This article contains a large number of phrases which should help you talk about your work experience in Finnish. Expressing your work experience in Finnish is important in job interviews but can also prove useful when talking to Finns in general.

1. Basic work experience vocabulary

2. How to say “I work” in Finnish

There are two ways in Finnish to say “to work”. First, you can use the verb työskennellä. In spoken language, it’s very common to use the combination of the verb olla “to be” with töissä “in work”. In some coursebooks, you will still find “olla työssä“, but I wouldn’t recommend you use that form.

In the tables below, I’ve listed the present, past and perfect tense of both työskennellä and olla töissä.

Conjugation of the verb työskennellä

Conjugation of the phrase olla töissä

3. How to say where you work in Finnish

If you want to talk about the location of a job, you use the missä-form as normally. This means that some placenames and locations will get the -ssa ending, while others will get the -lla ending. You can read more about these forms in this article.

4. How to say what your job is in Finnish

If you want to express the position you hold at work rather than the location of your workplace, you should use the essive case. The addition of the case ending -na to the name of the profession allows you to express that you work “as a” professional somewhere.

Most places of employment have many types of employees. It can be necessary to specify what your profession is in a certain place. Some of the examples below demonstrate this necessity.

5. Working history – Työhistoria

The word työhistoria literally means “work(ing) history.” You can find several sections containing phrases to talk about your previous work experiences in Finnish; ie. your employment history.

5.1. Specifying your past work experience

The word työkokemus “job experience” is generally used in the phrase “Minulla on työkokemusta”, which is then followed by the mistä-form (when talking about a job or task) or the miltä-form (when talking about the field of employment).

You can form your own sentences by, for example, putting your profession in the genitive case and following it up with työstä. Literally, these sentences mean “I have work experience of [insert profession]’s work”.

In addition, you could use työtehtävistä instead of työstä. This method creates sentences which literally mean “I have work experience of the duties of a [insert profession]”. The table below contains examples, but they haven’t been translated so literally.

5.2. Not much experience

If you don’t have any working experience, or only very little experience, some of these phrases might prove useful for you. Remember that doing a 6-week Finnish language internship is also something worth mentioning!

5.3. Work experience in other fields

The word ala is used quite a lot in Finnish. It refers to the field/industry of employment a job belongs to. Some common fields are:

5.4. Similar job experience

If you’ve done a similar job or similar tasks before, you could use some of the phrases below.

5.5. A lot of work experience

5.6. Specifying the length of past work experiences

It’s a good idea to also practice forming sentences where you specify both your work experience and the time span during which you have performed said duties. For this, form a sentence such as the ones above, and add the timespan in the same way as in the following table.

I have added the word tästä in the following example sentences to signify in what position in the sentence you would typically put the profession, field or task you have work experience with.

5.7. Work practice experience

If you don’t have proper professional experience yet, you might nevertheless have done a työharjoittelu (internship, job training) during a Finnish integration course. Another type of work experience immigrants sometimes get is työkokeilu “work try-out, work trial”.

These are worth mentioning because they mean you’ve been in Finnish working life. Even if the internship had nothing to do with the job you are applying for, it’s still valuable experience. Employers generally appreciate you having some type of experience with Finnish working life.

Check out these other sources online as well:

That’s all for this article. Hopefully this helped you get more of an idea of how you talk about your work experience in Finnish.

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