a job well done! 

Nova Talent continues to develop their work placement in Finland -services. From the Open work placements -website sending partners can see online which work placements are open and available for their trainees. Furthermore, these open work placements can be shared to their potential candidates who are considering internship abroad. There are already some 15 open work placements available and waiting for new matches.

Here you can find a latest updates to open work placements:

If your organization wants reach Nova talent open work placements, please send us a mail and we'll fix it! 

If you're keen to having a 30 minutes teams-meeting about mobility topics, I'm open for that too!


Current COVID-19 situation in Finland (16th March 2021). At moment all restaurants are closed until 29th March. Most of the schools are in distant teaching system and most of the companies are still running quite normally, but there are sectors like; restaurants, arts, shops etc. (or companies linked to these sectors) are suffering the situation most at moment. At this point it's likely that another Summer will be somehow "deleted" when it comes to normal life.

Nova Talent is assessing the situation on a weekly basis. Most challenges to mobility activities are: travel restrictions, companies capacity to host apprentices as well as the level of risk to their own personnel when hosting a person from abroad. Some companies are more open, some are more protective. But the very basic question is, when do we have access to Finland from other European countries.