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Award-winning Australian coffee entrepreneur told to leave Sweden

Australian coffee entrepreneur Steve Moloney has three times been named Sweden's best barista and has set up a successful business in his six years in the country. But now he has been told he may have to leave Sweden by the Migration Agency.

Published: 15 February 2019 17:37 CET
Updated: 19 February 2019 08:56 CET
Award-winning Australian coffee entrepreneur told to leave Sweden
Steve Moloney speaks to The Local about his work permit rejection. Photo: Love Coffee Roasters

Moloney was initially given less than two weeks to arrange to leave the country after the Migration Agency rejected his application for a residence permit as a sole trader (egen företagare), although this has now been extended for an extra week in order to file an appeal.  

The rejection came more than a year after the entrepreneur made the application, and the reason is that his visa application is being treated as a new application rather than an extension of his existing permit, and therefore he should apply from outside the country. But for the Australian, that means huge disruption to his personal life and his business.

He first came to the country on a one-year working holiday, later returning on a partner (sambo) visa to join his girlfriend. During their relationship, Moloney established himself as a sole trader with his company The Barista League, and after his relationship ended, his visa as an employee took over two and a half years to be approved by the Migration Agency, due to the huge increase in processing times.

READ ALSO: 'We are all extremely lucky to be working in coffee here in Sweden'


Photo: Fabian Schmid

“In the meantime, I was headhunted to a company in Gothenburg and applied for a visa based on the new employer and was finally granted residence in July 2017,” Moloney tells The Local. Later the same year, he decided to leave that job due to issues with the company management, and because his company The Barista League had grown so significantly, he applied for a visa as a sole trader. 

“I've invested so much in the company and my life here – I've got accommodation, friends, a girlfriend. My life is more here than back in Australia and it feels ridiculous that a bureaucratic technicality could get me thrown out after six or seven years,” Moloney explains.

READ ALSO: What to do if your work permit renewal gets rejected

“The business is growing super fast and really well, but I need to arrange work for the future and I can't do that when there's this uncertainty. The business is Sweden- and European-centric so moving back to Australia would mean losing the network and systems I'm working with now. And a lot of companies are relying on me to deliver on contracts i have with them.”

The entrepreneur has already received several references from business contacts, who have outlined the potential disruption and negative financial impact on their own companies if Moloney were to leave the country.

READ ALSO: What getting deported from Sweden (twice) taught me about life and business

“It's a strange discrimination against people who want to do something for themselves. I obviously feel very stressed, and there's a lot of disappointment.”

“It feels as if on a shallow level Sweden is all about startups, attracting talent and getting capital pumped into Stockholm for all these new ventures, but the bureaucracy doesn't work for international business owners that are in Sweden,” he explains. “My experience is that it is really difficult to be a small business owner, especially if you are trying to do something different, rather than a standard product within the existing system.”

Moloney also criticized the agency's lack of clarity, saying applicants are “basically walking in blind” with staff refusing to answer questions. He had been under the impression his new permit would be treated as an extension, rather than a new application, until he reached the decision in February.

Sweden's strict legislation around work permits and long processing times have caused difficulties for hundreds of internationals working in Sweden, including employees and entrepreneurs. In October, The Local spoke to American entrepreneur Peter Lincoln who was told to leave the country despite having launched a successful brewery.

In Lincoln's case, he had fallen foul of rules requiring foreign workers to earn a minimum salary, because he and his Swedish business partner had chosen to live off savings and invest their profits back into their business for faster growth. Earlier that year, another foreign entrepreneur was threatened with deportation for giving himself a pay cut, a decision he made in order to allow his company to grow. 

Sweden's strict rules in the area are designed to stop workers being exploited, but have led to thousands of foreign workers being forced to leave the country. In addition to entrepreneurs, the legislation has hit the tech sector particularly hard, with numerous cases of foreign workers deported over minor errors in their paperwork.

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WORKING IN SWEDEN

‘Reassess your cultural background’: Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

Many foreigners living in Sweden want to stay in the country but struggle to find a job, despite having relevant qualifications. The Local spoke to three experts for their advice.

Published: 7 May 2024 09:00 CEST
'Reassess your cultural background': Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

One international worker who found it hard to land her first job in Sweden is Amanda Herzog, who eventually founded Intertalents in Sweden with the aim of helping other immigrants find work in the country.

Herzog originally came to Sweden to study at Jönköping University and decided to stay after graduating.

“I thought it would take three months, maybe six months to find a job, I was prepared for that,” she told The Local during a live recording of our Sweden in Focus podcast held as part of Talent Talks, an afternoon of discussions at the Stockholm Business Region offices on how to attract and retain foreign workers in Sweden.

“What happened was it took over 13 months and 800 applications to actually get a job in my industry, within marketing.”

During this time, Herzog was getting multiple interviews a month, but was not getting any further in the process, despite showing her CV to Swedish recruiters for feedback.

“They were baffled as well,” she said. “By the time I landed my dream job, I had to go outside of the typical advice and experiment, and figure out how I actually can get hired. By the time I got hired, I realised what actually works isn’t really being taught.”

‘Reassess your cultural background’

Often, those who come to Herzog for help have sent out hundreds of CVs and are unsure what their next steps should be.

“My first piece of advice is to stop for a second,” she said. “Reassess your cultural background and how it fits into Sweden.”

Herzog, for example, discovered she was interviewing in “the American way”.

In the US, when asked to tell an interviewer about yourself, you’d be expected to discuss your career history – how many people have you managed? Did sales improve while you were working there? – while Swedes are more likely to want to know about you as a person and why you want to work in a specific role for their company in particular.

“A lot of people don’t know this, so imagine all of the other cultural things that they’re doing differently that they learned in their country is normal,” Herzog adds.

“Just start with learning, because it could be that you don’t need to change very much, you are qualified, you just need to connect with the Swedish way of doing things.”

 
 
 
 
 
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Networking is important

“Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and guidance,” said Laureline Vallée, an environmental engineer from France who recently found a job in Sweden after moving here nine months ago with her partner, who got a job as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

“You tend to insulate yourself and consider yourself not capable, but you’re not less capable than you were in your home country, you just need to explain it to the employers.”

Another tip is to network as much as you can, Vallée said.

“Networking is really important here in Sweden, so just go for it, connect with people in the same field.”

This could be through networks like Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s Dual Career Network, which helps the accompanying partners or spouses of foreign workers find a job in Sweden, or through other connections, like neighbours, friends, or people you meet through hobbies, for example.

Make a clear profile for yourself

Another common issue is that applicants are not presenting themselves clearly to recruiters, Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s CEO, Maria Fogelström Kylberg, told The Local.

“If you’re sending 600 applications without an answer, something is wrong. We have seen many people looking for jobs working in a supermarket, and the next application is a managing director post,” she said. “You have to decide ‘who am I? What do I want to do?’, you have to profile yourself in a clear way.”

This could be editing down your CV so you’re not rejected for being overqualified, or just thinking more closely about how you present yourself to a prospective employer.

“Which of my skills are transferable? How can I be of use to this company? Not what they can do for me, but what problem can I solve with my competence?”

Job hunters should also not be afraid of applying for a job which lists Swedish as a requirement in the job description, Fogelström Kylberg said.

“Sometimes if I see an ad for a job and I have a perfect candidate in front of me, I call the company and say ‘I have a perfect candidate, but you need them to speak Swedish’, they then say ‘no, that’s not so important’. This is not so unusual at all so don’t be afraid of calling them to say ‘do I really need perfect Swedish?’”

Listen to the full interview with Maria Fogelström Kylberg, Amanda Herzog and Laureline Vallée in The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Interview by Paul O’Mahony, article by Becky Waterton

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