4/10/2018

This week we have a new exciting blog series to present to you, dear readers. We are starting with some guest posts! We thought it would be nice to anyone thinking about applying for jobs abroad, to read about other people’s experiences. We will have some of our previous candidates participate in creating content for the blog and we bet we will have some very interesting stories to read in the future. We are starting off with a newly recruited candidate who just moved to Portugal. Find out how his process went and how did he feel about all of it!

Hi! Could you first introduce yourself shortly? Who are you and where are you from?

Hi! My name is Lars Axelsson I’m 19 years old and I come from Sweden

What made you apply for jobs abroad?

I’ve always been interested in travelling and I have always wanted to live abroad so after I finished high school I sort of felt like it was the perfect time to finally try something very different!

How did you contact Nordic Jobs Worldwide and how did everything go with that?

I searched around a bit, searching for international jobs until I found an online advertisement from Nordic Jobs Worldwide that said that they were searching for a Swedish customer support in Lisbon and I applied immediately.

What kind of job did you apply for/get? What were your initial thoughts when you found out about your job offer?

I applied for a customer support job for a company in Portugal. I don’t really remember that much about my thoughts at the time, but I remember that I was really excited about the job offer and that I really wanted to do it!

Where did you decide to move? How did you prepare for it?

I moved to Lisbon, Portugal. There was a lot of preparations involved for such a big life decision and there is really no way best way to prepare for it, but I would say getting a good mindset would be a good start!

Arriving to the new location. How did everything go in the beginning?

Smooth! I arrived at the airport and got picked up and driven to my apartment and then I got all the information that I needed to know, how to get to work in the morning from there, where to go, apartment line numbers in case of issues and so on. I was starting my training and after that there was really no questions I knew exactly where, how to get there and where to be on the first day of training.

Current situation. How long have you been living abroad now? How is everything going for you currently? 

Closing in on two weeks abroad now. I’m enjoying

everything a lot as I was really tired of school during my last year of it and It was a pretty depressing year, but now everything feels pretty exciting and I’m enjoying myself!

Have you had any problems, do you want to share something and help others?

Not me personally but my biggest recommendation is that when you get there ask your roommates about getting to work or For general advices, me and my two roommates who were just as new as I was. Decided that we would all go together during the first day of training which made things a lot easier and it felt a lot more comfortable and a bit less stressful!

Did anything special or fun happen to you? A story about that?

Not that I can think of I’m very new as well!

What do you find are the best things about moving to another country?

For me it’s all the new people I have gotten to meet. So many new friends!

Do you have any tips for anyone moving to a new country? What would you want to tell them?

Don’t be scared to try to speak the language there if you’re moving to a country with a language that you don’t know. It’s fun, I did a few Duolingo lessons in Portuguese before I went, and I still do sometimes, I still try to speak it whenever I order food or something. It’s challenging, and you can end up in awkward situations sometimes but it’s fun and I feel like I learn something new whenever I do it, so I would recommend doing that!

This article is written by Lars Axelsson, a candidate who landed a job Lisbon with the help of Nordic Jobs Worldwide