“Here, there are lots of people who are ready to help” - Aziza’s journey with KOSKE
When Aziza Ibraiva moved to Finland, she had no clue where to begin her job search. She recalled that ”…it was very hard and chaotic because I didn’t know (the) Finnish job market at all…I just wasted a lot of energy”.
Aziza decided to enroll in a Finnish integration course and applied to the Helsinki Spouse Programme, as well as participated in Talent Espoo’s activities. After that, she was accepted into Espoo’s Competence Centre for Highly Educated Immigrants (KOSKE), where she met with her personal career counsellor who helped her focus on interview skills. Aziza mentioned that this advice ”really turned around the whole interview process for me because I presented myself from the right side”.
Happily, Aziza’s competence helped her land a job at ICEYE as a Sales Associate. After a few weeks in her new position, KOSKE’s career counsellor called her to see how she was progressing and was ”very supportive”. Aziza commented that participation in KOSKE, as well as other programmes, were extremely useful in helping her land her new role. When asked if she had any advice for immigrants looking for career openings in Finland, Aziza emphasized trying different approaches to their job hunt, as well as getting help from others; ”Here there are lots of organisations, lots of people who are ready to help. Everything will be fine, don’t worry”.
When reflecting on her job hunt, something that helped Aziza was identifying which kinds of companies she wanted to work for. ICEYE stood out to Aziza because they have the same values as her, making them a priority. The organisation Aziza works at, ICEYE, currently employees over 40 different nationalities, with offices in both North America and Europe. Building their own synthetic satellites, ICEYE values “driven and curious people who are passionate about teamwork but always know how to have fun”.
When asked about Aziza’s recruitment, HR Business Partner Pauliina mentioned that Aziza’s previous sales experience made her the number one choice for her position, as well as understanding different cultural points of view. When Aziza started with ICEYE, her onboarding was done fully remotely, because her team manager was located in the UK. However, the people and culture team in Espoo supported her with practicalities and familiarising her with the office.
ICEYE offers a lot of training possibilities both externally and internally, and Finnish language courses are provided for employees. When asked about advice for other employers, Pauliina stated that it’s important for companies to be very open minded about hiring international talents. For ICEYE, it’s very important that they have employees who understand the international environment and customer base.