Career guide
At some point, you might find yourself re-thinking your career choices and you may decide to look for a new job.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of career opportunities! We want to inspire you to think about the various job-seeking options and avenues that are out there.
Many job-seeking channels
Your job search begins with looking for interesting workplaces. You can find information about job vacancies through a number of sources, such as job portals, employers’ websites, social media, newspapers and magazines.
You can also directly contact an organisation you are interested in and enquire about job vacancies. Not all jobs are advertised openly, so you should take advantage of all your networks.
You can also put the word out to your friends, relatives or social media network that you are looking for a new job. LinkedIn is a particularly good job-search channel. It pays to be active in social media in other ways, too, as it brings you free visibility in your job search.
Job application attachments, i.e. extract of criminal background and health certificate
When applying for a job or before the start of your employment relationship, you may require documents proving that you meet the requirements for performing the job in question. Such documents are a criminal background extract and a health certificate.
A criminal background extract, i.e. a criminal record extract, is presented to the employer if you will be working with children. You will need a criminal record extract if you are starting an employment relationship that will last more than three months within a one-year period.
The condition for taking on a public-service employment relationship is that the person taking on the employment delivers the health information proving that they meet the conditions set for the job to the deciding authority. If you are starting a public-service employment relationship, you must provide a medical certificate usually no later than 30 days from when you are informed that you were chosen for the job.
Working abroad
Do you dream of working in a foreign country? There are many options for looking for work abroad: you can apply from Finland, you can go abroad and look for work or you can apply for work at a Finnish company that also has operations abroad.
Your job search will be greatly affected by whether you are applying to work in an EU or EEA country or outside of such countries. The EURES portal can help you in your job search within Europe.
In case of unemployment
Are you unemployed or at risk of becoming unemployed? We have compiled some information for you about what you should do if you become unemployed.
The first things you should do are to:
- register as an unemployed job-seeker at the employment office (TE Office) no later than on your first day of being unemployed
- apply for earnings-related allowance from the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund
- contact OAJ so that you can pay a reduced membership fee
Register as an unemployed job-seeker at the employment office (TE Office)Apply for earnings-related allowance from the Teachers’ Unemployment FundContact us!
Still looking for answers?
Your shop steward and the experts working at the OAJ office will help and support you in different working-life situations. Find the right expert.
Join the union!
As OAJ’s member you receive the most important benefit: advocacy. To join the union, you must work as an employee in the education, training or research sector. The union fee is determined based on your gross earnings, and it is tax deductible.
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