 Hungarian Zoltan Szep has managed to find work building kitchens after three days of unemployment.
Zoltan Szep doesn’t really speak English and both he and his wife cannot stress enough the usefulness of not being able to do so, ‘It forced him to learn Finnish,’ his Finnish wife laughs. ‘It meant that he learnt the language really quickly.’ Zoltan came to Oulu, as he puts is, for ‘Love. For a beautiful woman.’ He had been working as a builder in Germany ‘because the pay is better than in Hungary’ when he met his Finnish wife. ‘She was finishing her studies in Germany,’ he tells me. ‘But we didn’t want to stay in Germany. We didn’t want to settle there.’ Work Within Days Originally communicating with his wife in German, Zoltan threw himself into learning Finnish when he arrived in Oulu nine years ago. He went on the Mamu course and managed to get a work practice place at a car dealership. ‘I went there in person to ask about it,’ recalls Zoltan. ‘It’s rare that people just go there in person. Anyway, I liked it and half way through the practice period I was offered a job there and I stayed!’ Everything was in Finnish and within about a year Zoltan was pretty fluent. Working as a mechanic, he got into kitchen-building work as a kind of favour for friends. ‘There was not a lot of work around. I did some renovation for my friends and for my wife’s family and they were very pleased with the work,’ he tells me. ‘They suggested that I should set up my own company doing this.’ Zoltan was building a kitchen one day in his own flat and he wanted to know a word for something that he couldn’t explain to his wife in German. The kitchen salesman came to visit and was so impressed with Zoltan´s work that when Zoltan later set up his own renovation firm, the same salesman recommended him to his customers. Now they have established a company together called Inno-keittiö. Entrepreneurs Zoltan has noticed many differences between Hungary and Finland but one of the most obvious is attitudes to entrepreneurship. ‘Finns don’t want to do this as much,’ he explains. ‘They don’t want to take the risk. They’re happy if they can just work and then go home and forgot about it.’ But Zoltan finds that there is nevertheless a constant source of work. ‘Young people especially buy a house, sometimes with a fairly new kitchen. But within about four years they want to change the kitchen!’ he smiles. Zoltan is confident that foreigners can find work if they really try. ‘If you want to find a job you can get a job,’ he insists, ‘if you can do your work properly.’ However, in some ways he has found being an entrepreneur in Finland more difficult than at home. ‘There are less people, there are less companies and everything works very slowly here,’ he says. He’s also found the process of getting a job in Finland to be very confusing. Not Responding to Letters In Hungary you apply, there’s an interview and they decide who gets the job,’ he notes. ‘Here I had a job interview at one company. There were 500 applicants and we had to sit a psychological test!’ he smiles. ‘It’s different.’ He also observes that many Finns simply do not write back to letters of application or emails even in Finnish‘Maybe it’s to do with being a foreigner,’ adds his Finnish wife. ‘You have to go there so that they remember you and know that you can really speak Finnish.’ She adds that, ‘a lot of older employees don’t think it’s rude to not respond to a letter or email but if it’s an international company they’ll usually respond.’ His wife’s recommendation – she is also involved in running a company – is always to telephone after sending your application because it forces people to answer. ‘It shows that you’re really interested,’ she says. ‘It means you can present yourself.’ However, she finds people just turning-up in her office asking for work in person to be ‘a bit pressurising.’ No Black Market Zoltan’s line of work is notorious in many countries for the black market with people paying less money if they pay in cash so that the builder can pay less tax but according to Zoltan there is very little in the way of the black market in Finland.‘If you renovate an old house – including putting in a kitchen – you get, within certain restrictions, sixty percent of the work cost back from the government. So there’s no point using the black market’ he tells me.‘ Also, a lot of Finns seem to feel there’s a really good infrastructure here and they want to contribute to it. I even know expats that think like this!’ Cold Winters and Weird Liquorice Zoltan has settled in Finland but he still misses a few things from home – such as a particular kind of greasy pork that he can’t get in Oulu – and continues to be amazed by some things in Finland. ‘Salmiakki!’ he laughs, when asked what he finds the most different about Finland. Even though he’s been here for nine years, he still can’t understand how anybody could like it. Also his first winter here was so cold – it got down to minus 40 – that he couldn’t bear it and just went back to Hungary for a month. Zoltan has also found the stereotypical Finnish quietness to be quite amusing. ‘I worked with this Finnish guy for one and a half years,’ he recalls. ‘We’d never said much more than “hello” but then when I was leaving he said that I was one of his favourite colleagues!’
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Congrates. I will make sure when we buy a house of our own, and in need of a kitchen, we will give you the first refusal.