My Oulu: Mentoring helps international professionals to integrate
Villa Victor’s previous mentoring program’s final meeting was held in late May. Photos: Marina de León
Jaa sosiaalisessa mediassa:
Oulu's multicultural centre Villa Victor organizes mentoring for highly trained immigrant professionals who already know a little Finnish. The goal is to help them build networks in the city and deepen their understanding of Finnish working life and the language.
Doctor of Engineering Mirjami Jutila from the University of Oulu worked as a mentor in the program which started in the fall of 2023. That program included 15 mentors working with 18 actors, in other words international professionals receiving coaching and guidance.
“The main point is that the actor benefits from the mentoring. At best, the mentors will also receive good experiences and can expand their networks. I believe that everyone should have something in their lives that mirrors their life with someone else’s. It is somehow beneficial. If a person lives alone for too long, it might not always lead to something good”, Jutila states.
The goal of the program is to increase the networks of professionals and offer professionals with immigrant backgrounds insider information about the Finnish practices in their field. The program is based on pair mentoring.
The international actors applying for the program will work with mentors in the Oulu region in fields as similar as possible to the actors’ fields. The mentoring pairs will meet once during the winter or a couple of times per month based on their own schedules.
The actors consider in advance what matters they want to learn more about from their mentors or what kind of matters they need help with. The mentors can also actively discuss matters they believe are important.
The mentor needs an open mind and a will to offer help to international colleagues. The program is in Finnish. This means that the actors participating in the program must have some Finnish language skills so that they can discuss work-related matters in Finnish.
The language skills do not have to be perfect: we have observed that in previous programs the participating actors have developed their skills greatly during the program.
Learn a language by using it
It is important to practice speaking Finnish in safe situations with a person who truly wants to understand and be present. Multiple studies have found that language skills do not improve in a vacuum, instead one can only learn a language by using it – and it can be learned with the support of your work community.
Mirjami Jutila (left) who worked as a mentor and Villa Victor’s mentoring coordinator Riikka-Maija Gardemeister remind that mentoring can be very beneficial to the mentor as well.
Villa Victor’s mentoring program’s coordinating Development Teacher Riikka-Maija Gardemeister has also seen this in practice.
“You can’t learn to talk without talking and listening either. But not everyone has a person they can talk with. We find people who voluntarily want to join, whom you can message and ask questions from. This is why the program uses plain Finnish. Many mentors have been surprised that they do well with just Finnish. They don’t always need to switch to English.”
Help in job searching
Work mentoring has been found to be helpful for job seekers with immigrant backgrounds. For example, mentors can help job seekers write job applications and resumes into forms that are suitable for the Finnish job market. They can also practice Finnish language skills that are needed during job search.
Another concrete benefit from mentoring is a chance to receive a Finnish reference in their resume. Seeing a familiar, or a Finnish name, in a resume can have a significant effect in receiving a job interview. A Finnish reference works as a kind of “guarantee” that the job seeker with an immigrant background is trustworthy and know the rules of Finnish work life.
Pair mentoring is based on social learning and confidential interaction between the mentor and the actor. For the people who have moved to Finland from elsewhere, mentoring acts as a bridge to local working culture.
For mentors, participating in work mentorship offers a perspective into other cultures and their own field in other countries. It offers an excellent opportunity to inspect your field’s recruitment practices from an outsider’s perspective. In fact, we hope that participating in mentoring can act as kindling for more extensive discussions within working communities on how the recruitment of international workers can be seen as an investment in the future instead of an expense.
Riikka-Maija Gardemeister is a Development Teacher and Mentoring Coordinator at Villa Victor and Päivi Iikkanen is a University Teacher at the University of Jyväskylä and has researched mentoring all over Finland.