Cambridge Proficiency Exam - A report

Job fair in Oulu, Finland


As Finland still struggles with the economical crisis which started as early as 2008, a huge number of university students are afraid of not finding a suitable job after their graduation. This is one of the reasons why an international job fair was organised at the university campus in Oulu on May 1st 2016. The aim of this report is to describe the job fair and to evaluate it's ability to encourage young people and enable them to find a source of employment.
Most of your report is "after the event", but you have specified a date that is currently in the future.)

Widely international (Extensive International Representation)

The fair consisted of 52 international companies and research funding programs from 23 different countries. Even though the vast majority of them were European, there were also some from more exotic home countries could be found, e. g. Honduras, Namibia and New Zealand.


Different university faculties

A very positive thing was that all of the faculties of the University of Oulu were considered in the job fair. Finnish language and literature students were offered jobs at German universities, and members of the Department of Biochemistry were being informed about working possibilities in the Netherlands.
Since two major faculties of the University of Oulu are not located at the university campus, there was a shuttle bus service from the Department of Architecture and the Faculty of Medicine to the campus during the job fair.(.. a shuttle bus was organised to take students between the main campus, the Department of Architecture and the Faculty of Medicine during the job fair.)


Combining new technologies with traditional professions

I was positively surprised by with the ease by which new technologies were combined with traditional professions. The representatives of many companies reassured that, thanks to the internet, the jobs could be done even from Finland. So, Finnish university graduates can work for an international company without moving abroad. This often brings the possibility to open a branch in Finland, employing more Finnish people.

Conclusion

The fair was very well organised and included many companies of different fields. I was very satisfied with it's ability to increase the students' career opportunities and to make them consider working abroad.

I didn't expect to find much to 'correct' and it seems so.

I wonder if anyone pointed out that expanding a search area does not create more jobs, it just increases the competition for the same limited jobs. This might be good for some Employers, but hardly anyone benefits. For jobs that cannot be done remotely, as people are forced to commute further, more fuel is used, the transport infrastructure is stretched and people have less to spend on living. (A bit like the "food miles" problem.)