Finnish Games Career Day 2020

28 October 2020 was a momentous day for the Games Factory Talents team, as it was the first time that we organized our trademark 'Games Job Fair' recruitment event in a virtual setting, since 2018. 

With virtual being the 'new normal' in today's times and interactions between people largely being online, the challenge for us was to bring a high-level of engagement and intimacy between leading games studios from Finland and the talented game developers joining the event from across the world. We are proud to say that we lived up to everyone's expectations and brought our event's slogan to life - Connecting Passion and Talent!

Almost 500 attendee cards were created helping talents to promote themselves, highlight their skills and share their projects.

While there were a lot of nerves and excitement leading up to the event, we finally hosted 32 speakers from the recruiting studios and partner organizations, over 500 attendees and 300 one-on-one meetings during one intensive day. Throughout the day, our speakers highlighted a range of topics – from introductions by leading games studios in Finland like Remedy Entertainment, Ubisoft RedLynx, Seriously Digital Entertainment, Epic Games, Redhill Games, Fingersoft, Huuuge Games, Veikkaus Games Studio, Mainframe Industries, Nitro Games, Dodreams, Dazzle Rocks, MyGamez, Panzerdog, Zoan - to - living and working in Finland by Business Finland, Barona, IGDA Finland, Game Makers of Finland and city of Helsinki.

We categorised the talents based on their hard skills and level of experience.

Senior - 25% Middle - 35% Junior- 40%

The event was organised in four parts.

1

The first part of the day was dedicated to studios. Recruiters and representatives from the studios were able to highlight and promote their studios at the Main stage of the event.

2

For the second session after all the studio presentations were done the attendees could interact with studio representatives during the networking break. This enabled attendees to mingle and connect on a personal level with the companies Live at their virtual interactive stands and have their questions answered.

3

After the networking break, in the third session we continued with the presentations from the leading recruiters and supporting organizations like Business Finland and City of Helsinki on how to join the Finnish games industry and Steps for easy relocation..

4

In the final part of the event, we organized a panel where talent leads from Remedy Entertainment, Seriously Digital Entertainment, Dazzle Rocks and Barona relocation services shared best practices of successful relocations to Finland for games industry professionals and what one needs to know before relocating. It was great to hear that there were many talents that decided to come to Finland and join the studios during the pandemic and many more are going through the relocation process. 

We concluded the event with a couple of presentations from participants of the previous job fairs who have already begun their careers in Finland. They shared their own experiences on relocating and living in Finland for the last couple of years. 

In summary, I'd like to thank everyone – speakers, attendees, organizers – for making our first online event a resounding success! It was incredible to experience the energy, passion and enthusiasm from the speakers and the attendees through the large number of questions and comments during the event. This reflects the resiliency of our Finnish Games industry (and our society as a whole) to rise above the pandemic challenge of today and continue to find new ways of engagement and recruitment. And we will keep this momentum going into 2021!

Join our next Finland Games Job Fair online event is in April!