Cause for careful optimism

I've had a good week: I've attended three interviews, one with a company, two with recruitment consultants and have another lined up this week with an IT consultancy. Switching back to software development seems to have been the correct decision.

The momentum started when my Job coach passed my CV on to two of her colleagues, who recruit for permanent and contract IT staff respectively. I met them last Friday and seemed to make a good impression. I carried out the interview in a mix of Swedish and English. I began in Swedish and switched to answering in English when my vocabulary began to handicap me. My interviewers carried on asking questions in Swedish, and I had no problem understanding what they were asking me. At the end of a very general 'getting to know you' type interview where they asked about my career history, my education and my personality, I was invited to interview for a small software house in Lund.

The job itself wasn't exactly perfect, it was working with a a less interesting part of the software development toolset and language I'm familiar with. The interview itself went reasonably, I started answering in Swedish, but after a while the interviewers wanted me to answer in English so I was more comfortable and they continued to ask questions and comment in Swedish. I understood everything they asked, which will give me a lot of confidence for future interviews.

Sadly, on Friday I found out that I didn't get the job (apparently the choice was between me and someone else, and the other candidate had directly relevant experience). Although it was disappointing, it seemed a nice friendly place to work, I thought it was a bit of a long shot, given I didn't have direct experience of windows forms as I've mainly worked on the web side of things.

I also interviewed with another recruitment consultant for a more interesting position on Friday, again the interview was mostly conducted in Swedish with me falling back to English when my vocabulary failed me. By now I'd begun to notice a trend in the interviews, and the following reoccurring questions were asked:

What are your main strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why did you do geography and university and not computer science?
How would your former colleagues describe you?

Of course, the interview cliché question came up every time: "so, where do you see yourself in (insert number) years?" Resisting the temptation to beat my head on the table at the inanity of the question when asked is very difficult. We both know I'm not going to answer honestly, so why bother?

I was a bit wary when the recruitment consultant started asking about salary expectations, and seemed surprised when I knew the market rate for a software developer in the area. She also began to visibly squirm when she admitted the job was under the market rate. Incidentally, this handy website will tell you.

Personally, I find it very strange to go to an interview without knowing how much the job pays, but I guess you have to accept the cultural differences in the labour market. We then proceeded to play a game where we both pretended that the salary wouldn't matter and that even if I got the job I'd stay there when a better paid position was offered elsewhere. It was an interesting experience, but I feel quite wary about the position (comes complete with two week audition like period), and indeed the recruitment consultant, who seemed to want a lot from me just to put me forward.

I have noticed when dealing with recruitment companies proving you can speak Swedish is imperative. If you can cobble together a covering letter or email, I think it will really make a difference. Although the Swedes pride themselves on their ability to speak English, they seem very reticent to employ someone who can't at least understand Swedish.

I also got a letter confirming that I'll be started SAS (Svenska som andra språk) next week, which at least will fill in the time until I find work.