In the job search in Sweden, one skill will increase your success rate by 86 %. But only 1 in 3 of all unemployed people is actually developing this skill. If I told you that you can increase your chances of having an income above 13 000 sek/month in Sweden by 86 % would you take it?

Maybe you would ask, what do I have to do?

Learn Swedish will help you succeed in your job search in Sweden!

You need to learn Swedish to succeed in your job search in Sweden. Research have shown that the people that are going through all the Swedish for Immigrant courses will be 86 % more likely to find a job in Sweden. Going through your SFI classes increases your chances of having an income above 13 000 kr/month from 36 % to 66 %. It shows the strength in the SFI education in Sweden. This is a huge opportunity for you. So why is this?

Breakthrough in Swedish

I talked with a teacher in SFI. She has been working as a teacher in SFI for decades, helping immigrants to Sweden learn Swedish. When I talked to her, she told me that in general, the breakthrough in the language is usually occurring for the students in SFI D.

Personally, this is my experience also. The people that I meet that have finished SFI D are generally good at communicating in Swedish. They also tend to have an easier time in their job search.

This is a great start if you want to work in Sweden. If you want to work, it will be very beneficial for you to have some basic understanding of Swedish. When knowing Swedish, you will be able to participate in meetings. But maybe even more importantly, you will understand what people talk about during fika breaks. 🙂

Showing Learnability to Succeed in Your Job Search

Having finished the SFI is also a sign that you are dedicated and interested in learning. You won’t be fluent when you go through the classes. But you have good proof to your employer that you are interested in learning the language.

It is also an argument that you can learn other things quick as well. In research made by Manpower Group, they found that over 50 % of all employers offer their staff training when they can’t find talented employees. This means having the ability to learn quickly is getting very important in a business landscape that is changing rapidly. If you want to dig deeper into this, see the Manpower test for your Learnability Quotient.

Only a third of asylum seekers in 2007 finished all their SFI courses. The ones that did had 86 % higher success rate in their job search.

Causality

Of course, the results that I mention does not necessarily show causation. It might be the case that people that finish SFI just have some other skill that makes it easier for them to find a job.

So, if you have time to take the SFI courses, I would definitely recommend you to do it. If you are not eligible for SFI for some reason, I would recommend you start out with an app like Duolingo. There are also a lot of other great resources online that you can use.

The stats I have received this info from is this article (in Swedish).

In short: Learn Swedish for Job Search Success

Please take some specific actions towards learning Swedish if you are interested in getting a job. Start practicing the essential small talk phrases. Just being able to start the conversation in Swedish will help you greatly.