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IMMIGRATION

Scientist forced to leave Sweden over employer’s job ad error

A highly skilled biomedicine professional from Taiwan has been forced to leave Sweden after six years studying and working here, in the latest example of work permit holders being kicked out of the country due to minor problems with their paperwork.

Published: 21 November 2019 13:51 CET
Scientist forced to leave Sweden over employer's job ad error
Jin-yu Lu was asked to return to Taiwan after six years studying and working in Sweden. Photo: Private

Jin-yu Lu spent two years studying at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute and four years working at Swedish companies in the medical sector before her work permit renewal was rejected and she was forced to leave the country.

She got in touch with The Local from Taiwan, where she is currently working out the next steps in her career.

“Sweden is globally recognized for its efforts in technology innovation and humanitarian services. This spirit motivated me to come to Stockholm in 2013,” she explains. 

After her two-year KI Master's in Bio-entrepreneurship, Lu worked first as a project coordinator for pharmaceutical development in clinical trials, before joining a medical technology company in 2018, working on quality assurance for drugs and medical devices for Parkinson's disease.

“The network and relationships I have built in Sweden during the past six years helped me grow up to become who I am today,” she says, also pointing to the investment made in her by the medical technology company which funded Lu's online course online course in biomanufacturing for medicines at Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT.

NEW ARTICLE ON THE LOCAL:

Lu first became aware of the complexity in Sweden's work permit legislation in 2015, when a friend from her Master's programme received permit rejections from the Migration Agency and the Migration Court due to an administrative error.

And in October 2018, her own work permit renewal was rejected.

There were two reasons, including one which has affected many other non-EU workers: the advert for her job was not posted on the website of the Swedish Public Employment Agency before the decision was made to hire her in 2018.

Once made aware that this would be a problem, her employer posted the advert for the required two weeks while Lu was still in her probation period, and said that after this posting she remained the best qualified candidate.

The second factor in the rejection was that at the time she began working at the second company, she did not have a valid work permit since her application was still being processed.

In May this year, the rejection of Lu's work permit was confirmed by the Migration Court following an appeal, and two months after that she reached the end of the road when the Migration Supreme Court agreed with the previous decisions. She was given the standard time of four weeks to leave Sweden in the court judgment, seen by The Local.

The biomedicine professional has now returned to her home country, from where she is in the process of reapplying for a work permit. The new application was submitted in mid-October.

She says she was “surprised, confused and disappointed” by the rejection. “My boyfriend and cat are living in our apartment in Stockholm. I feel sad to be away from them because of this migration issue,” she says.

Her company supported her throughout the long process of appeals from 2018 to 2019, helping her understand the decision letters (written in Swedish only), and providing her with help from two lawyers.

“I believe they tried the best they could to keep me [in Sweden],” she says.

Her current plan is to return to work in Sweden if possible, but her experience demonstrates how the bureaucracy of the Swedish system can send skilled professionals to other countries, and she says she is open to other opportunities outside Sweden.

After leaving Sweden, Lu took a course in clinical vaccine development at the University of Oxford in the UK, and at the start of November she was admitted to another course at the prestigious institution, this time in medical statistics for clinical trials, which will begin in Oxford from early December.

“This leads to alternative career plans, while I am still waiting abroad for the Swedish Migration Agency's decision,” she notes.

While she says she would be happy to return to Sweden if given the opportunity, she is stunned that she has been admitted to the university after being forced to stop working in Sweden.

“Looking from a long-term perspective, I feel this experience is a critical turning point. When one door closes, another opens,” she comments.

“Both in Stockholm and Oxford, I have been inspired by many people from various countries who are also working far away from their hometowns to improve human health. Politics for immigration may be complicated, but opportunities for medical innovation must not be compromised.”

Thank you for reading this article. Which issue that affects foreigners in Sweden should The Local write about next? If you have feedback, questions or ideas, please get in touch.

Member comments

  1. Hello,
    Why you are insisting that is something is wrong with Migrationsverket. It is not to blame Migrationsverket, you should blame employer. In most cases employer and employee agree on employment before announce. Both employee and employer in such cases are trying to bypass the law. There was a reason for law, having announced employment case in the Swedish Public Employment Agency. It is because people make sure all employment announcements are accessible to them and they do not miss them. Employer can announce the employment to any other websites, etc.

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For members

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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