If you are an international student coming to Finland to study, you may be also thinking about getting a job here. The easiest way to kick off your career is either doing a practical training during your studies or getting a summer job. Summer job is a very common practice in Finland and most of the students work full-time during the holiday months and also part-time during the academic year. However, it is not that easy to get a job or an internship place, few things to keep in mind:
- START APPLYING EARLY ENOUGH. Application period for summer jobs starts in January and for some companies in December. Make sure you have your CV and general template for cover letter ready. Make and fill in your LinkedIn profile.
- APPLY TO MANY POSITIONS. From my experience, you need to apply to 100 places to get 5-6 interviews and 1-2 offers. Don’t forget to customize your cover letter to different positions that you apply.
- VISIT RECRUTING EVENTS AND NETWORK. There are plenty of recruitment events happening at Aalto campus and around Helsinki capital region. Make use of these events, talk to companies, tell about yourself and your skills, visit CV clinics and just get to know the job market.
Studying at Aalto University goes hand in hand with the real working life. During the courses, students have lectures not only from professors but also from the guests lecturers from the business world. That is how I got to know my current employer – construction company Fira. Company representative gave a lecture during the Real Estate Business & Entrepreneurship course and mentioned about traineeship opportunity in their company. Construction is not exactly the field I study (I study Real Estate Economics) but the knowledge in this sector would bring great benefits to my career in the future. So with no further doubts I applied and got an invitation to the “Trainee Day”, later – a summer job place, and after the summer – a permanent part-time place.
I work as a construction site engineer in the residential houses building project.First weeks were quite hard because I had to learn so much, learn to use various softwares, learn construction vocabulary, meet hundreds of people – coworkers and subcontractors. On the daily basis I prepare for and attend negotiations, prepare contracts and agreements, make material orders, organize meetings and trainings.
Two of my most favorite tasks are delivering weekly news for stakeholders and monthly news for the residents. With the weekly news I have the opportunity to show my creative skills: every week I go around the construction site and take pictures of the current activities, after that I am able to create slide deck for the project stakeholders (the client, architects, designers, inspectors) in which they can see the progress of all three residential buildings. After the apartments were purchased, I started making similar news for the residents. I must say, residents do really enjoy those news because they can see what is happening in their apartments and have control over the process.
To sum up, I can say that I have learned a lot about building processes and construction business during my internship. I came from a person who appeared to know nothing about construction to somebody who can actually now surely operate at the construction site. In my opinion, practical training is a great addition to your studies, opportunity to have deeper understanding of the study field and earn some ECTS credits too! I feel that after getting my degree from Aalto University I can continue building my career in construction business and be a valuable worker in any other real estate focused firm.
About Master’s Program of Real Estate Economics:
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Daria Babanina,
Master’s Program of Real Estate Economics