Caverion turns its hiring problem into Finland's Energy-Wisest School Minecraft contest

Caverion, a major Finnish building-technology company, needed to hire about one skilled professional a day, yet the sector's reputation — poor indoor air, endless construction sites — repelled young talent. To secure its future workforce, it had to make energy-smart building something a generation that grew up on Minecraft actually cared about.

Turn Caverion's expertise into a national Minecraft contest: kids redesign their real schools as energy-wise buildings, so the industry becomes something they play with.

With Microsoft, the City of Oulu and agency Kurio, Caverion ran 'Finland's Energy-Wisest School' from 27 September to 1 November 2023: any Finnish class could rebuild its own school as an energy-wise building inside Minecraft Education, which nearly every Finnish municipality already licensed. Caverion energy experts and Microsoft educators wrote curriculum-aligned lessons, Oulu's STEAM network piloted them, and Minecraft YouTuber Paqpa joined the jury. Around 100 designs were submitted; winners came from Oulu, Jokioinen and Turku.

Hundreds of schools and thousands of students took part, and media coverage reached an audience twice the size of Finland's population. Job applications to Caverion rose 54% in a single month. The project, billed as a world first, went on to win Campaign of the Year at the ICCO Global Awards and was ranked the world's fourth-best PR project at the Global SABRE Awards.

Caverion builds and services the technology inside buildings, and in 2023 it faced a talent math problem: the company needed roughly one new skilled professional a day, but schoolchildren saw the sector as dirty old construction with bad indoor air and endless projects. The energy transition made the topic timely, yet traditional employer branding was not getting through to the people Caverion would need in ten years.

The campaign answered by giving children Caverion's own expertise as a game. 'Finland's Energy-Wisest School' invited every Finnish class to redesign its actual school as an energy-wise building inside Minecraft Education — the version of Minecraft schools already had licences for. Caverion's engineers supplied the energy knowledge, Microsoft shaped it into curriculum-aligned lessons, the City of Oulu's STEAM educators tested the material, and a popular Minecraft YouTuber helped judge the roughly 100 entries.

What looked like a corporate competition functioned as a national teaching moment and a recruiting engine at once. Participants learned about heat conservation, renewable generation and building automation by designing them; the winning builds showed solar roofs, geothermal loops, rainwater harvesting and recycling. The effect on Caverion was immediate and measurable: applications rose 54% in one month, hundreds of schools took part, and coverage reached twice Finland's population.

The contest put the employer's technical expertise — not its logo — at the centre, so children learned the industry by building it.

Minecraft Education was already licensed in nearly every Finnish municipality, removing the usual classroom barrier to a nationwide programme.

Curriculum-aligned lessons and Oulu's STEAM pilot made the project legitimate schoolwork, not an ad break.

Judging by an admired YouTuber gave the contest credibility with children that a corporate jury could never have had.

When you must recruit from a generation you cannot reach, hand that generation your expertise as something to play with: a national contest inside their own world out-recruits any careers page.

Caverion kept the learning materials free for schools after the contest closed, and the campaign kept collecting honours into 2024: Campaign of the Year at the ICCO Global Awards and a top-four finish at the Global SABRE Awards. For Caverion Finland, the daily-hire recruiting drive behind the idea continued.