Learn to speak Swedish

If you're new to Sweden and you don't speak Swedish or another Scandinavian language, this is the one piece of advice I hope you don’t ignore. If you’re reading this blog post and thinking that you might be in Sweden for 3 to 5 years, that ends up being 7 to 11% of your working career, if you plan to work for 45 years. That is to say, proportionally, your time in Sweden is not an insignificant part of your career.

There are a lot of opportunities in Sweden that are in Swedish, particularly at companies that are not the big global brands you hear about abroad. I interviewed at some super cool companies that are 100 or 200 years old and are still doing really incredible work. 

Speaking Swedish meant that I had, shocker, more opportunities in front of me. In fact, 1 out of 4 job applications I sent were in Swedish, and the work itself would have largely been in Swedish or a combination of Swedish and English. And about 1 out of 3 interviews I took were done in Swedish, even when the company did most of its business in English. 

One caveat for marketers, from my experience as someone who speaks Swedish as a second language: jobs with a strong content angle are the ones where I've been met with concern. Even though my Swedish friends say I sound almost like a native speaker, it is a bigger risk for a company to hire me to write. I still have a long way to go before I write in Swedish at the same level as I do in English. 

If you have the resources, you can take paid classes to learn Swedish faster, since the free adult learning system (Komvux) can take a few years. In my case, it took me 2.5 years to finish all 7 courses in the Svenska som andraspråk curriculum. So, start early, even if you’re not sure you’re going to stay.

Network, network, network (preferably in Swedish, too)

If you like Sweden, you have to network. I've gotten interviews through networking, simply by being in the right room in front of the right people and being humble (and passionate!) about what I do for work. I can highly recommend the Luma app for finding tech events. And if you can, do some of that networking in Swedish. Many of the companies I mentioned above work in Swedish, and every conversation is a chance to practice speaking, which is what will get you into the interview. 

Don't take ghosting personally

Yes, you do get ghosted, or job postings get changed, or jobs get moved to different countries. That happened to me 5 times. In my experience, founders were the most likely to go quiet. They have so much going on. They know hiring is important, but so is that deal they’re trying to close. Two things can be important at the same time. Don’t take it personally. 

Don't be afraid to follow up and ask what happened. Usually the reason is not you. And if it is you, amazing. Now you get some feedback that may be useful.

Put your energy into things that you can control, like going to networking events and writing down your experience (more on that below).

Follow up when you fumble an answer

One thing you can control is what happens after the interview. At the end of one interview, the hiring manager made a point of mentioning that he had another meeting in a few minutes. I got the sense the interview didn't go well.

I liked this company and I wanted the job. So I quickly jotted down what I thought was missing, wrote an email to the recruiter and forwarded it along to the hiring manager.

Spoiler alert: I didn't get the job. But the hiring manager really appreciated it and felt that I had nailed his concerns. He had just met another candidate who was more interesting to him. And by the way, managers usually hire people twice. If you were one of the finalist candidates, you might get an email in the future. So don’t forget to connect with the hiring manager on LinkedIn.

And my biggest learning: Write down your experience and show your work

During interviews, I’ve had the great pleasure of saying, “Let me show you,” thanks to my blog. I didn’t set up my blog for my job search. I set it up because I wanted to build V2s of the AI agents from my last job, so I could use them in my next one. It’s had the unintended consequence of putting proof behind what I say in interviews. And boy, have I been pleasantly surprised by how useful it has been. 

In one interview, I showed them my Message Alignment Agent and my Structured Database so they could see how I was working with both structured and unstructured data: making sense of it to use in my messaging and positioning, building assets, and generally navigating and working upstream and downstream in marketing. There is a sense of rigor in that. You’re taking your time to write things down and show them that you’ve actually thought about this. I think creative thought is so much more important in this new economy.

Both of those, and my GTM Tiering Agent, are public on GitHub. The repos prove that these tools are available and transparent, so people can try them for themselves. They show how I went about building them and also where there might be opportunities that I’m missing. For me, it’s about being collaborative and not showing my ego.

And if you’ve never built an agent, that’s fine. 

Simply being able to talk about how you go through your processes is important. For example, if you’re a content marketer: What’s your writing process? Who inspires you? How do you work with others in the organization to write content? Take the core responsibilities that are important to your job and write down how you go about solving them. What are the things you consider? What do you do and not do? Writing that down not only gets your ideas out, it also helps you better prepare for the interview. And you might actually help somebody else, which is also awesome.

How this worked in practice for me

I did this for myself, too. I had Claude Code build a comprehensive questionnaire full of core skills for product marketers and adjacent skills (depending on different industries and company size). It has 15 sections with several questions per section, and it’s not something you can do in an afternoon. It has taken me days and days to fill out, but it’s been remarkably useful to have the time to reflect: “Oh yeah, this is not only what I have done, but also how I might answer these questions.” These questions come up over and over in recruiting processes, and filling it out has made me aware of my experience and my gaps.

Then write for your network. What might people in your network be curious about in terms of your work? I’ve focused on writing to the product marketer like me: challenges and obstacles that I know other product marketers are experiencing right now, and how I’ve approached them. There’s a bonus, too: if you send your blog with your application, the hiring manager can put it into a chatbot and ask, “Tell me a little bit more about this person.” You’re giving them more writing samples.

I also record my interviews with Wispr Flow (I let the recruiter know I’m recording for my own development) so I can debrief: Where was I unclear? Where did I ramble? This gives me the insights I need to be more concise during my interviews, particularly if I’m doing them in Swedish.

Take the time to write down your experience, have AI ask you interview questions, and even try answering them out loud with Wispr Flow so you can move through them faster and get the hang of how you might talk about your experience live during an interview. 

And don’t be afraid to be honest that you maybe have weaknesses. A good company is not hiring for a lack of weakness. They’re hiring for strengths.

If you’re looking for a job in Stockholm right now, good luck!

If you found this helpful, follow me on Substack for more learnings like these.