“They have their rules” - Digital stories offer guidance for employment services

Abstract

This study analyses the stories of the experiences of 18 highly educated migrants with public employment services in Finland. This contributes to the discussion about the value of employment services by exploring 1) how it responds to the needs of educated migrants, 2) how educated migrants experience encounters with employment officers, and 3) what kind of services educated migrants themselves think would help them. The results reveal a lack of encounters and regard for one’s personal situation, as well as deficiencies in professionalism and customer service orientation. The stories in this article portray the employment office mainly as a bureaucratic and faceless apparatus, controlling and sanctioning its subjects. The contribution of this article lies in (1) providing new insights into the understudied topic of highly educated migrants’ experiences of the employment office, (2) offering an example of a user experience analysis and (3) helping develop employment services in collaboration with international talents.