Part Time Jobs & Summer Jobs
Master's Thesis Positions
Permanent Positions
International Traineeships
Part Time Jobs & Summer Jobs
In case of having the possibility of working during the semester, you can look for a job for example, in the engineering offices, in supermarkets, in post delivery etc. - in all different kind of companies that you would imagine needing seasonal employees.
When considering applying for a part time job, it would be good to contact the employer in forehand by phone and ask him/her whether he/she preferred you sending them your application first or you stopping by sometime and discussing your job opportunities in person.
The hunting for summer jobs in Finland starts already in January – some of the companies have their closing dates for applying already at the end of January and some may proceed their recruiting process as far as until April or even later. So there is no official or national period for hunting summer jobs – it is completely up to the companies, so you really need to be active in order to make results.
Most of the companies market their summer jobs on their websites and the applications can be sent either on-line, by email or by mail, depending on the company. Sending approximately 50 applications for summer jobs is quite normal - but again, it is highly important to try to stand up from the crowd by tailoring your application. Well, how to tailor your on-line application? Usually there is at least one open data box in the on-line application for additional information. Tell about yourself and about your skills in your own words – make the employer see that you are the one that they should be recruiting!
Master's Thesis Positions
The amount of publicly announced Master’s Thesis openings is very limited. When looking for this kind of an opening you naturally need to go through the various job hunting sites, company web sites, newspapers etc. But furthermore, you need to start finding the potential companies on your own and start sending them open applications.
In an open Master’s Thesis application it would be good if you suggested your own idea for the Thesis. But then again, be sure to left the door open for the ideas that might rise up to the employer when going through your application.
Your application needs to raise up the employer’s interest – but a personal contact by phone is again, more than essential. Having a real conversation gets you to discuss about your ideas and visions, which is naturally more enlightening to the employer and gives him/her a better insight to the topic than only reading it from the application.
Permanent Positions
The same thing applies to permanent positions – only a minority of positions is actually published. In fact, approximately 70-80 percent of the positions are hidden, which means that they are never published anywhere in public and yet they are really there. This means that the companies need people to do the work but yet they might have neither time nor the resources to go through the whole process: drawing up the job advertisement, deciding where to publish it, go through a huge amount of applications, interview the applicants… it takes a lot of time and energy. And in case of not having the time, the company might most likely highly appreciate an open application from an applicant with potential – someone who meets up with their criteria and is more than willing to start working for them.
To help you with looking up the companies of your own field, remember MyBluebook – the biggest web-based database for companies in Finland, also in English.
International Traineeships
Please see the info on International Traineeships at International Services' website.