Moving to Denmark to start a career

This blog post is written by our Search & Recruitment Specialist, Veronika Dimitrova. Veronika moved from Bulgaria to Denmark in 2014 to study at the University of Southern Denmark and has since been living in Odense.

Moving to another country. Studying. Getting a degree. Staying instead of moving home. Getting a job in your profession. That’s the ideal scenario that everybody wants to sell to international students when they move to Denmark. But even with a degree, it’s not that easy to “implement yourself” into Danish society and start a career. My story is no different, so let’s go back to the beginning!

The purpose of leaving home sweet home!

There can be many reasons to flee the comfort of your home country: Bad or failing social systems, politics and policies, personal conflicts of any kind, as well as environmental factors, standards of living, seeking adventure and even love! For me, it was a mixture of a couple of reasons, but more specifically I was seeking a destination that provides free higher education. 

However, for as long as I can remember I have wanted to move abroad. To move away from home, friends and family in Bulgaria, so I could prosper and be independent in a foreign country. It was in some ways my ultimate goal! It was also on the bucket list I made when I was 16 years old, along with me learning Yodeling, travelling by plane, bungee jumping and learning French!

As I grew older, the thought of moving abroad grew more! And in the end, the dream of higher education became my escape card. So, I started the preparations: Finding out what I wanted to study and where I wanted to live! Luckily, after an extensive search for universities, campuses, fees, and even living standards I found my top 3 destinations! I applied and after waiting for 3 months I got the good news: I had been accepted to the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Denmark, here I come!

Relocating to Denmark and the struggles that followed

Let's make something clear right from the get-go: Denmark might have a free education system and an amazingly organized system, even for foreigners, but it has quite a high standard of living! The cost of living is much higher than my 24-year-old brain could possibly have imagined.

When I landed, I had 7000 DKK in my bank account. I was spending 120 DKK per week on food and groceries, I bought a bike for 200 and used to get from A to B, and from time to time I enjoyed a beer with my study mates.

Luckily my dorm was prepaid so I had 3 months free of rent. So that gave me just about 3 months to find a job or else I had to go back to Bulgaria with no degree, wasted money and worst of all, with my “tail between my legs”. In short, a total failure if I wasn’t able to find a job!

When I started my studies I learned about the SU-rules! For those of you who don’t know it, it’s the magic system that gives you a “scholarship” if you are working up to 12 hours a week and if you are a full-time student in Denmark!  

Up until now, it was all good. I started learning more about the country and “implementing myself” in the system and the culture. The only thing that was still left to do was getting that job! I simply needed those 12 working hours a week!

As we all know, searching for a job is not easy, especially when you have one and a half months left until all your resources are depleted! The clock was ticking but one day I learned about an agency that was providing part-time jobs for students, a.k.a. “vikar jobs” (which later became the subject of my Master’s thesis).

So, I swallowed my shyness in the name of the greater goal and I personally went to their offices to give them my CV! I was proud and extremely happy and it felt like I was on my way to prosperity and greatness! By adding a salary (around 3000 DKK) to my monthly budget of 5000 DKK thanks to SU, I now had the most money I ever had in my life - 8000 DKK pr. month!

And now, let’s cut this part of the story short before it goes out of hand. Let's wrap up before we go to the next chapter of my story: 

• I finished my education and was ready to conquer the world! 
• I didn’t conquer the world and instead swam in the unemployment sea, just like so many other international students who relocated to Denmark.
• The constant unemployment brought me to many conclusions, one of which included: Education redirection.

Steering away from my degree

I believe in education. It’s just that I don’t believe that academic education is the be-all and end-all in life. The logical path is to go through as many steps of the educational system, so you can eventually be considered a professional in your area of expertise.

Unfortunately, as everybody comes to realize, that’s not how the real world works. The companies of today most probably prefer a steady experience of 3, 5 or 8 years, rather than a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree that took the same amount of time with no working experience included!

In the end, my dreams came crashing down. It was a constant battle of updating my LinkedIn profile and writing CVs and cover letters – tailored to each position I was applying for. I did everything that is universally recommended by recruiters and job consultants. It was just like a fulltime job - the only difference was that no one was paying me for my efforts!

I knew I had to enter the professional world and get a steady full-time job because the “vikar jobs” weren’t sustainable. I knew I had to back those degrees up with real jobs. Except for the few short-term internships, or “virksomhedspraktikker” as they’re called, I landed, there was no light in the tunnel. Nobody was ready or willing to commit to a full-time contract.

I must admit, I was ready to throw down the towel several times throughout this period but I must say that I am grateful to the father of my children who believed in me and never allowed me to give up and go back home.

Are Internationals taking jobs from Danish employees?

Thus, another realization came along: The notion that most people are losing their time with education and that the whole system is made to lose that time on purpose! Obviously, that’s not really true, but when you’re down and out of luck you need a scapegoat to turn it all around and pick yourself up.

It’s a fact that most people are working with something completely different than what their university degree dictates! This is the place in the story where I chose to change direction and move away from finding a job in marketing and instead focus on recruitment! 

It’s also an ironic contradiction that international students in Denmark have a harder time finding full-time employment while society and politicians openly beg for internationals to stay and work in Denmark after graduation! Yet, a lot of us are still waiting, knocking on every door, almost begging for a job that fits our academic profile.

But, who can blame the employers? They’re pouring money and resources into every new hire and when push comes to shove and employers have to choose between two candidates, they’ll most likely hire the most experienced candidate and someone who’s local. 

The pool of companies who consistently hire internationals is much smaller than companies who hire locals, especially in the field of marketing and communication. An engineer or software developer can find a job anywhere in Denmark and in the World! 

And that’s fair enough - supply and demand set the rules of the play. So it also depends on education, the field of expertise, experience and language barriers - let’s face it, I wouldn’t be the perfect fit to write articles and social media posts in Danish for a client if I was working at a marketing agency!

Why IT recruitment became my favourite place to be

I think the answer to this question hides in many perspectives. First. it can be considered that I got lucky! After failing to find a job precisely in marketing, I expanded my search. I included fields in which I had an interest in; recruitment and project management. I followed the belief that education is irrelevant and that I can find a job that I want regardless of my education and degree! In addition, and as I always say, everything in the world of business is interconnected. 

That is why my path took me to recruitment and I was lucky enough to find a company that hired me for everything else but my experience and my degree title! They, just as I do, believe that recruitment is connected to marketing, marketing to sales, sales to strategy and so on! They’re cogs in the machinery!

Second, there is also the notion of giving independence to employees and trusting them with it!! Not only did Kold+Partners hire me to their team, but they gave me independence and responsibilities. I wasn’t hired to bring the coffee or to do small tasks. 

From the moment I came onboard I got my own job portfolio and was tasked with finding relevant candidates, therefore trusting me to find the right people for our clients! They somehow believed that I would manage to do this job, and I did! 

If something doesn’t work, try to do something else!

In a way, I have always been attracted to HR! I am and will always be a people’s person! And let’s face it, recruitment is nothing more than a good and trustworthy conversation with another person! You’re basing your decisions, whether it’s accepting an offer from a company or declining to talk to a recruiter, based on conversations with and impressions of other people. 

Thus, improving your communication skills and building up your network is something I have had as a professional perspective! On the other hand, I am a chatty person and recruitment gathers all those amazing people that are never boring! And in my case, I am surrounded by the greatest team there is!

As a conclusion, I would like to set a line of thought! There is no right way to do things! As there is no right perfect candidate to hire! No perfect degree or background! If you’re struggling to find a job that fits your specific degree, I recommend that you start experimenting in your job search. Are you having a hard time finding the perfect employees? Then experiment with your recruiting, experiment with your strategies, with your developers, frameworks, languages, company culture, practices! 

The world of today is versatile, and as this young woman came from Bulgaria to Denmark to become a marketing specialist, she didn’t have a clue that her future is in recruiting! And Kold+Partners were a great part of allowing me to find that out!