A little bit of context:
I moved to Oslo in November last year, and so far it’s been amazing. I worked for a little startup for a while as a software engineer, which again was awesome. Unfortunately they faced some financial dificulties (pretty severe) and they had to lay off some people, one.
So ever since that happened – end of May, I’ve been applying for jobs. As many as I found fit – as a software engineer. But I got called to pretty few interviews, and most of them require me to know Norsk, which I do, but not at a high level yet – A2-B1 at most. And to make it clear, I mean I was called to very few interviews – 2-3, despite trying to apply to everything that I found is in my domain of expertise.
I got around 4 years of hands on experience some of which at at pretty cool companies (in my opinion) – Adobe for instance, and Bachelors + 2x Masters of engineering + industrial management. I’m a backend engineer specialized on Java mostly, but come around with many technologies…
I was thinking perhaps I am doing something wrong. I see so many people that don’t speak Norwegian that work as software engineers here, and there must be something I don’t know.
So: I was wondering, could you give me sone advice what I could do to be called to interviews? Where should I apply?
I tried through NAV, Finn.noKode24, and oportunistic job offers.
I would be really gratefull for any help!
EDIT: I wasn’t clear enough: by interview I don’t mean full interviews, but they didn’t realize I didn’t speak Norsk well enough, and they told me that "I need to speak Norsk at a better level to be considered fit for the position"
Posted by Dizzy-Tour2918
9 Comments
I mean you’re getting interviews which is a good sign?
So besides the Norwegian (which they should be aware of before the interview anyway – so it mightn’t be that), do you know what might be the reason?
I mean, you have to accept that you are at a disavantage. You don’t talk Norwegian, you will almost always be the seconde choice. If you got called so few times, with all the offers I see for software engineer on Finn almost daily, I guess something is wrong on your part.
For your domain, LinkedIn is the go-to place for jobs.
In addition to job market being slow for IT in general, summer is the worst time to be looking for a job here. Everything slows down to a stand-still, including recruiting efforts. It should pick up a bit the next few weeks. But it’s dtill a difficult market right now, so you may want to broaden your search a bit.
The market is tough, and has been for some time. I’m British, have been here for almost three years now, and changed jobs in January. I began that search in September ‘24, and applied to a total of 82 jobs — all varying shades of relevant, and varying shades of interesting. I received (immediate) rejections from 33 of them. There were 7 offers to interview, of which I walked away from 4 during the processes, and the remaining 3 I received offers from. Incredibly, all 3 offers were from places I actually had an interest in working. This is _probably_ a pretty damn good run.
I’m in a similar boat to you. My written Norwegian is excellent, as is my reading, but my speaking and listening suffers where it’s a struggle to practice at “my level”. I exclusively applied to organisations that had a strong international presence (though in my case they had to be headquartered in Norway to satisfy my visa) since, on balance of probability, the operating language would be likely to be English. At no point did I pretend I could speak Norwegian well. My CV is in English, my applications were in English, and I only spoke or wrote Norwegian when asked.
I think the main thing you’re doing genuinely wrong is putting your CV and applications in Norwegian, despite not really talking it. That will be perceived as dishonest at best, and actively misleading at worst. You’re shooting yourself in the foot by misrepresenting yourself on paper.
Unfortunately, it’s also just a slog. I got quite lucky with the role I’ve landed in (and I’m happier than I’ve ever been, honestly) but it took work. Stick with it.
There’s probably nothing wrong with you. The likely reason here is the fact that we’re in times where the Norwegian job market is saturated with software engineers. Startups are the only kinds of companies nowadays in Norway that may be more willing to compromise on language skills since they’re generally avoided by us locals. The rest of the industry will require more from you. We generally don’t speak English in tech in Norway, despite what you may hear from others.
You’re probably right that there are many currently working in tech in Norway who don’t speak Norwegian, but you’re also forgetting that they’re also undesirable candidates in our current market. They would probably struggle just as much finding a new job if they were laid off, just like you. Most of the foreign software engineers currently working in Norway were hired in different times under different circumstances, and most of them would not find work here today.
I wouldn’t overthink it too much. This is supposed to be hard, and probably the best you can do is to play the numbers game until you get lucky.
I am sorry to say this but even in Germany where we are far behind, nobody is searching software developers anymore, there are just too much. Cybersecurity, IT-Infrastructure, Cloud-Administration is still easy to find and not as easy to replace it with AI directly
Me and my family are leaving Norway for this exact reason. This is all pointless after a certain point
Try practicing your Norwegian maybe? You say you have the writing and reading skills, maybe then practice with Italki, prepply your speaking?