Lot`s of work without Finnish or diplomas

[vindemil]

Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. There are many work possibilities if one learns ok Swedish, for instance in Swedish speaking nurseries and old people`s homes. I moved to Finland in September, and it took me about 3 weeks to get a full-time job in a Swedish speaking nurseries; knowing some Swedish already, but no THAT much... They don`t require fluency or mother language skills in this kind of work.

One might think "well, I have to learn a new language anyway, so what´s the use?", but REALLY: Learning Finnish is much more difficult than learning Swedish, given that one has some knowledge of another Germanic language (English, German, Dutch, etc.). In addition, the job market isn`t as tuff as the one for Finnish-speakers - there are less people and more work.

I`d say that I`ll take about one year to learn Finnish good enough for "normal work", but learning Swedish takes maybe 4-6 months, if one really makes an effort.

[Amandine.K]

To be honest I find it pretty funny that they would employ somebody in a nursery (children day care right?) with limited knowledge of the language, be it Finnish, Swedish or English. You are supposed to interact with the children all day long. How do you manage without being fluent?

[karel]

Ok, so let's all go work in a nursery...

[lipko]

Hah!
I just decided today to start learning Swedish. (3 otherwise very nice job ads required Swedish knowledge).
I hope it's as easy as it seems. Is there a Swedish piece of the Beginner's Language Dictionaries Series? I couldn't find it in English or Finnish. Just in Hungarian, but i guess that would be hard to find in Finland...

BTW I haven't found so much (negligible) ads in Swedish on mol.fi
How did you find the job?

[vindemil]

Let me make myself clear: Obviously one needs be able to interact with the children in a nursery, so of course one needs to be, late say, on a "conversant" level when it comes to speaking Swedish. But as the situation is now, many nurseries are looking for workers, and can`t really require fluency in Swedish. Your Swedish just has to be "good enough", meaning that you can speak and understand trivial Swedish.

[vindemil]

First of all: Be aware of the fact that Swedish speaking job depends very much on in which area you are looking for a job. Mostly Swedish speaking Finns live in the southern and western parts of Finland. Lipko: If you live in Jyväskylä, that`s not the best area to be locking for Swedish work, as it is only about 0.2 percent of the town`s population how are Swedish speakers. Here`s a list of Swedish-speaking and bilingual municipalities of Finland to give you an idea of where in Finland one might find Swedish speaking workplaces:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sw ... of_Finland

- Lipko
This was what I did to find the work: I found a list on the internet of all the Swedish speaking nurseries in the Helsinki region, got on my bike, visited many different nurseries, knocked on the manager`s door and said (in Swedish, of course) that I would like to work for you (regardless of wether there had been ads online saying that they actually needed new personal). This went on for some weeks, and finally somebody said, "yes, we are looking for somebody, let me sign you up for a trial period of, say, two weeks, and if we`re happy and you`re happy will give you a work contract". I should add that I had relevant work experience (worked one year in primary school in my home country).

In my experience is`s gives much better results if you are able to actually visit the places where you would like to work.

[vindemil]

Here is how to find Swedish work at mol.fi:

Type in "svenska" where it says "sanahaku" for a list of all jobs require some Swedish, or "barnskötare" if you want a list of nurseries. This will give you hits in Finnish, but mostly inSwedish language. Have a look.

[lipko]

Thanks!
I guess I wasn't looking carefully enough... But I don't want to get in a nursery yet anyway...