The Swedish Bulletin - Archives: How to find a job in Sweden

How to find a job in Sweden

You’ve got your Swedish residency sorted, your work permit’s been approved and your personal number’s in the post. It’s time to earn your kronors, and put in a hard day’s work. But let’s be honest, job-hunting in Sweden can become a long-term career in itself.

First stop
Make an acquaintance with your local job centre, which should become your second home. Arbetsförmedlingen has 49 offices in Stockholm alone and, what’s more, they’re bright, airy and none- too-depressing places to be when whiling away the job-hunting day.

You can register as a Swedish jobseeker, with advisors on hand to help match your credentials, offer language assistance, refresher interview techniques along with valuable CV and letter writing tips. Free Internet access is also available.

While it’s worth ploughing through the daily papers, from the broadsheets to the underground freebies, Arbetsförmedlingen houses the biggest bank of vacancies for the whole of Sweden. If you’re unemployed, it’s a one-stop shop and really worth the trip.

Surf the sites
Cut your Internet bills in half and abandon the search engines – there are only three websites worth a visit.

http://www.ExpatsInSweden.com - is a new online resource centre for expatriates living in Sweden. The creators aim at helping expats network with each other and to find meaningful employment in Sweden.
The website offers information about immigration, culture, and the business environment. There is also a membership area specifically designed for job seekers where one could access lists of over 400 American, 110 British and 30 Canadian companies with operations in Sweden; lists of over 100 recruiting, 100 IT consulting, 60 Management consulting and 60 Marketing Research companies in Sweden. You can also post your CV/Resume for recruiting companies and hiring managers to access
http://www.ams.se - the homepage of Arbetsförmedlingen should be first in your list of ‘favourites’. It has every up-to-the-minute vacancy and is easy to navigate. Check out the platsbanken link and click on senaste inkomma daily for new positions, or search by keyword and location in ‘sök profil’. Contact numbers and addresses of your local office can also be found here. http://altavista.jobsafari.se/ - A jungle of job opportunities with a few hidden extras you might not find at Arbetesförmedlingen. This site scours company pages for all the latest listings. The second 2 sites are only available in Swedish hence…

Learn the lingo
Quadruple your chances of success with Swedish skills on your CV. Lingua-phobes should look for starter courses in conversational Swedish, says Madeleine Deland, advisor at Arbetesförmedlingen.

“It’s a tricky situation,” she says. “It’s not impossible to get a job without speaking Swedish but normally it is essential to at least have the basics.”

Indeed, a First Class Honours degree in Biochemistry is about as useful as a Diploma in Embroidery if your Swedish vocabulary doesn’t suffice.

But even if your Swedish isn’t up to scratch, get your CV translated professionally, a worthwhile investment, which could pay off.

Be speculative…and realistic
The Yellow Pages or Gula Sidorna is a bible of contacts and compulsory bedtime reading. Look up companies in your field and chase their email addresses on the web. Additionally, obtain a list of international companies currently operating in Sweden from your Embassy. Then simply scatter your CV everywhere, cross your fingers and pray.

You can also register with the larger Swedish recruitment agencies but one word of warning, advertising on Swedish CV databases is a usually a waste of time. Now is the time to act with companies looking for summer replacements, or offer your services on a ‘vikariat’ basis (temporary worker). Two hundred emails later and still without luck, consider that your dream job isn’t going to flash before your eyes. A vast drop in salary expectations or the dreaded ‘retraining’ may well be on the cards.

Go to the pub
If all this sounds too depressing wallow in a pint and a trip to your local, it could be the making of your new career. ”It’s who you know not what you know,” many people say including the Swedes. Networking is the key to the interview office door here, and your future job could depend on it - a staggering 40 per cent of Swedes find employment through friends, family and contacts.

Advertise your services
Put your name about and concentrate on your strengths, native language teaching is always in demand if you’re desperate. And if the conventional route doesn’t work, negative advertising does, at least it did for one unemployed Swede.

Fed up of fruitless attempts to find work, 30-year old Angelika Wedberg from Gothenburg placed the following advert in her regional daily. “I want a well-paid job. I have no imagination, I am anti-social, uncreative and untalented." Within minutes the phone was ringing, interviews were booked and a new career beckoned. Not surprisingly, it was in the media relations industry.

- Christine Demsteader