Employers’ language requirements towards international students in the pre-recruitment stage: The case of Aalto University in Finland

In Finland, inadequate knowledge of Finnish language has been reported as one of the prominent hurdles to international graduates’ qualification-matched employment. To better understand the employment issues through a lens of language, this research aims to analyze the language requirements specified by employers in the pre-recruitment stage and discuss whether the required language could be considered as a form of discrimination on the local labour market. Online job advertisement is regarded as an appropriate data source for analyzing the needed qualifications. The data sample was mainly collected from an online job portal named Aalto JobTeaser where employers in Finland regularly advertise positions. During the observation period, 2,355 entry-level job advertisements were gathered and coded, of which 705 vacancies were posted in English descriptions. The frequency of the requisite language skills is measured after parsing and extracting the relevant keywords from the English-writing job descriptions. Content and statistical analysis was carried out based on the data samples, findings show that ads on Aalto job portal favour students with fluent Finnish skills. There are significant variations of the explicit language requirements across different job categories, occupational groups, and organizational types. International talents from the study field of technology have more employment opportunities than those from the field of business and design. Start-ups are showing more positive attitudes to hire international talents than large corporations, SMEs and public institutions. Based on the data findings, no definitive conclusion could be made concerning whether the language requirements could be seen as a direct and overt form of discrimination. The reasons behind the language preference, on the other hand, could be linked to implicit discrimination, or the unconscious linkage of immigrants with negative performance labels. Furthermore, it is concerning that the requisite Finnish skills extensively listed on the job vacancies will discourage highly qualified international graduates from applying. This study contributes to the current language issues in international human resource management research. It also adds understanding to the issues of language barriers in the early recruitment stage and employers’ linguistic attitudes in country-specific setting. Research findings could shed light on skilled immigrant’s employment and inform language-related policy choices in Finland, especially for envisioning how to attract and retain highly educated international professionals at both organizational and national levels