Looking for a job is difficult anywhere this day and age, so I knew when I started my job search it wouldn’t be easy. In Los Angeles, I was a pharmaceutical sales representative. I absolutely loved my job, it was the career I was born to do and I was good at it. Success came with hard work, determination, and constantly pushing forward. The gratification was when I hit #1 in the nation of over 1500 reps, I knew that the hard work paid off. I had amazing partners and a wonderful team that kept us all going. Making the decision to leave something that I had finally found as my calling was extremely difficult. I moved to Sweden in July, Daniel wanted me to move much sooner, but I was unsure. I wanted to continue working. I thought maybe through the end of the year…but he felt it was time.

From the first week of moving to Sweden, I hit the job search hard. I pulled up a list of all the pharmaceutical companies in Sweden and Denmark and started sending my CV to every possible job posting or to their HR department. I felt I had a strong enough resume that surely someone would call. Then the rejection letters started coming in. Devastating. It was all the same messages, that they have gone with another candidate and will keep my CV on file. We all know what that means… it’s going into the black hole of other CVs never to be found or looked at again.

I got my first big break when Abbott, a huge pharmaceutical company called me for an interview. One of my very best friends, Tawny, works for the company in Los Angeles and she had sent my CV as a referral. The position was for sales in Sweden and Denmark. I was so excited and felt this was my chance. All was going well until the recruiter asked me if I spoke Swedish or Danish. Nope. A week after our call, she had told me that the hiring manager wanted someone that spoke one of the local languages. So I was out. I felt quite deflated after that. It was the perfect position for me and I knew that I would excel, but I also understood that most physicians would like to speak to someone that spoke their own language. So I continued my search.

This past Friday, I had my first face to face interview with a recruiter for a medical software company. I was so excited and nervous at the same time. The recruiter didn’t know if the company would oppose to someone that only spoke English so we went on with the interview as normal. The interview went really well, in my opinion. But I noticed right away that there was a difference in interview style here in Sweden. The recruiter focused a lot on work-life balance and kept asking me what I did to relax and recharge. I rarely was given that question in the states. They would be happy if they heard that I work 24 hours 7 days a week. So when he asked me how I spent my weekends, I had to think of something. I spent it eating. LOL!

In America, when you are going for a sales job which is highly competitive, they are usually looking for someone that is aggressive and will close the deal no matter the obstacle. Sometime I was not aggressive enough because that is not my nature or my selling style. But during an interview you had to show them that you can close the deal. It is different here in Sweden. I don’t know what the right answer would have been, but when the recruiter asked me what motivates me, my natural sales person response was “money”. He looked up at me strangely and said “Okay, but what else?”… I guess that wasn’t the normal response here in Sweden, but I’ve used that line before and most managers loved it. Because let’s face it,… it’s all about money. By this time in the interview I was worried my crazy American over aggressive sales pitch had cost me the interview, when he told me that he will put my name forward as a candidate for the company to interview. I was ecstatic! The only thing that could potentially kill this interview is if they are looking for a Swedish speaker, which could very well be the case. Hopefully I will hear back from this recruiter with good news in the next week or two. But it’s a start in the right direction. I just need to adjust my forwardness. So this is to be continued…