Students busy networking during the biggest recruitment event at Laurea

Network to Get Work is the biggest recruitment event organized annually by Laurea. This year it took place at Leppävaara campus. The event was planned mainly for the IT, Business, Restaurant Entrepreneurship, Risk and Security Management as well as Cosmetic Care students. Among the 27 companies were Academic Work, City of Espoo, HOK-Elanto, Kesko, and Posti.

The lobby of the Laurea building in Leppävaara was crowded from the morning. Companies offered many different opportunities from summer jobs, to trainee programmes to full time jobs for graduates.

For example, Kesko was especially interested in business and IT students. They had placements for summer jobs, but also full time positions and trainee programmes for those graduating this year. Most positions required Finnish language skills, but as they said, for IT team good English should be enough. Veera, Business Information Technology student was interested in working for Kesko. She hoped to get a summer job there. She has applied during the event for a customer service position.

Efima, finance sector company offered trainee jobs for graduates. In addition, Handelsbanken looked for finance and business students and graduates. For this year, they had summer jobs, part-time jobs and some trainee placements.

It was worth to approach Academic Work, the recruitment company, as it offered over hundred jobs in different fields. Students could register in their service; tell about themselves and their interests. Another recruitment company Enjoy, specialized in restaurant and hotel business looked for candidates in those fields. They offered different positions all over Finland: from Helsinki to Utsjoki. 

An interesting offer had Suomen Mentorit. They were not recruiting but offering mentoring programmes for students and graduates to help them find a job, to discover their strengths, capacities and skills. The mentoring programme lasts one year and is free of charge. Each participant gets his or her own mentor from the same profession and meets up to ten times over the year. Students interested in the programme could register for it at the event.

Dress for success

This year for the first time there was a possibility to get an advice from hairdressers and make-up artists about professional appearance and get a good quality photo for your CV and LinkedIn profile.

”We wanted to emphasize the importance of your professional appearance”, says Sanna Eronen, Planning Officer at Career and Recruitment Services.

It turned out that it was the best and most popular part of the event. Students were patiently lining up in a long queue waiting for their turn to get the professional photo. The hairdressers and make-up artists were also very busy. Students were saying they wanted to get this professional look - fine make-up and a good hairstyle. They wanted to look stylish for the photo session.

Students could also take part in workshops: “LinkedIn workshop”, led by Tradenomiliitto, “How to recognize you competencies” led by a recruitment consultant and a former Laurea student as well as Video CV and CV Clinic workshops. All the sessions were also very popular among the students. Some of them came to the event especially to get some professional advice.

“I came here for the Video CV workshop and CV Clinic to get some tips about how to present myself, how to tell about my skills etc. It was very beneficial and I will use the advices. I am also looking for a summer job or internship and hopefully I will find something interesting”, said Noora, Service Business Management student.