Finland, home to Nokia and jobless engineers, struggles to fill tech jobs

Helsinki, June 14: Finland, whose once-renowned technology sector shed 15,000 jobs with the demise of Nokia’s mobile phone business, is struggling to fill thousands of vacancies for software developers because it lacks people with the right skills.

At the same time, technology firms say immigration policies hamper recruiting trained workers from abroad, adding to the factors weighing on growth prospects for an industry considered key to the stagnant economy’s recovery.

“We want the best game developers working for us, but not all of them can come from Finland,” said Ilkka Paananen, chief executive of mobile game maker Supercell which made close to $1 billion in core profit last year with just 180 employees.

“Hiring the world’s best to come here is the best opportunity”, but inability to hire the right staff would pose “the biggest risk to our company’s growth,” he said.

The country’s technology sector is looking for about 7,000 programmers, according to the Finnish Software Industry and Entrepreneurs' Association.

The country has high hopes for its start-ups, especially mobile gaming firms, following global successes for Finnish firms such as Supercell’s ‘Clash of Clans’ and Rovio’s ‘Angry Birds’ mobile games.

Small software fir ms often look for people with special skills who are ready to start work without training, officials and entrepreneurs say.

That is bad news for Nokia veterans.Nokia dominated around 40% of the world’s mobile phone industry in 2008, but its products were eclipsed by touch-screen smartphones made by Apple and Samsung. Reuters