Working in Sweden: 165 vacancies and the personnummer

What is being advertised

Seekuro holds 165 live vacancies in Sweden, almost all of them through EURES, the European Union's public job network, which means they are posted by employers and public employment services rather than copied from an agency chain.

The mix is dominated by the public sector and by care. Municipalities are hiring directly: a childcare worker at Lindskolan in Huddinge municipality, a teacher for after school care in Leksand municipality. Health and social care runs through everything: a support assistant for a psychiatric residence in the southwest, an undersköterska position in home care at Hede Älvsåker with flexible shifts, experienced social worker consultants wanted across the country. Administration appears in specific roles, such as an insurance investigator working on sickness compensation coordination in Karlstad. And there is a technical strand: a system developer for cyber operations, an experienced automation subproject manager in Stockholm.

The geography is spread out. Stockholm appears, but so do Huddinge, Leksand, Karlstad and the small places where care work is hardest to staff.

The personal identity number comes first

In Sweden almost everything runs on the personnummer, the personal identity number, and understanding this before you arrive saves months.

You get one by registering as resident with the Tax Agency, Skatteverket, which normally requires that you will be living in Sweden for at least a year. Without it you can still work, but opening a bank account, getting a phone contract, using most digital public services and identifying yourself online all become difficult, because they are built around the number and around the electronic identity that follows it.

Employers know this and the good ones will tell you what to do first. Ask the employer directly how they handle it for new arrivals and whether they have hired from abroad before. An employer who has done it is worth a great deal.

If your work is shorter than a year, ask about a coordination number instead, which covers some of the same ground.

Language, honestly

Swedish decides which of these 165 vacancies are actually open to you.

Care work and education are not negotiable. An undersköterska documents, hands over shifts and speaks with patients and families. A childcare worker speaks with children and their parents. Expect to need fluent Swedish, and expect to be assessed on it at interview.

Municipal administration is the same, because you are writing in the language of public record.

Technical roles are where English sometimes carries. A system developer or an automation project manager may work in an English speaking team, particularly in Stockholm and in larger industrial companies. It is worth asking, because the answer is sometimes yes, and in care work it is never yes.

Many people arrive on an English speaking technical job and learn Swedish afterwards through municipal courses. That is a realistic path and a common one.

What a Swedish employment relationship looks like

Ask early whether the employer has a kollektivavtal, a collective agreement. Most Swedish employers do, and it is the document that sets pay scales, working time, overtime, pension contributions and holiday beyond the legal minimum. Whether there is one, and which one, tells you more about the job than the advertised salary does.

Ask whether the post is tillsvidare, which means permanent, or visstid, which is fixed term. In care and education a great many first contracts are fixed term or cover a named absence.

Ask about the probationary period, provanställning, and how long it runs.

Swedish workplaces are flat in a way that surprises some people. You are expected to raise problems directly and to make decisions within your role without asking first. Meetings aim at agreement rather than instruction, and silence is usually read as consent rather than dissent.

Applying

A Swedish application is shorter and plainer than a German one. A clear CV of one or two pages and a short covering letter that says which post you mean, when you can start and what your Swedish is like.

Municipal employers often use their own recruitment system and will ignore applications sent by email. Apply through the route the advert names, even if it is more work.

References matter and are usually called. Give two, with current telephone numbers, and tell the referees to expect the call.

For regulated roles, start early. Health professions including undersköterska in some contexts, nursing and teaching require your qualification to be assessed by the relevant Swedish authority, and that takes time you should spend before applying rather than after.

Before and after you move

Housing is the hard part, particularly in Stockholm, Gothenburg and university towns, where the rental queue system means waiting lists measured in years for a first hand contract. Most newcomers start with a second hand sublet. Ask your employer whether they help, because in care and in the smaller municipalities they sometimes do.

Register with Skatteverket as soon as you arrive. Then the bank, then the electronic identity, in that order, because each depends on the one before.

If you are an EU or EEA citizen you do not need a work permit. If you are not, you do, and the employer has to be willing to take part in the process, so ask in your first message rather than after four interviews.