What Integrify can do for You
An interview with Ilkka Haahtela
Helsinki has recently partnered with Integrify to change lives.
New students started at Integrify the first week of August and some of those students are being sponsored by Helsinki. Helsinki is paying Integrify to train these immigrant students how to become developers according to Integrify’s curriculum.
In an interview with Ilkka Haahtela, the Head of Immigration and Employment Affairs for the City of Helsinki, was asked to explain and answer some questions about Helsinki’s new partnership with Integrify.
When asked, why Helsinki was partnering with Integrify, Haahtela explained:
“The City of Helsinki need to recruit more talent and more ICT (information, communication and technology) experts into our labour market. In order to solve this problem we are buying education programmes from Integrify in order to do so. Integrify has a great concept to give education and skills to immigrants in order that they can help Finland and Helsinki to get more ICT experts. We can fulfil our ICT shortage from skilled people from abroad, so it is very important for us to partner with Integrify.”
And WHY might you ask, is the City of Helsinki bothering to invest in unemployed immigrants and Integrify?
“We have some really talented immigrants in Helsinki but they can’t show their skills because they can’t speak our language. But if you are heading to the ICT sector it is less important to speak Finnish. So by taking this course immigrants can find quick ways to get into the labour market. And at the same time we are solving the problem that ICT companies need more skilled experts. So the project nicely combines both sides.”
Want to know how these particular participants were selected? Haahtela’s explains:
“We have worked together with our partners Integrify to find the most suitable applicants to meet both our priorities. At City of Helsinki, it is very important to prioritise finding work for unemployed people who have the greatest challenges finding work. Whereas of course, Integrify also needs to select people with the most ICT potential and greatest chance of graduating from the programme. So during our selection processes we have found a balance of both.”
The City of Helsinki is paying for these participants to train at Integrify. But, the financial investment in Helsinki’s unemployed immigrants makes more fiscal sense than the alternative. Helsinki expects to save money by partnering with Integrify, though it is unclear how much at this time.
“There are certainly financial benefits to running the programme. It is quite expensive for the City of Helsinki to have people who can not speak Finnish and are not giving their skills to the labour market. We have to pay benefits to people and it is quite expensive for the city. With Integrify, we benefit twice. Firstly, because when these people find their way into the labour market they start to pay tax, and also because we don’t have have to pay for their benefits any longer.”
It might seem obvious, but the impact that Integrify can have on Finland’s national government and labour market is tremendous! Integrify has the potential to speed up the integration process in Finland 10 fold with its training program catered to employers that are looking for developers across the labor market.
“At the City of Helsinki we have to find the quickest way to help get our unemployed immigrants into the labour market in the future. By working with Integrify and turning these people into ICT experts, we don’t need to wait for them to learn Finnish or go through the education system before accessing our society. We now have a much quicker way to allow them to access our jobs market and they don’t need to spend time learning more than they need.”
Integrify is eager to scale the program overseas. Integrify believes other labour markets, in Sweden and Germany for instance, can benefit from Integrify’s training model and help to integrate unemployed immigrants. Soon, Integrify training model may help to benefit governments and immigrants around the world.
I think Integrify is quite a global concept that could certainly be successful in the future in Europe or further overseas. Our European neighbours face the same kinds of challenges with regards to immigrants lacking local language and also need to help these individuals find a place in society. So I certainly think that the programme is scalable abroad.
Here, I want to be clear that Integrify is a software development training program. Thus, the participants are trained as Junior Developers, not ICT experts. There is a slight difference here, though developers are very needed in the Finnish labor market, just as much and if not more than ICT experts, and will be searching for jobs in tech.
The pilot has just begun and the success of those students sponsored by Helsinki has yet to be determined. However, each Helsinki sponsored student is in the middle of intensive coding training, working hard, and activating themselves to change their own lives and learn new skills. Stay tuned to hear more big things about the students at Integrify and the Helsinki/Integrify partnership.
