A recruitment agency recently established in Helsinki aims to focus solely on helping immigrants in Finland find work related to their qualifications and experience, and promises to not, for example, offer cleaning jobs to engineers.
Eezy Shine is located near the Puhos shopping centre in the east of the capital, and CEO Shaho Jaff told Yle that his reasons for establishing the company can be surmised just by looking around the centre.
"Look around you. It's during the work day and there are lots of immigrants around. That means something is lacking. Our role is to combine the skills of these people with the labour market," Jaff said.
To illustrate the point further, Jaff pointed at his glasses on the table.
"If you're going to sell those glasses, you need to know what brand they are, what their strengths are and what kind of glasses they are. You need to know what you're selling," he said.
In this respect, Jaff said he believes that it is easier for recruitment agents to find work for other immigrants when they themselves have immigrant backgrounds with experience of finding work in Finland.
"If I don't know what kind of jobseekers I have, I don't know how to sell their skills. But our knowledge doesn't come from the outside, it comes from the inside," Jaff noted.
Eezy Shine offers services in 32 different languages, according to Jaffi, who is himself of Iraqi origin and speaks 14 different languages. The company therefore aims to interview all job hopefuls in their own mother tongue about work experience, education and language skills.
"Then we go through the Finnish working rules with all employees, because everyone has a different background. Each newcomer has worked in their own country, so our job is to adapt their skills to the Finnish labour market," Jaff said, adding that the company's mission is to provide work for people who find it especially difficult to find employment in Finland.
Jaff told Yle that Eezy Shine is the first recruitment agency in Finland to focus solely on the specific needs of immigrants.
The company has so far, he added, found roles for a few hundred workers in various different sectors, and continues to operate on the primary aim of finding jobs that match the skills and qualifications of each individual jobseeker.
"The image of immigrants is usually that they do cheap, low-wage jobs," he said, noting that one of his company's clients is an engineer by qualification who has been offered cleaning jobs.
"It's not fair. I'll find him a suitable job," he said.
The level of an immigrant's Finnish language skills can often be a deciding factor in whether or not they receive a job offer, but Jaff said he believes there are many jobs in Finland that do not require fluent Finnish.
"If an immigrant has difficulty learning a language, it doesn't mean they should be unemployed for the rest of their lives," Jaff said, adding that perfect language skills are not necessary for jobs such as berry picking, a number of agricultural jobs, service roles, photography and other creative professions.
Ministry: Immigrant work situation "better than ever"
Antti Kaihovaara, a Chief Specialist within the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment's Labour Migration and Integration unit, told Yle that the employment situation of foreigners in Finland is currently at its best level since records began.
According to statistics published by the ministry in August, there were seven percent fewer unemployed immigrants in Finland in July compared to the same month last year, while the employment rate of Finnish citizens was 7.2 percentage points higher than that of foreigners.
Kaihovaara further noted that the number of unemployed jobseekers with Estonian, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese backgrounds has fallen by a noticeably large amount, more than 20 percent compared to the same period last year.
The ministry's figures also revealed that asylum seekers find it especially difficult to secure employment, which Kaihovaara said can be attributed to how long it takes them to recover from their experiences in their home country and to adapt to life in Finland.
Language skills are also a factor, and many asylum seekers do not speak English when they arrive in Finland. However, Kaihovaara also noted that the employment rate of people who first arrived in Finland as asylum seekers rises rapidly once they have a residence permit and a home.
This improvement in the employment rate of immigrants is the result of many factors, Kaihovaara added, including the development of employment services and the general economic upturn.
"Immigrant employment tends to respond more strongly to the business cycle than the employment rate of the native population. Finland has had a good economic upturn, so that has improved employment, especially among immigrants," Kaihovaara said.
However, there remains a large gender gap: employment among immigrant women is around 15 percentage points lower than for men. On the other hand, the situation is very different for second-generation immigrant women, whose employment rate is slightly higher than that of second-generation immigrant men.
Kaihovaara: There is a "small risk"
In general, Kaihovaara said, the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs has a very positive attitude towards recruitment agencies such as Eezy Shine, which aim to help immigrants find work.
"I see an opportunity for such a service to better provide services specifically for immigrants and to identify the skills they have and sell them to employers," Kaihovaara, said, adding that a recruitment agency focusing solely on the needs of immigrants is one way to reduce discrimination in the labour market.
"This has potential, if it could help to combat labour market discrimination and if it could convince employers that recruiting immigrants is worthwhile, even if their Finnish language skills are not always at the level of a native speaker," he further noted.
On the other hand, Kaihovaara says it is possible that immigrants will continue to be offered mainly low-level and low-income jobs, even through companies such as Eezy Shine. The ministry's shows that immigrants are much more likely to do manual work than people with a Finnish background.
"There is such a small risk, but in principle I am positive about the private side supporting the public employment service," Kaihovaara said.
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