How to find a job in Sweden
Next review: latest in August 2026
The unemployment stats are truly, really not great right now, and if you visit any online community to ask about job prospects in Sweden, the answers won't wash you away with a wave of optimism, to put it mildly. But it is still possible to get employed in this long country. Let's talk about how.
One could reasonably expect this post to start with a list of links to websites where Swedish companies advertise their open positions. But I'll give you no such thing since it is unfortunately quite ineffective to try and find a Swedish job like this. If you want to see how the postings look like in general, go to LinkedIn or Arbetsförmedlingen's platsbanken, but I wouldn't recommend rolling up your sleeves and starting with sending the applications.
Professional networking, the Swedish way
The thing is, most of the available jobs aren't advertised. Not on LinkedIn, not on the company's website, not anywhere. A lot of the opportunities are instead communicated between people who just know each other. Reputation and personal recommendations are huge when you only have ten million people in a country and can't just willy-nilly fire folks after their probation period of 6 months is over, and it's harder for an immigrant to break into this circle by definition. But there's also good news: flat hierarchy is another thing that's huge in Sweden, and the combination of that + just ten million people means that when you're reaching out to someone in a reasonable fashion, you're so much more likely to receive a helpful response. Note the “reasonable” part: you can't be obnoxios or over-selling, but you can ask a question that doesn't burden the other person much and that shows that you're trying to “göra rätt för sig” — support yourself. It's one of the most respectable aspirations one can have in the Swedish society.
If you're not a world-renowned star in your field, I'd recommend looking for people instead of looking for job listings. It's amazing how responsive and helpful people are if you approach them politely and with a clear purpose. I got pages of valuable career advice from a Swedish podcast host, and from a guy whose job-related blog posts I loved, and from a business owner, just by writing each of them an email with a clear question. How do I break into A, where could I find financing or partners for B, which companies that do C could use my skills, what sort of education do people in D have. And the most important question: “Whom else could I talk to about this?”. If you manage to find just one person who's working your dream job and can introduce you to a couple of others in the same space, you might be halfway there to your next job.
Now onto the second half of that way.
Learn Swedish
Yeah, yeah, I know. “Everyone in Sweden speaks perfect English, and they say the employers are screaming for qualified candidates” — that's the picture that a lot of immigrants come with. It's not like it's completely incorrect: lots of Swedes do in fact speak English amazingly well. That doesn't contradict the fact that they might not want to do it at work, all day every day, looking for uncommon words and doubting their pronunciation, all just for that one person who happens to not speak Swedish, if there's an alternative. And there's almost always an alternative, especially now with 10% unemployment rate. If you don't speak Swedish fluently yet, show that you're on the way there: put the course you're currently taking on your CV, mention your goal to reach B2 by the end of the year in your cover letter, showcase your commitment in an unambiguous way.
Lena
Lena
Also, the more Swedish you know, the more communities you can join: a dancing group, a writers meetup, an association of nature lovers, a forum of stock market enthusiasts. This is a less direct way to stumble upon an opportunity than the targeted professional networking I mentioned above, but it surely feels better to hang out with people around a shared interest than to send your thousandth application into the void. Volunteering is another way to make connections and practice Swedish even when your funds are tight due to not having a job.
If you're outside of Sweden
There's no sugarcoating it: the farther you are, the harder it is, and the more likely it is that you'd need to compromise on a few things to get your foot in the door. Small, medium-sized, and even big companies lack desire and/or knowledge to go through the process of initiating someone's work permit process, let alone wait for you to relocate. Here are some suggestions that I've seen work for other people:
- If there's a company in your country with a Swedish branch, see if you can make a transfer
- If you're in IT, apply to the big companies in Stockholm, Göteborg or Malmö
- If you're in manufacturing, look further north (although Northvolt turned out to be a sad story, there are others)
- Come here for grad school if you're an EU citizen or have money for the studies and start with internships.