Working life and expertise studies and career planning

The Career Services cooperates with the degree programmes/responsible teachers to plan the studies related to working life and expertise studies. The Career Services also have an appointed contact person (career counsellor) for all degree programmes (see the list below). Please request a visiting lecture or other support for your course primarily using this form.

You are warmly encouraged to use The Material bank for supporting students’ career planning and expert identity development. The Material bank has been especially compiled for teachers by university's career counsellors. It provides a comprehensive range of freely available activities and useful background information on career planning and expertise.

You are also welcome to use the self-study materials on career planning and job seeking, designed specifically for students, as well as the diverse episodes from the "Working Life Now" webinar series and the "Working Life for Everyone?" podcast series in your teaching!

For the topics below, Career Services has prepared ready-made content and activities that can be customised to suit your degree programme.

• Career planning
• Different theoretical approaches to career planning
• Self-awareness: identifying and describing your competence; identifying your values, motivation and strengths; working on your pitch
• Choices and decision-making
• Sustainable careers and career decisions
• Employability and expertise: factors affecting the employability of persons with an academic background
• Changing working life
• Networking
• Being aware of your options
• Career monitoring and career placement information and the Skills radar app
• Competence requirements of the future
• Job hunting: job hunting strategies and documents, job interviews

The Career Services’ contact persons for faculties from 1.1.2024 (the contact person supports all degree programmes of the faculty):

• Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry: career counsellor Salla Wilén 
• Faculty of Arts: career counsellor Jarkko Immonen
• Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences: career counsellor Salla Wilén 
• Faculty of Educational Sciences: career counsellor Leena Itkonen
• Faculty of Law: career counsellor Jarkko Immonen
• Faculty of Medicine: career counsellor Sanna Grannas 
• Faculty of Pharmacy: career counsellor Sanna Grannas 
• Faculty of Science: career counsellor Sanna Grannas 
• Faculty of Social Sciences: career counsellor Heini Hult-Miekkavaara
• Faculty of Theology: career counsellor Leena Itkonen
• Faculty of Veterinary Medicine: career counsellor Sanna Grannas 
• Swedish School of Social Science: career counsellor Heini Hult-Miekkavaara

You can contact all career counsellors at: careerguidance@helsinki.fi

The University of Helsinki Career Services coordinates the university’s centralised system for traineeship subsidies. Career Services issues the university’s traineeship subsidies, administers traineeship agreements and provides advice to students, staff and employers on questions regarding traineeships.

NB. These instructions do not apply to the clinical traineeships of vocational disciplines, practice teaching by class teachers and subject teachers, on-the-job learning in parishes, practical pharmacy training or the mandatory clinical traineeships of veterinary medicine students. In addition, the traineeships in these disciplines are not covered by the university’s centralised system for traineeship subsidies. However, all degree programmes may update the degree programme-specific traineeship instructions in their instructions for students.

Traineeship instructions for students are available under the Traineeship theme in the Instructions for Students.

Responsibilities of Career Services concerning traineeships

• Providing general advice to students, staff and employers in matters related to traineeships.
• Administration of the university’s traineeship subsidy system: granting traineeship subsidies, signing subsidised traineeship agreements and providing advice on traineeship funding. See the Instructions for Students on applying for traineeship subsidy. When granting a traineeship subsidy, Career Services will check that the traineeship meets the general criteria. In addition, students must contact the person responsible for traineeships in their degree programme to ensure that the traineeship fits their degree. The university’s traineeship subsidy is not available for traineeships within the University of Helsinki (separate institutions included).
• Providing traineeship agreements for traineeships not subsidised by the university. If the student wants to include a traineeship not subsidised by the university in their degree, the person responsible for traineeships on their degree programme must sign the agreement and approve it as a part of the student’s degree.
• Preparing general traineeship instructions and materials.
• Monitoring the traineeships subsidised by the university and preparing related reports (numbers, traineeship placements, employer sectors). Faculty or degree programme-specific information on traineeships subsidised by the university can be requested from Career Services.
• Supporting students who are looking for a traineeship.
• Publishing traineeship advertisements on JobTeaser.
• Organising general traineeship briefing sessions. If a degree programme organises its own traineeship briefing sessions, Career Services can be asked to participate to provide information on matters such as traineeship funding.

Responsibilities of the degree programmes concerning traineeships

• Appointing a teacher responsible for traineeships and updating the list of responsible teachers whenever a new person is appointed.
• Degree programme-specific traineeship advice: for example, the requirements set by the degree programme for traineeships, advice on how students can include the traineeship in their studies. The Instructions for Students have a place for degree programme-specific traineeship information. The page can be used to inform students on available traineeships, traineeship duration and reporting instructions.
• Organising the traineeship as a study unit: specifying learning outcomes, approving traineeships, receiving traineeship reports or other learning tasks, and approving traineeships as completed study units.
• Signing traineeship agreements for traineeships not subsidised by the university. The person responsible for traineeships approves the traineeship as part of the student’s degree by signing the agreement.
• Degree programmes may also cooperate with employers on traineeships by, for example, distributing information on suitable traineeships directly to the students. Traineeship advertisements from employers can also be directed to JobTeaser; to submit an ad, click on this link.

For more information, please contact Career Services traineeships@helsinki.fi

Advertising job and traineeship offers at the University of Helsinki has been renewed. JobTeaser job portal replaced Rekrynet job board. JobTeaser is a versatile service in which students define what kind of job advertisements they want to see in their dashboard or receive via e-mail. 

 

In the JobTeaser job portal, you will find 

• a Europe-wide job market
• a more comprehensive selection of events.  
  
  In addition to Career Services’ own events, you can also participate in virtual events organised by companies.
• employer profiles.
  
  For now, you can see mostly profiles of international employers, but as the service is used more, you can also find profiles of Finnish companies in the service. 
• guidance and messaging to support job seeking and career planning.
  
  Materials to support students are produced by JobTeaser and Career Services. 

More information about the JobTeaser. All services for employers provided by Career Services can be found on Collaboration with students website.

Employers can be directed to contact Career Services for any questions related to job ads, employerservices@helsinki.fi.

There are many sources of information on how students’ careers have turned out after graduation.

Career monitoring
Career monitoring surveys the employment situation of respondents, their career developments, the correspondence between their jobs and their education, and their satisfaction with their degree after graduating. Career monitoring also addresses the factors affecting employability, the skills and competencies currently needed in working life and how well the university’s degrees meet these needs.

Master’s career monitoring follows those who have completed a master’s degree, a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy or a Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Education for five years after their graduation, while the careers of Doctorates are monitored for three years.

Töissä.fi
Töissä.fi is a national website targeted at students of universities and universities of applied sciences. The site contains information on the employment of graduates and texts written by the graduates themselves about their work. On the site, you can find information on the work duties of the graduates of universities and universities of applied sciences.

The University of Helsinki in LinkedIn
LinkedIn contains plenty of information on the students and graduates of the University of Helsinki. The LinkedIn page of the University of Helsinki (behind the tab Alumni) contains more than 100,000 profiles of the university’s alumni. Alumni profiles can be searched through filters such as location, employer, field, education or skills, or by entering keywords in the search field.

Portfolio work is a way of supporting the student’s path towards professional expertise and helping them identify and describe their own competence. The advantage of portfolio work is that it allows future-related themes to be processed throughout the student’s entire study path, rather than as irregularly organised courses. Portfolio work may also consist of a combination of different perspectives, such as study planning (personal study plan), reflection on the student’s own learning (HowULearn), career planning, setting objectives for an internship period or exchange studies and preparing related reports, or documentation of the student’s accumulated knowledge and skills.

Before starting portfolio work in the programme, the form and purpose of the portfolio should be established.

• Is the purpose to reflect on different themes, creating a learning diary-like document, or is it perhaps a story of a journey, goals and growth, or simply a collection of samples demonstrating the student’s skills?
• Is it a basic portfolio with perhaps a living archive of samples, or a sample portfolio?
• Is it a folder of documents collected by the student primarily for the purposes of self-reflection, a semi-public description also targeted at the student’s peers, or a completely public portfolio made for potential employers?
• Are there strict schedules and instructions for the content, form or scope, or can the student prepare it freely?
• Is it created in parts over specific courses or events or separately from studies? Do the students return to the portfolio work repeatedly over the course of their studies, or is it a shorter project scheduled for a single period to support career planning or similar activities?

In addition, you should consider the following perspectives:

• What is the relationship between text and samples or text and visual material? (connecting the words to the samples, interpreting the samples, moving from a single sample/experience to a wider perspective and your own competence; what is the relationship between the text and the appendices)
• What is the platform used for the portfolio?
• Who will read and comment on the portfolio? Who is supervising the portfolio work? What is the division of duties between the teachers, tutor teachers, study plan supervisors and thesis supervisors, or between the teachers and the peer reviewers?
• What should be assessed? The product or the process? What are the assessment criteria?

The University of Helsinki Career Forum is a network open to all staff. The idea is to share information and good practices related to working life cooperation and students' career skills. The broader aim is to promote the employability of university students in a career that match their studies. The network is aimed at degree programmes and all other staff interested in the topic. More than 100 members of the university staff are already involved and the Forum is coordinated by the Career Services. 

In the meetings of the Career Forum e.g. the following topics have been discussed: university's business and employer collaboration, traineeships, employability of international talents, alumni cooperation, skills for the world of work now and in the future, and career planning to support students' graduation.

The Forum currently meets three times a year and operates in the Teams area. You can get involved by joining the Career Forum's Teams area.

For more information on the network, please contact the Career Services: careerservices@helsinki.fi

In addition, Career Services offers students personal career counselling and advice in matters related to job hunting and traineeships. They also organise events around the themes of job hunting and careers. For more information on how Career Services support students, click here.