Is Finnish required?

Photo by Tristan Pokornyi from Pexels

Being an immigrant in a foreign country is challenging at times. I've been on and off learning Finnish unofficially for the past 5 years. I now finally have time to do some intensive learning but this brings up a question.

When searching for jobs in the marketplace, I've always skipped over the ones that are advertised only in Finnish. But the more I'm looking, the more I feel like I'm missing out on job opportunities. I'm just as qualified and probably come with some other advantages as a native English speaker. I live and work in Helsinki, the ever-growing and opportunistic capital of Finland, where English is known far and wide. I understand there are jobs that are client-based and require communicating back and forth with clients, Finnish is obviously required.

But I've worked for a company before that the working language was Finnish, the UI and advertisements all in Finnish. However, everyone at the office spoke English to me and English to each other if I was included in the conversation. I took that opportunity to be immersed in Finnish and learned quite a lot being forced into learning.

I know it can work. The question is... am I wasting my time applying for jobs that are posted in Finnish on the job boards? What is your opinion? How has it worked for you? Recruiters, how has this worked for your jobs?

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