Social research jobs in Finland

[Aijal]

Hi,

I wander if any foreigners visiting this forum have tried to have a social researcher's job in Helsinki. Can you share with your experience? I'm a PhD candidate in sociology, my husband wants to move back to Finland and I'm worried about my prospects to find any decent job there. I don't speak Finnish and don't think I would be able to learn it that quickly. I speak Latvian, English, Russian, basic Germand and French; I have research experience with academic research institutes, international organisations, governmental/political institutions, businesses.

Thanks in advance for any comments,

A

[Hank W.]

You can always find a job proving Finns and Finland is a racist xenophobic place instead of you paradise origin country. . You just prove racism and uncivilization of the natives and you get all the funding.

[TampereOwl]

You can always find a job proving Finns and Finland is a racist xenophobic place instead of you paradise origin country. . You just prove racism and uncivilization of the natives and you get all the funding.

Or you could do like the natives and get drunk before slagging off foreigners on the internet.

[silk]

Aijal, you can start your field work here, on this forum. I introduce you to Hank, the prototype Finn.

[blaugrau]

I'd say finding a research job is never that easy, regardless where you are, but it definitely is possible, also as a foreigner in Finland. It might depend a bit, however, on what your speciality is and which methodological camp you adhere If you're familiar with quantitative methods etc., I guess you could keep an eye out for government research institutions like Stakes ( http://www.stakes.fi/EN/index.htm ) or maybe even Statistics Finland ( http://www.stat.fi/index_en.html ). That's the more mainstream organisations that come to my mind offhand, I suspect there's more possibilities but I'm unfortunately not so familiar with the situation in Helsinki. You could also find out if there's organisations that are related to your area of specialisation ( e.g. trade unions, immigrant organisations, child welfare organisations, or whatever matches the field you're familiar with) an try offer your research expertise to them (this is just an idea, I don't know whether it's realistic that these organisations have the funds to employ a researcher, but I'd say it's worth a try). And of course, you could check if there's university jobs available (http://www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto)

Besides these more speculative applications, it's a good idea to regularly monitor sites like http://www.aarresaari.net, a job search engine for academic jobs. I have a hunch it's not so unrealistic to find a social sciences job here (but of course far from easy), even though you're not fluent in Finnish. (I'm myself in that area and found my research assistant job via that search engine and the language I use for my work is English). But in any case you will also need a big portion of luck.

Oh, and of course you could always try market research and that stuff until you find something more suitable for your interests.

[Cloudberry]

Aijal, you can start your field work here, on this forum. I introduce you to Hank, the prototype Finn.

blaugrah, they're fantastic ideas and links! I think I'll check them out myself. Are you employed by a university?

Lisa

[blaugrau]

Yes I am. Upon further contemplation, I'm now thinking that probably its easiest in a university environment to be employed as a foreigner, where papers etc are published in international journals and research is geared more towards an interanational community. I'm thinking that when conducting social research in other Finnish (governmental or not) institutions, it might be more manadatory actually to write reports etc in Finnish, since the research is tailored more towards a Finnish audience (of policymakers/institutions). But that's just my guess now. It's possible that these non-university institutions maybe also have somekind of an "international department", or some niches where it's acceptable to write research reports etc first in English.

A bit tricky that fluent Finnish skills in conversation doesn't necessarily equal perfect, academic-level writing skills. The latter will be even more difficult to acquire than the former, I suppose, and are at the same time more crucial than the former in this kind of area.

So maybe I was a bit biased by my own luck in the above estimation... I can imagine that if you don't manage to find university-employment, it'll be important to try to find jobs outside your field and find ways to "sell" your specific skills to the employer. *Sigh*

[Hank W.]

A bit tricky that fluent Finnish skills in conversation doesn't necessarily equal perfect, academic-level writing skills. The latter will be even more difficult to acquire than the former, I suppose, and are at the same time more crucial than the former in this kind of area.

I'd think "academic writing" skills can be acquired by rabid monkeys on acid. Its easy to write self-evidences into a paragraph and fill it with fancy words that obfuscate the zero value of the writing. it is much harder to write plainly so that people understand.

[blaugrau]

Either way, the problem (as it appears to me) is that in this sector you are expected to use these fancy words and specific grammatical structures that in your opinion obfuscate the meaning, and for a non-monkey foreigner without rabies or acid this is still a different kind of cake than being fluent in everyday life Finnish.

[sammy]

it is much harder to write plainly so that people understand.

Tell that to Kierkegaard

The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself.

But be as it may with "academic" writing, I think the basic idea is that it may indeed be more difficult to learn to write so-called 'proper' Finnish than to speak it... depends of course, but spoken language is not something that looks good in the academic circles, essays or other more 'official' contexts than SMS...

[onkko]

Theres generator for "academic" sentences. "Todellisuudessa integraatioprosessin polysentrinen tukeminen ahdaskatseisen identiteettipolitiikan ylittämiseksi näyttää todeksi asianosaisiin kohdistuvia ongelmia." http://puppulausegeneraattori.fi/

[Hank W.]

that in this sector you are expected to use these fancy words and specific grammatical structures that in your opinion obfuscate the meaning, and for a non-monkey foreigner without rabies or acid this is still a different kind of cake than being fluent in everyday life Finnish.

Well, I had to write a paper like that and I promised to never even piss into the direction of any academia.