Describe what you succeeded in doing, praise yourself for it and follow your mo…

Does it feel that your work experience is like a confused mass of different kinds of experience and that it is difficult to highlight your skills or strengths? Identifying your competence and putting it into words is a skill that would indeed be needed when you are applying for a job.

On the Monday of your first week at work, you cannot find your way back from the staff room after the coffee break because the corridors all look the same. On Friday, someone asks you how you find it in your new workplace. You don't know what to answer because it feels that you have not done anything, yet.

Listening to Aleksis Nokso-Koivisto describe his work career makes the listener feel almost out of breath, such is the number of career changes and leaps from one field to another made by this 40-year-old.

How can a young job seeker stand out in a highly competitive market?

Heli Pahlman is a young Finnish woman currently working for the United Nations in New York. Heli has achieved what many dream of: a career within the UN. How did she achieve it and what advice can she offer to our readers?

When Tytti Yli-Viikari, Auditor General of the National Audit Office of Finland, left for France to go to upper secondary school there, she was not planning to come back. Today Yli-Viikari lives happily in eastern Helsinki.

Fundraising Aid, a firm that recruits face to face fundraisers for NGOs, employs many young job seekers. Small details can have a big impact on getting the job you want.

Nepali entrepreneur Bijay Baniya argues that immigrants have great potential for starting businesses - and creating jobs.

Prestina Buggenhout is currently living in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands where she is working in the field of mental health. She is of Belgian nationality, but has taken quite many interesting turns during her life, before landing in the Netherlands. And it seems like her adventures in foreign lands are far from over.

I spent last summer in Paris, France as an intern at the Permanent Delegation of Finland to UNESCO. That turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Jenni Ripatti recommends going abroad as an exchange student to all young people. She herself gathered a lot of confidence and courage during her exchange.

Heli Väinölä helps young people identify their own skills in online courses for job seekers. She encourages young people to be active and modest in the job search.

After graduating from upper secondary school and completing his civil service, Matti Minkkinen left Finland to study in London. Four years of university studies in a metropolis bolstered his courage and confidence.

Latvian student Austris Štāls got involved in Haaga-Helia’s Student Union because he wanted to do something useful with his free time. Now he loves his job and works long hours to organize an amazing International Day for his school.

“Once a live broadcast starts, it’s showtime,” laughs Antti Sahlström. “You either do your part as well as you can, or you freeze. Once you say your initial lines, you cannot take them back.”

In addition to paid employment, valuable working life skills can be learned in student organisations and volunteer work. The Europass CV allows users to comprehensively describe the competence they have acquired.