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Cities of Southwest Finland Campaign to Attract International Top Talents

  • A digital campaign, dubbed Happy Pro, draws from Finland’s reputation as the happiest country in the world
  • The campaign’s aim is to increase awareness of the career opportunities Southwest Finland provides for highly educated international experts.
  • Jennifer Hunt, the Head of Bayer’s Product Supply Center in Turku, telling about Turku’s opportunities

– In 2020, Finland was chosen to be the happiest country in the world for the third year in a row. Finland indeed is one of the best countries to combine a happy life with professional development. As the fastest-growing cluster of innovation and expertise in the country, Southwest Finland is working hard to attract new expertise. The companies in our region offer a wide range of fascinating career opportunities for international experts of different fields, and Turku as a city provides an excellent location where they can sharpen their knowhow. The recent Osaamisen visio publication also strengthens these goals as Turku aims to be a world-class developer of expertise and education by the year 2040, says Minna Arve, the Mayor of Turku.

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Southwest Finland needs international talents to become a global forerunner in future growth industries.

One of the biggest hurdles to growth in Southwest Finland is the lack of specialists. The Happy Pro campaign is part of the national Talent Boost programme, and it supports the efforts to make opportunities provided by Southwest Finland better known on a global scale. The campaign is coordinated by Turku Science Park Ltd and organised in co-operation by the cities of Turku, Pori, Rauma, Uusikaupunki and Salo.

Making Southwest Finland a global forerunner in growth industries

The Happy Pro campaign is directed at highly educated talents, whose expertise matches the needs of the region’s companies. Fields that are especially in need of skilled labour include the following: robotics and automation, electric transportation and battery technology, diagnostics and biosciences, as well as ICT (AI and cloud services in particular).

– Despite the pandemic, and partly because of it, securing the availability of skilled labour is crucial for the growth of the companies in the Turku region. Southwest Finland has a chance to become a global forerunner in future growth industries, such as electric transportation, health business and circular economy, but this cannot be done without the necessary expertise. Since all of the experts that the companies need cannot be found in Finland alone, we have to attract them from abroad, says the CEO of Turku Science Park Ltd., Niko Kyynäräinen.

Jennifer Hunf from Bayer as the voice of Turku

At the centre of the Happy Pro campaign is a playful questionnaire, which can be used to test how well the person answering it would be able to settle down in Southwest Finland. The campaign also uses peer marketing as international talents who have already been employed in the region describe their experiences of working and living in Southwest Finland in an encouraging manner.

Jennifer Hunt, the Head of Bayer’s Product Supply Center in Turku, tells about her experiences regarding living and working in Southwest Finland. Hunt, who is originally from the UK, is a seasoned professional in the life science industry. Hunt values how welcoming, kind and helpful people in Finland are. She finds that Turku has the best of both worlds: a cosmopolitan feel and nature right on your doorstep.

In Finland, Bayer employs about 1000 people, located in Turku and in Nordic HQ in Espoo. The Product Supply Center in Turku is the global center of expertise and innovation hub for Bayer´s long-term polymer-based contraceptive products that are exported to over 130 countries. According to Jennifer Hunt, Finland and Bayer are full of opportunities that she encourages everyone to try out.

Southwest Finland has been successful in attracting international talents in recent years. For example, the Talent Call Turku competition in 2019 invited five talents along with their families to get to know Turku as a place to live and work. There were over 1000 applicants representing a total of 75 different nationalities. One of the 2019 winner couples have worked here in the technology industry since the autumn of 2020, and another family will arrive during the spring of this year. The goal is to organize the Talent Call competition again in 2021. This time, the winners will get to know all of the cities that are collaborating on the Happy Pro campaign.

The Happy Pro campaign runs at www.talentcall.fi/happypro

The Happy Pro campaign is part of the co-operation between the Talent Boost network of Southwest Finland and the LOURA co-operation. The Talent Boost network in Southwest Finland consists of the cities of Turku, Salo, Rauma, Uusikaupunki ja Pori, the regions’ development companies (such as Turku Science Park Ltd.) and other actors related to the attraction, reception and integration of international talents. The network is part of the national Talent Boost Finland programme, which is coordinate by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. LOURA is a strategic co-operational model that aims to improve awareness about the region, as well as its competitiveness and attractiveness.