Sweden is one of the world leaders in gender equality. Employers are bound by law to promote equality among their employees. Photo by: Cecilia Larsson/imagebank.sweden.se
Because I came to Sweden on a work permit, I am often asked by readers for some tips on finding a job in Sweden.
Here are five good pieces of advice:
#1
It’s the usual story. Network, network, network. Tell anyone you know with the slimmest of connections to Sweden that you are looking for work. Make phone calls! Send emails!
#2
Learn Swedish. Many job announcements want you to be fluent in Swedish and English. There are oodles of ways of learning Swedish online—numerous apps, lots of websites, and Swedish TV, Swedish news, Swedish radio on the Internet.
#3
Subscribe to alerts from job websites (you can customize what sort of jobs you want to receive alerts about). For example, I used to receive a daily alert about Monster.com jobs located in Uppsala, Sweden.
Sites I have used include (use Google Translator if only in Swedish and you need English):
Swedish Monster.com (in Swedish)
The Local has lots of job ads Note: I used to be suspicious that these were real jobs but I recently met someone who got a job via The Local so there you go.
Step Stone (in English)
Eures (European Public Employment Services)
Vakanser (in Swedish)
Sweden.se has a plethora of information about how to go about working in Sweden. Start here. Then you can read here about what to do after you receive a job offer.
#4
Use Google Translate to translate job announcement into English (or your native language). Either click the link next to Google Search to translate the page or paste the content into Google Translate directly.
#5
Create a spreadsheet and keep careful track of where you have applied and what the response was. Don’t give up! Keep trying!
