7 hurdles ex-Nokia employee need to jump in Finland

7 hurdles ex-Nokia employee need to jump in Finland

Observations in finnish job market after Nokia handset business collapse

I left Nokia three years ago. The year 2012 was the peak in the series of layoffs that started in 2009. This year 2015 is about to end that series. In its peak around 2006-2007 Nokia's handset business had some 17 000 employees in Finland. Now that business, currently owned by Microsoft is about to reduce roughly to 1000. At the same time numerous layoffs have been conducted by subcontractors and other companies which were dependent on Nokia's businesses or its employees purchasing power. This includes number of consulting business, shops, barbers, department stores, few hotels, restaurants, etc. Bare in mind, the whole Finland has population half of the London. This collapse of handset business has had wide ecosystemic effect in Finland.

For me this has been an excellent opportunity to study such historic event at ground level. Personally I've been seeking jobs, having temporary jobs, studying, tried entrepreneurship, etc. and finally found a good job. So that has given me a chanche to see it all. I also participated in voluntary activity, which was studying and seeking help for the situation. I think, now after three years it is good time to do some retrospect and list key observations.

1/3 rule

According to several studies[1,2,3] about 1/3 of the former Nokia employees have found permanent job, around another 1/3 has been between short term jobs short term unemployment periods and last 1/3 has been unemployed almost all the time. Roughly four to five hundred companies were founded by former Nokia employees[4]. About one out of the ten ex-Nokian's tried entrepreneurship. I was actually one of them, but my career as entrepreneur was not succesful. Thanks to Nokia's support in funding and training roughly 1/5 of these new companies are still alive and provide jobs, few even growing. Situation would be much worse without them. Nevertheless, majority of the ex-Nokian's who found a job, found it elsewhere. Why the number of long term unemployment is so high? Majority of this group has high education, bachelor or masters degree. Here are the seven career mismatch challenges former Nokia employees need to overcome.

1. Mismatch in competence

As telecoms business is in decline, areas like health care tech, mobile games, business software, digital marketing, etc. are on the rise. This means, that there is not much demand for the main competencies of the former Nokia employees. The mismatch can be clearly seen in software development. Many of the former Nokia engineers did software development, for example close to hardware level embbeded software design, radio algorithm designs, etc. In business software different programming languages and tools are used and also software architectures are different. For competent software designer 6-12 months retraining is needed to become upto date. The case is even worse for hardware and electronics engineers. Nokia used to have ASIC designers and very dedicated job profiles. Nokia focused in large scale consumer electronics. The growing companies are making small series of investment products to businesses, which are made on top of existing platforms.

2. Mismatch in job lifecycle

When laid off, Nokia's employees left very mature business organization and a large corporation. On the other hand most of the growth companies in Finland are small or mediums sized, typically sub 100 people organizations. These companies are culturally startups or otherwise young dynamic SME's. They are not hiring corporate bureaucrats, but instead people who have deep technical expertice, autonomy, intraprenial attitude and skills of light management. The company cultures in these companies are still in formation as they are growing. Nokia like many othe corporations provided careerpath which promoted people towards middle management. In new young companies there is much less need for "pure" managers, instead they need either "expert" leader "combos" or deep expertise in emerging technologies.

3. Mismatch geographically

New jobs are being born in different areas where Nokia used to have major branch offices. Since Finland has geographically sparce population, as Nokia grew larger it had to establish branches in other cities like Tampere, Salo, Jyväskylä, Turku and Oulu. After this autumn only Tampere is remaining as small branch office for Microsoft. The ongoing start-up boom has happened mainly in Helsinki meanwhile traditional entrepreneurship is flourishing in Ostrobothnia area. Especially Salo is now becoming Detroit of Finland.

4. Mismatch in number

There are open positions in Finland, but that doesn't match in number the lay offs. The competition for jobs is hence fierce. Therefore succesful job seeking requires more personal digital marketing, personal brandning, networking skills than in the past. When most of the ex-Nokia employees were hired to Nokia in late 90's, Finland's GDP was growing 5%. Demand for workforce was so high, that there was no competition in job market. With normal company employment renewal rate it will take a decade for Finnish job market to digest the bite it has been given.

5. Mismatch in payment

Accordign to research[2] those who have got a new job, have much smaller sallary than in Nokia. Higher you were in corporate ladder, higher the drop. In some cases the salary drop has been 1/3. That is one more addition to 1/3 rule.  High competition and lower than expected salaries must have been turn down for many. We must bare in mind that Finland has quite well functioning safety net. Medium waged employees can get unemployment benefit that is close to 2/3 of your former salary. The idea of postponing job search for later better time is tempting. But it has been a deadly trap if time consumes your competences.

6. Mismatch in age

Last but not least, the preferable ideal age for new hire is 30-35. The typical ex-Nokia'n is 40-50 years of age. Actually it shouldn't matter much. The most of the middle agers are still capable of learning, in better shape than their parents were at same age etc. But in tough competition, the age is easy number to discriminate.

7. Mismatch in contacts

Ex-Nokians have good network of contacts in telecoms business and corporate world, but hardly any in linkage to SME's or startups. It is tough to notice that your former bosses are unemployed too, your former clients maybe also, since the whole sector in Finland has collapsed. Despite of a large Network, you will feel lonely.

Summary

I think that considering the size of the job markets, the facts and the seven career obstacles ex-Nokian's need to face, they are overperfomers in the job market despite the hard numbers look sad. Nokia and finnish goverment has done also lot efforts to help the situation.

There is still another 2000 ex-Microsoft employees who are going to face these hard facts. I hope that many of them will read this. For me it took a while to figure out the gravity of the situation. I was simply too busy at work in Nokia. I think it will be the same for the others too. In order to flourish in job seeking ex-Nokia and ex-Microsoft employees need to take retrospective to your career, competencies, persona etc. and reflect that against the seven obstacles I listed. Identify what strenghts and weaknesses you have in each one. Make an action plan how to overcome those, what new skills you need to learn, what new contacts you need, how you need to change your attitude. For each of us these choices are personal, but the challenges in the job market are generic. 

[1] "Tutkimustulokset: Nokiasta lähteneiden uudelleensijoittuminen", HRM Partners, Elina Palmroth-Leino
[2] "Mitä Nokian työntekijöille on tapahtunut suurten irtisanomisaaltojen jälkeen?", Niko Porjo & Jakke Mäkelä
[3] "Työnhaku - aktiivisuus ja siinä onnistuminen. Varsinais-Suomessa Nokialta ja sen alihankkijoilta irtisanotut.", JustDoICT, Tatu Lund
[4] "Bridge It Up - the impact of startup services offered for employees - Case Nokia's Bridge Program", Aalto University School of Business, Pertti Kiuru, Jari Händelberg & Heikki Rannikko

Oskari Koskimies

CISO, Co-Founder at Orla DTx

8y

@Jilles van Gurp: Also, comparing to Estonia is an apples to oranges kind of comparison. Estonia is a low-taxation, low-social-security country. Finland is a high-taxation, high-social-security country. According to one news article, Helsinki paid more social security money to Estonians in Helsinki in 2012 than Tallinn did to Estonians in Tallinn. You may prefer the Estonian system, but Finns have time and time again voted for their current system. The reason Estonia is popular is simply because it is possible to have your cake and eat it too; as a Finn, you can work in Estonia and pay the low taxes (salaries are of course lower, but so are costs, and for highly paid experts the money after taxes is probably close to what it is in Finland), but if you get sick or unemployed, you can always return to Finland and enjoy the social security. It is the same reason many Finns like to work in US; you get the benefits without having to worry about the disadvantages. Estonia is just much easier to start working in.

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Oskari Koskimies

CISO, Co-Founder at Orla DTx

8y

@Jilles van Gurp: I have to very much disagree with it being hard to lay off people in Finland. Companies are doing it in record numbers currently, and as you yourself said, Microsoft is rapidly scaling down operations. If it were hard to lay off people, they could not do that. It *is* hard to fire individual people, but that is more a problem for local startups. For corporations that start R&D activities in Finland the risk is small. E.g. now that Samsung is not doing so well anymore, they quickly and quietly shut down their Finnish R&D. The current problems of Finland are simply many bad things coming together at the same time; general recession and lack of investments across the world, Nokia phone business dying, and Russia export and tourism business shut down by the embargo (how on earth our politicians agreed to the embargo without demanding the costs to be shared across EU is beyond me). I agree that currently the environment is not the best possible for startups; hiring risk is high and moving from employee to entrepreneur is penalized with loss of unemployment benefits. But the general mood is very pro-startup at the moment and there are changes underway to fix those problems.

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Martin Botteck

Professor at FH Südwestfalen Meschede

8y

Very well said, Tatu! Happened all the same to me leaving Nokia in 2008 after 15 years… however I´m not based in Finland but Germany. My personal network rendered useless in the decline of the German telecoms sector, and other businesses did not appreciate my learning abilities nor management competence for a long time (almost three years that I filled with smaller projects and entrepreneurial attempts). Anyhow: thumbs up to all us ex-Nokias who struggle or succeed. To Jilles: I don´t know which area in Nokia you were with but my personal experience does not at all match your valuation. Almost all my fellow employees were amongst the most competent, engaged and creative personnel I had the honor to work with. And: Germany has similar rules on the job and entrepreneurial market as Finland has - so, when last have you looked at comparing figures of EU BIP and growth rates? Certainly, there must be s.t. else that makes business not to prefer Finland for the time being … and: I had the same situation as Tatu and others despite being not in Finland. Please, go seek a better reason for shredding employee´s rights.

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Jianli Xu

Software Architect at Danfoss Editron

8y

Jilles van Gurp: excellent point, cannot agree any more. The problem of Finland is Finland.

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Jilles van Gurp

FORMATION CPTO | Experienced tech entrepreneur, (interim) CTO/CPO, strategy, and product consultant, hands-on troubleshooter and mentor.

8y

All true, I worked for Nokia for seven years, of which three in Helsinki. In all fairness, Nokia had it coming. Nokia was burdened by middle and upper management that was so out of touch that it doesn't surprise me that a lot of them ended up being long term unemployed. Nokia had for years been promoting people to their level of incompetence where whatever technical skills were displaced by middle management type skills. This mainly involves spending most of your day in telcos and meetings and exchanging emails and powerpoint slides. Lets just say that the job market for professional powerpoint wielders is smaller than ever. The situation in Finland is aggrevated by the fact that modern day Finland is a very hostile environment for companies to operate in: taxes are high, cost of living is high, it is very hard to lay off people, etc. Frankly if you don't have to be there, it's a place you want to avoid at all cost as a company. This means that even though foreign companies have been drooling over the engineering capacity up for grabs, they have largely been holding back ramping up operations in Finland because the financial risks are just unacceptable. This is probably a also big reason Microsoft has scaled down operations so quickly in Finland. Finland needs to drastically reform its economy to make it a worthwhile place for entrepreneurs and mulltinationals again. Just look across the baltic at Estonia. Standards of living are pretty good there and there is a lot of foreign investment. The big difference: they are not strangling their corporations and entrepreneurs. You still have the engineering talent, designer talent, network infrastructure, friendly people. The only thing holding back Finland is Finland.

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