Talent Boost Programme

Talent Boost Programme - attracting and retaining international talent for the Finnish labor market

Talent Boost is a national programme that aims to attract international talent for the Finnish labor market and improve the employment of international specialists who already live in Finland. Talent Boost actions support international talents' integration and opportunities to build their future in Finland. The programme supports the Finnish government's objectives to increase the number of international students and their employment in Finland after graduation.

Read more about Talent Boost Programme from the web pages of Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland

Talent Boost actions in Metropolia include for example career services for highly educated immigrants, degree programmes where Finnish language is integrated into teaching and co-operation with companies interested in hiring international talent.

Metropolia's Talent Boost service promise

• We strengthen international students' connections to Finnish companies and professional networks
• We help international students to find interesting career opportunities in Finland by increasing and strengthening co-operation with companies.
• We improve our services to support international students to integrate into Finland and find internships and job opportunities.

Finished projects

• Talent Helsinki 2022-2023 project (2022-2023) The objective on the Talent Helsinki 2022 - 2023 project was to attract foreign experts and entrepreneurs and key people working in various fields to Helsinki, especially in the field of labor shortages, and to facilitate the establishment and integration into the labor market of international experts and their families already in the region.

• Oske project (2020-2023) The project developed and piloted a service concept of a competence center functions for immigrants with a higher education background.The project offered career coaching and recognition of competence services and Career Boost programmes for supplementary studies. The main target group was jobseeking highly educated immigrants in the Helsinki region.

• SIMHEapp II project (2019-2022) Metropolia was a partner in the project coordinated by Karelia University of Applied Sciences, extending and further developing the digital mobile platform that helps to recognise immigrants’ competences and supports their guidance. The application was developed in the SIMHEapp project (2017-2019) and the updated version included also support for employment paths and non-degree related educational paths.

• Talent Helsinki project (2021-2022) Metropolia was a partner in the project coordinated by City of Helsinki. The aim of Talent Helsinki project was to improve employment among international degree students and international talents in the Helsinki region. The goal was to increase activity and the number of employers and international degree students in the JobTeaser portal.

• SIMHE continuation project (2019-2021): The project developed an integrated career guidance and Finnish language-learning model for international degree students to support their employment in Finland. The project also evaluated the SIMHE activities and experiences in Finland. The project was funded by Ministry of Education and Culture.

• International talents accelerating growth project (2019-2021): The project improved employment among international degree students and developed the attraction and integration of international talents in the Helsinki region. The Talent Boost AIKO funded project was run in a network of 12 partners in the Helsinki region.

• SOTE-silta project (2018-2021, page in Finnish): The ESR funded co-project of four universities of applied sciences developed a meaningful and cost-efficient process for recognising competences, granting professional practice rights and supporting employment in certain professions in the field of health care.

• Deploying Competence in Finland project (2018-2020, EDUFI): The project aimed at creating an ecosystem in Helsinki Capital Region that enables recognition of competences and guidance of highly educated immigrants to enter to the most competence-related educational or career path that also supports integration to the Finnish society.

• SIMHE path (2018-2020, ESF): The project aimed to make the highly educated immigrants' competences more visible and to develop a regionally customised (Northern Finland, Eastern Finland and Helsinki Capital Region) educational project to support employment. This model can also be applied and adopted by other institutions of higher education.

• Getting ready - A higher education preparatory program for Immigrants (2017-2019, Ministry of Education and Culture): In this co-project of nine universities of applied sciences in Finland an advanced training programme was developed to improve immigrants' access to higher education. Also national recommendations were provided.

Check out our publications

Most of our publications are in Finnish for a greater impact within Finland. Here are the ones we publish in English.

Publication

Towards a Finland of talents together – insights on the SIMHE operations (2021)

The publication is a compilation of the insights, best practices and identified development needs from the 2017–2020 strategy period. The operations are covered from the perspectives of the SIMHE member institutions, various projects and the multi-actor co-operation network.

Various Variables -blog

In this blog we share our experiences, tips and advice and insights to our customers and stakeholders. We publish blog texts regularly.

Read more Various variables blog.

Contact

Specialist Anu Luoma (People Finder -profile)

Specialist Henriikka Heikkinen (People Finder -profile)