New here. I am a finn living in the US with my american husband, we have been here since our marriage 21 years ago.
all these years, we have talked about moving to Finland...it has never happened. dh has been sending applications to various companies again, but hasn't received any response. he is a CIO/it manager with 17 years of experience.
anyway, i have read some of the postings and noticed that so many husbands really feel unhappy there. are there others who enjoy living there?
my husbands really enjoys work so i will not consider moving there unless he has a job waiting. at the same time, it seems that the companies are not even looking at his resume. we don't seem to know a way "in" not knowing anyone in the industry.
i am a stay at home mom and will remain such if we were to move there, i still have a 3 and 5 year old children at home. so we are concerned about making a living there, considering the high taxes, 40% is what i'm hearing.
my husband speaks conversational Finnish (keeps it up reading Aku Ankka!) and has visited Finland on several occasions, as well as lived there for 1 1/2 years before our marriage, so he has some knowledge about the country and customs etc.
just don't really get it how others have done it...we are too conservative leaving a well paying job and just going there in hopes of finding another one...
i am also sensing anti USA sentiments there, so i am concerned about my kids being bullied (i also have elementary and high school age kids in addition to my preschoolers.)
lots of concerns..
why we are wanting to move there:
my husband really likes Finland and thinks it is a beatiful country. he loves to go to mökki and sit by the lake and drink jaffa.
he loves the food.
he likes my relatives and friends.
he is worried about the long and dark winter..but who isnt?
he loves the summer.
he loves the closeness of the rest of Europe, Russia, the cultures that are nearby and easy to travel to.
mainly, we would like to move there to spend some time with my family, my dad being in a nursing home now and my mom getting older also, and to have our kids learn Finnish.
thanks for reading, i would love to hear from those of you who have actually done this!
are all foreign born husbands bitter, anyone happy there?
I'm a foreign born husband - and I love it here. However, I am 24, married 3 yers (almost) and a student...anyway, i have read some of the postings and noticed that so many husbands really feel unhappy there. are there others who enjoy living there?
But what shall it profit a people if they satisfy all material desires, but leave for their children nothing, only a wasteland.
the openings we have found have mostly been on monster.fi.
he has sent whatever they ask-- sometimes it says to "apply" - send cv as an attachment and then he has been emailing whoever the contact is if there is one.
he has called one place he applied a job for, but never got past HR to the actual person who might have been doing the hiring.
he is very driven, competent and hardworking so i have no doubts about him not being able to do any job he would be hired to do, but we just don't seem to know the way "in'.
he has sent whatever they ask-- sometimes it says to "apply" - send cv as an attachment and then he has been emailing whoever the contact is if there is one.
he has called one place he applied a job for, but never got past HR to the actual person who might have been doing the hiring.
he is very driven, competent and hardworking so i have no doubts about him not being able to do any job he would be hired to do, but we just don't seem to know the way "in'.
My experience on job seeking from abroad: I recently spent two month abroad with the intention of moving back (to Finland) and start working at a full time job. So I wrote a number of applications for a number of different jobs, I hardly ever even received an answer. And if I received an answer, it was a negitve one. This changed as soon as I did not mention anymore that I actually was abroad and put a Finnish address on my CV instead. I realised that for some reason people did not regard my application as serious enough as long as I was still abroad.
Based on this experience I'm afraid your prospects of finding a job while still living abroad is close to zero.
Based on this experience I'm afraid your prospects of finding a job while still living abroad is close to zero.
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nomad_alien
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- Location: Klaukkala
There's 2 sides to your question. Since he already knows the country and he knows what he likes/dislikes about the country I think you guys would have a good time here and he won't "hate" it, so for that desicion I would say go for it!
Now the other more problematic area is the work. At the level he is working he is going to have a hard time to find a job without personal connections. A classic example where recently a foreign company bought a Finnish company (hi-tech area). The guy from the foreign company is a freind of mine (and also a foreigner) and his remarks was how "closed" the finnish companies are. With that he meant that everybody knows everybody and everybody has worked at every other company so everybody knows everything about the other company (with "everybody" I mean people at the Cxx level like your husband).
So it's not so much that he is a foreigner but that nobody knows him and the community is so small. So yes, it will be VERY hard for him to get into a position at that level. Just don't give up, keep going, eventually he will strike luck.
from my personal experience....I have sometimes received responses to my application 2 MONTHS after I send my CV, so yes, things doesn't go fast here
Now the other more problematic area is the work. At the level he is working he is going to have a hard time to find a job without personal connections. A classic example where recently a foreign company bought a Finnish company (hi-tech area). The guy from the foreign company is a freind of mine (and also a foreigner) and his remarks was how "closed" the finnish companies are. With that he meant that everybody knows everybody and everybody has worked at every other company so everybody knows everything about the other company (with "everybody" I mean people at the Cxx level like your husband).
So it's not so much that he is a foreigner but that nobody knows him and the community is so small. So yes, it will be VERY hard for him to get into a position at that level. Just don't give up, keep going, eventually he will strike luck.
from my personal experience....I have sometimes received responses to my application 2 MONTHS after I send my CV, so yes, things doesn't go fast here
I would definitely agree with Donald about the difficulty of job seeking from abroad. My Finnish wife lived in the US after our marriage for 10 years. When we decided to move to Finland, I spent more than a year sending CVs, with little success. I don't think anyone wants to take the risk of hiring someone still living abroad. It does make a difference if you call them a few days after sending your CV. Then they have to look at it. When I finally gave up on job hunting from California and set a moving date, everything changed. With a Finnish address and the ability to interview at the companies' convenience, things were MUCH easier. The stress of moving without a job was rewarded. Just make sure if you do that, that you have enough savings to live for a number of months and also have a plan B if things don't happen quickly enough. And, as scary as it might be, resist taking the first offer. I grabbed the first good opportunity and suffered a bit for it. It sounds as if your husband has quite a bit of experience in a field where foreigners can find jobs in Finland, so although none of us can afford to be too picky, he can to some extent. But he's way ahead of most of us experience-wise and speaking some Finnish.
Now after 2 years I couldn't be happier living in Finland. No intention of ever leaving. Most of the rest of the world has anti-American sentiments, but it is nothing personal. Just resentment toward foreign policy. It has never been a problem, although my politics are quite liberal (by American standards) so I'm not put off by hearing the US criticized, as in most cases I agree.
Good luck,
Eric
Now after 2 years I couldn't be happier living in Finland. No intention of ever leaving. Most of the rest of the world has anti-American sentiments, but it is nothing personal. Just resentment toward foreign policy. It has never been a problem, although my politics are quite liberal (by American standards) so I'm not put off by hearing the US criticized, as in most cases I agree.
Good luck,
Eric
Re: are all foreign born husbands bitter, anyone happy there
the dislike of the USA as others have said stems from the US's political stance, the one that Kofi Annan finally said something against, right at the end of his tenure.Finnmom wrote:i am also sensing anti USA sentiments there, so i am concerned about my kids being bullied (i also have elementary and high school age kids in addition to my preschoolers.)
Not many people under the age of 16 are politically active, if anyone is likely to be bullied about the USA connection it will be you and your husband as opposed to your kids. And 99.9% of people won't say anything to your face.
Said elsewhere.... my wife and I have interesting well paid jobs (well paid by Finnish standards), we own our own apartment - most aspects of life are good.
The downsides are that for 50 weeks of the year the town we live in redefines the word "dull". I feel we pay too much tax, Finland is overly bureaucratic, it takes 20 hours of travel to visit my folks. Apart from that life is just peachy.
Re: are all foreign born husbands bitter, anyone happy there
The 0,01% are drunkensinikala wrote: Not many people under the age of 16 are politically active, if anyone is likely to be bullied about the USA connection it will be you and your husband as opposed to your kids. And 99.9% of people won't say anything to your face.
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Mölkky-Fan
- Posts: 1401
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- Location: Vantaa (Finnish), Vanda (Swedish), Fanta (English)
Getting a job is quite difficult, but after that life is nice here. Being honest we get lots of applicants for positions from overseas, but normally these are not followed up as we have many applicants for the positions who already live in Finland (Finns and foreigners).
But if the reason for moving is getting to know the family better etc, couldn't he try and get a 3 or 6 month sabatical or something, so you could visit, get to know the family and then look for a job if he wanted. If nothing comes up then you could always go back to the security of a good job.
I know one US/ Finn family that first came over like that, and now live here permanently.
But if the reason for moving is getting to know the family better etc, couldn't he try and get a 3 or 6 month sabatical or something, so you could visit, get to know the family and then look for a job if he wanted. If nothing comes up then you could always go back to the security of a good job.
I know one US/ Finn family that first came over like that, and now live here permanently.
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
I am an Indian who worked in the US for a long time before I met ma SO here. We tried living in the US for a short period, but then ma SO was not able to adjust to a flat-faced land of Dallas-Fortworth with driving everywhere and no friends along with the fact of me doing long hours at work. The money was good (I should say that it seemed good but then in retrospective as well as in reality, the spending power of the dollar was better than here). By this, I meant that you can earn an equivalent amount of Euros of what you can earn in dollars there but then 10-25% of it goes for extra taxes( which you will get back in terms of healthcare, education, family oriented living and convenience, environment etc). More goes for high prices here.But if you re gonna travel for vacation there, you can plan and buy most things from there ( given spending power of Euro now) cheap.
Even with high taxes, the quality of living here is way better than anywhere else in the world( Balance of work-life even for high profile executives are better here).
Now the main problem with your DH getting a job is that he might be looked on as a highly qualified individual from abroad..hint hint..thats percevied as a threat to anyone in an organization or the organization itself is so that they are not adept to accept foreign hands. Not to say that there are not many high profile executives in Nokia(http://www.nokia.com), Kone(http://www.kone.com), Elektrobit(http://www.elektrobit.com), Teitonator (http://www.tietonator.com) (ICT companies) who are foreigners. But most of them were recruited from abroad from their subsidiaries or they spent some time on contract here and then were recruited here. The most important part of your DH's job is the position he is in. Not too many CIO/COO/CEO/High profile positions are available for external recruitment without personal connections/Work connections here. Not to discourage you but then he needs to start networking virtually (http://www.linkedin.com) or physically here in Finland to establish a credibility here.
There was a thread about some high profile positions in "jobs and entrepreneurship" section.
Another way ( my opinion is that this might work better for him ) is to contact executive recruiting firms here (examples are:
http://www.boyden.fi/
http://www.intersearch.fi/
http://www.stepstone.fi/
http://www.adecco.fi/en/
) Read this link from expat-finland:
http://www.expat-finland.com/employment/index.html
I also suggest that he contact executive recruiting firms there which have a connection to companies in Finland.
More over, In my experience, an American Resume is not a Finnish CV. American resumes are more oriented towards work-related accomplishments and a Finnish CV is a little informal.
If he is adept with his own business, then I suggest he look into those opportunities. Also, You could first try other countries where jobs are easier to find like Sweden, France, Germany, UK etc before you establish the roots in EU and Finland.
If you want to take the risk of coming here and then looking for a job, I advise that you have savings for more than a year( prefer 1-2 years of savings for a family of 4). This is due to the enormous amount of time it takes to find a job and for companies to decide.
Another thing to remember is that Whatever you spend there, you will spend 1-2 times more here.
Other options include spending 6 months here and telecommuting from here to other EU countries ( like Tallin, Russia etc).
As said before, side effects of Finland include dullness during this time of year, work-life adjustments need to be made by DH to get used to work culture, get used to Local culture ( depends on where you plan to live in Finland-city or boondocks. In the city, expect only to live in apartments, In the boondocks near Helsinki area, you are looking at houses starting from 250K euros etc+car etc).
The reason I say is that hes been here only on vacation and not living here..( try a long vacation during dull months here oct-feb).
Your DH needs to start living with virtual friends from the US as well as making new friends is a little bit of a process.
Considering all this, I am still happy here and will not want to go back to the US to live there..( mebbe on contract for a max 2-3 years
But not to DFW or flat-nosed lands, East?west coast, Boston etc might be an option)
Need more info, please feel to pm me.
Good luck
Even with high taxes, the quality of living here is way better than anywhere else in the world( Balance of work-life even for high profile executives are better here).
Now the main problem with your DH getting a job is that he might be looked on as a highly qualified individual from abroad..hint hint..thats percevied as a threat to anyone in an organization or the organization itself is so that they are not adept to accept foreign hands. Not to say that there are not many high profile executives in Nokia(http://www.nokia.com), Kone(http://www.kone.com), Elektrobit(http://www.elektrobit.com), Teitonator (http://www.tietonator.com) (ICT companies) who are foreigners. But most of them were recruited from abroad from their subsidiaries or they spent some time on contract here and then were recruited here. The most important part of your DH's job is the position he is in. Not too many CIO/COO/CEO/High profile positions are available for external recruitment without personal connections/Work connections here. Not to discourage you but then he needs to start networking virtually (http://www.linkedin.com) or physically here in Finland to establish a credibility here.
There was a thread about some high profile positions in "jobs and entrepreneurship" section.
Another way ( my opinion is that this might work better for him ) is to contact executive recruiting firms here (examples are:
http://www.boyden.fi/
http://www.intersearch.fi/
http://www.stepstone.fi/
http://www.adecco.fi/en/
) Read this link from expat-finland:
http://www.expat-finland.com/employment/index.html
I also suggest that he contact executive recruiting firms there which have a connection to companies in Finland.
More over, In my experience, an American Resume is not a Finnish CV. American resumes are more oriented towards work-related accomplishments and a Finnish CV is a little informal.
If he is adept with his own business, then I suggest he look into those opportunities. Also, You could first try other countries where jobs are easier to find like Sweden, France, Germany, UK etc before you establish the roots in EU and Finland.
If you want to take the risk of coming here and then looking for a job, I advise that you have savings for more than a year( prefer 1-2 years of savings for a family of 4). This is due to the enormous amount of time it takes to find a job and for companies to decide.
Another thing to remember is that Whatever you spend there, you will spend 1-2 times more here.
Other options include spending 6 months here and telecommuting from here to other EU countries ( like Tallin, Russia etc).
As said before, side effects of Finland include dullness during this time of year, work-life adjustments need to be made by DH to get used to work culture, get used to Local culture ( depends on where you plan to live in Finland-city or boondocks. In the city, expect only to live in apartments, In the boondocks near Helsinki area, you are looking at houses starting from 250K euros etc+car etc).
The reason I say is that hes been here only on vacation and not living here..( try a long vacation during dull months here oct-feb).
Your DH needs to start living with virtual friends from the US as well as making new friends is a little bit of a process.
Considering all this, I am still happy here and will not want to go back to the US to live there..( mebbe on contract for a max 2-3 years
But not to DFW or flat-nosed lands, East?west coast, Boston etc might be an option)Need more info, please feel to pm me.
Good luck
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Badgermushroom
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:33 am
- Location: Helsinki
Re: are all foreign born husbands bitter, anyone happy there
I guess I fit that bill - 28-year old Scottish male, living and working in Finland for 6 years now, manager in a financial consultancy firm, got married last year (and again this year - long complicated explanation, don't ask!).Finnmom wrote:thanks for reading, i would love to hear from those of you who have actually done this!
Finnmom wrote:all these years, we have talked about moving to Finland...it has never happened. dh has been sending applications to various companies again, but hasn't received any response. he is a CIO/it manager with 17 years of experience.
I'm glad things were much easier, Eric, but I tend to be more skeptical about such things. I tried applying for jobs in Finland from Scotland for about a year, with no luck at all. When I finally came over, it took exactly one month to get a job. But I consider myself extraordinarily lucky in this respect; I know foreigners resident in Finland who have spent a year or more trying to find something.eric71 wrote:I would definitely agree with Donald about the difficulty of job seeking from abroad ... I spent more than a year sending CVs, with little success. I don't think anyone wants to take the risk of hiring someone still living abroad ... With a Finnish address and the ability to interview at the companies' convenience, things were MUCH easier.
Basically, if you try applying from abroad (especially somewhere non-EU), don't expect anything because that's what you'll get. And if you come here, you'd better have enough resources and patience to wait it out. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can't.
Maybe your husband can get a sabbatical or something from his job, so he has something to go back to if it doesn't work out here?
Finnmom wrote:anyway, i have read some of the postings and noticed that so many husbands really feel unhappy there. are there others who enjoy living there?
Meh, where are the husbands who do not complain?
Anyway, most complaints seem to be about headstrong Finnish women, and he already has one of those.
Hank really said it all:Finnmom wrote:i am also sensing anti USA sentiments there, so i am concerned about my kids being bullied (i also have elementary and high school age kids in addition to my preschoolers.)
Your kids will be different, and kids pick on anything different from themselves as I'm sure you know. But Finland is mainly friendly towards Americans - there are many Finns who I'm sure would be very sad indeed if they thought Americans didn't come to Finland because they feared discrimination.Hank W. wrote:Its not anti-USA-people sentiments, its anti-USA-politics sentiments.
He might be better off going to Copenhagen or Amsterdam then, rather than this corner of nowhere that is so expensive to get to and from.Finnmom wrote:he loves the closeness of the rest of Europe, Russia, the cultures that are nearby and easy to travel to.
Yeah, I know the feeling. Best of luck, I hope it works out for you.Finnmom wrote:mainly, we would like to move there to spend some time with my family, my dad being in a nursing home now and my mom getting older also
-BM
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Hank W.
- The Motorhead
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Uuuh -oh. yeah, he isn't sending this is "I invented the internet, my salary is a million, my ass shines of gold, I am beautiful, I am god" - style? Ummm.... NO... godforbit teh HR department will rupture their spleen. Here's Phil's guide. He's a yank and spent 8 months chasing geese, theres a few pointers on the CV.raamv wrote:More over, In my experience, an American Resume is not a Finnish CV. American resumes are more oriented towards work-related accomplishments and a Finnish CV is a little informal.
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
I think it also really depends on his/your personality. I've known people living in the middle of nowhere with not a lot of money who are happy and people living in a giant apartment in Manhattan with tons of money who are miserable.
I am happy that I came here from the US, but a bit sad in a way in that by living here day to day it has made this place far less "special" to me than when I would come for a few weeks in the summer. I like it, but it's a very different thing to live here rather than just visit.
Maybe there is some happy medium where you can live here during the summers or something. And def come here in the winter for a month so you see what it like when it is gray and raining every.single.day. That was one thing I was not prepared for, coming from the US: the fact that you can go a month without seeing the sun. That just does not happen really in North America and it is really hard to live with.
Edited to add: the other thing that I didn't really "get" before I came here is that life is not really better or worse here, it's just different. So it really depends on what your priorities are and what you want out of life. You will not necessarily be more/less happy here: you'll just feel differently about everything.
I am happy that I came here from the US, but a bit sad in a way in that by living here day to day it has made this place far less "special" to me than when I would come for a few weeks in the summer. I like it, but it's a very different thing to live here rather than just visit.
Um, not that those reasons are bad to move back to Finland, but maybe not the best reasons to give up a good job and come here with no job, especially since there are children involved.he loves to go to mökki and sit by the lake and drink jaffa. he loves the food.
Maybe there is some happy medium where you can live here during the summers or something. And def come here in the winter for a month so you see what it like when it is gray and raining every.single.day. That was one thing I was not prepared for, coming from the US: the fact that you can go a month without seeing the sun. That just does not happen really in North America and it is really hard to live with.
Edited to add: the other thing that I didn't really "get" before I came here is that life is not really better or worse here, it's just different. So it really depends on what your priorities are and what you want out of life. You will not necessarily be more/less happy here: you'll just feel differently about everything.
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Hank W.
- The Motorhead
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Why do you guys come to Finland when you could move to Alaska, less hassle, same mosquitoes - and darkness... Helsinki and Anchorage are about on the same latitudekay30 wrote:That was one thing I was not prepared for, coming from the US: the fact that you can go a month without seeing the sun. That just does not happen really in North America
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.