Now, let’s get to business. I have been working as a recruiter in Sweden for over a year now. I have previously held many roles in recruiting for over a decade in India. In the last year or so in Sweden, I have assisted job-seekers with their career transitions. Some of these job seekers were expats (qualified with extensive work backgrounds) and they all have the obvious question – What can I do to find a job here?
Not to scare you but let’s face it. Sweden is a competitive job market and like it or not, it is more competitive for expats. What did I do get a job here in Sweden and what do I advise my candidates is what I am going to write in a series of short blogs. Inspiration for this blog is a couple of candidates who insisted on spreading the word. When I decided to work in Sweden, the first thing I did was to make a list of ‘who’ can employ ‘me’. It’s a practical first step, right?
So, depending on your area of work or area of interest, make a shortlist of potential employers. Being an expat, I can understand the temptation to just look for Global MNC’s but it’s important to resist it. Let the list not just contain Global MNC’s but also look for organizations that are relatively small and local but emerging and growing in their own segments. Sweden, being one of the most innovative countries in the world, has many start-ups, small and mid-sized organizations that can offer a unique proposition. Some examples could be my own clients, one of my client has an innovative portfolio of robotics and automation driven business solutions and another has smart lighting solutions while another one is into IOT applications for wireless communications. None of these are Global MNC’s but growing rapidly in their own segments.
I understand this could be a daunting task, especially to nail down the start-ups, small and mid-sized organizations. You cannot really google this and get a direct list – you may hit a wiki page or something similar with an outdated list of all companies registered in Sweden, but this is not what you are after. You need the ones that, as I said earlier, can offer a unique proposition and importantly have open positions.
What could help you here is to put your networking skills to test like join groups, follow hashtags, connect with people on LinkedIn that are close to your work profile. One very specific tip is to network with recruiters and recruiting consultants who can help you put that list together. This is exactly what I did not do when I started to write my list and hence ended up just having the big names in it. As you can imagine, recruiters and recruiting consultants will have ready and, at times, exclusive access to a potential list of employers that will give you a head start in taking that first step and putting together a list with big – midsized and small organisations. In fact, most of my clients do not put out their jobs on job portals which then makes it difficult, if not impossible, for a regular job seeker to google that out. Hence, this suggestion to specifically network with recruiters and recruiting consultants.
I will continue to write next week. Keep tuned! Divya Harish