Building a New Life
 Edward
Dutton meets Hungarian Zoltan Szep who has managed to find
work building kitchens after three days of unemployment
Zoltan Szep doesn’t really speak English and both he and
his wife cannot stress enough the usefulness of not being
able to do so, ‘It forced him to learn Finnish,’ his Finnish
wife laughs. ‘It meant that he learnt the language really
quickly.’
Zoltan came to Oulu, as he puts is, for ‘Love. For a
beautiful woman.’ He had been working as a builder in
Germany ‘because the pay is better than in Hungary’ when he
met his Finnish wife.
‘She was finishing her studies in Germany,’ he tells me.
‘But we didn’t want to stay in Germany. We didn’t want to
settle there.’
Work Within Days
Originally communicating with his wife in German, Zoltan
threw himself into learning Finnish when he arrived in Oulu
nine years ago. He went on the Mamu course and managed to
get a work practice place at a car dealership.
‘I went there in person to ask about it,’ recalls Zoltan.
‘It’s rare that people just go there in person. Anyway, I
liked it and half way through the practice period I was
offered a job there and I stayed!’ Everything was in Finnish
and within about a year Zoltan was pretty fluent.
Working as a mechanic, he got into kitchen-building work
as a kind of favour for friends. ‘There was not a lot of
work around. I did some renovation for my friends and for my
wife’s family and they were very pleased with the work,’ he
tells me. ‘They suggested that I should set up my own
company doing this.’
Zoltan was building a kitchen one day in his own flat and
he wanted to know a word for something that he couldn’t
explain to his wife in German. The kitchen salesman came to
visit and was so impressed with Zoltan´s work that when
Zoltan later set up his own renovation firm, the same
salesman recommended him to his customers. Now they have
established a company together called Inno-keittiö.
Entrepreneurs
Zoltan has noticed many differences between Hungary and
Finland but one of the most obvious is attitudes to
entrepreneurship.
‘Finns don’t want to do this as much,’ he explains. ‘They
don’t want to take the risk. They’re happy if they can just
work and then go home and forgot about it.’
But Zoltan finds that there is nevertheless a constant
source of work. ‘Young people especially buy a house,
sometimes with a fairly new kitchen. But within about four
years they want to change the kitchen!’ he smiles.
Zoltan is confident that foreigners can find work if they
really try. ‘If you want to find a job you can get a job,’
he insists, ‘if you can do your work properly.’
However, in some ways he has found being an entrepreneur
in Finland more difficult than at home. ‘There are less
people, there are less companies and everything works very
slowly here,’ he says. He’s also found the process of
getting a job in Finland to be very confusing.
Not Responding to Letters
‘In Hungary you apply, there’s an interview and they
decide who gets the job,’ he notes. ‘Here I had a job
interview at one company. There were 500 applicants and we
had to sit a psychological test!’ he smiles. ‘It’s different.’
He also observes that many Finns simply do not write back to
letters of application or emails even in Finnish
‘Maybe it’s to do with being a foreigner,’ adds his
Finnish wife. ‘You have to go there so that they remember
you and know that you can really speak Finnish.’ She adds
that, ‘a lot of older employees don’t think it’s rude to not
respond to a letter or email but if it’s an international
company they’ll usually respond.’
His wife’s recommendation – she is also involved in
running a company – is always to telephone after sending
your application because it forces people to answer. ‘It
shows that you’re really interested,’ she says. ‘It means
you can present yourself.’ However, she finds people just
turning-up in her office asking for work in person to be ‘a
bit pressurising.’
No Black Market
Zoltan’s line of work is notorious in many countries for
the black market with people paying less money if they pay
in cash so that the builder can pay less tax but according
to Zoltan there is very little in the way of the black
market in Finland.
‘If you renovate an old house – including putting in a
kitchen – you get, within certain restrictions, sixty
percent of the work cost back from the government. So
there’s no point using the black market’ he tells me.
‘Also, a lot of Finns seem to feel there’s a really good
infrastructure here and they want to contribute to it. I
even know expats that think like this!’
Cold Winters and Weird Liquorice
Zoltan has settled in Finland but he still misses a few
things from home – such as a particular kind of greasy pork
that he can’t get in Oulu – and continues to be amazed by
some things in Finland.
‘Salmiakki!’ he laughs, when asked what he finds the most
different about Finland. Even though he’s been here for nine
years, he still can’t understand how anybody could like it.
Also his first winter here was so cold – it got down to
minus 40 – that he couldn’t bear it and just went back to
Hungary for a month.
Zoltan has also found the stereotypical Finnish quietness
to be quite amusing. ‘I worked with this Finnish guy for one
and a half years,’ he recalls. ‘We’d never said much more
than “hello” but then when I was leaving he said that I was
one of his favourite colleagues!’
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