jobs & joys in Copenhagen W48
Some end-of-the-Q4 jobs, joys, and other related affairs.
Here’s a recent dose of jobs & joys that have come across my desk.
Happy Tuesday!
Here’s this week’s update: We are 100! Two months in, and what an honour. I have to admit—seeing the number grow gives me a bit of an ego boost (hello, dopamine rush). But to be completely honest with you—and I think I can—I find the comments, DMs (not to mention the emails!) and restacks hit even closer to home.
You all remind me how dedicated and passionate this community is. You care about how you live your life, how you spend your time, and what opportunities are out there to accelerate your path.
As promised, this edition includes my interview with a recent hire. Expect personal stories, hard truths, unglamorous paths, and some wonderfully mundane advice that just works.
Lastly, I’m slowly figuring out what my audience, you guys, want. A few have reached out with their field of interest, and I’m also checking the clicks to actually see what is useful. Want to hear more about a certain sector? Or looking for more child-friendly or singles-friendly events? I’m just a ping away.
And so without further ado, check out this week’s bag of goodies.
Jobs
Postings, careers, and callings that are as fun as labour can be.
Student/Grad
Digital Marketing Intern at Njord (link)
Graphic Design Intern at Njord (link)
Graduate Programme at Novo Nordisk (link)
Competition Compliance Programme Support at Maersk (link)
Management Consultant to our Strategy & Performance Team at Deloitte (link)
Creative and Communicative Skills for Sales Excellence in IT at Deloitte (link)
Graphic Design Intern at Organic Basics (link)
Junior (2+)
Production Assistant at Cecilie Bahnsen (link)
Customer Service Team Lead at NAKED COPENHAGEN (link)
Customer Success Manager at StormGeo (link)
UI Specialist at Flying Tiger Copenhagen (link)
Mid (4+)
HR Specialist, Navigation and Support at UNOPS (link)
Product Owner at SimplerQMS (link)
Systems Thinker at 1508 (link)
Copywriter at IKEA *in Malmö (link)
Financial Controller at ActionAid Denmark (link)
Product Support Manager at DFDS (link)
Communications Specialist at ActionAid Denmark (link)
Senior Project Manager – Digital Marketing at DEPT (link)
Tech Business Development Director at LanguageWire (link)
Senior (7+)
Senior iOS Developer at Vivino (link)
Head of UX at Catalysta (link)
Senior Sustainability Project Manager at Hempel (link)
AFAIK, none of the jobs require Danish language proficiency (though I’m sure it’s a plus to mention you’re learning). Apply if you have at least 80% match with your CV, but I’m sure you already know all that. Good luck!
PS: if you get hired upon discovering the job here, I’m sooo happy for you. Also, let me know? I’d love to know, you know. x
Are you or your team hiring?
Share it with one of the vibiest communities in Copenhagen. Do it. Do it now.
Joys
Insights from recent hires you didn’t know you needed.
This is a special edition of Joys, crowdsourced job-hunting stories from Copenhagen-based internationals.
To my surprise (and delight!), a few expats were kind enough to talk to me and to share their journeys of searching for a job for a long time™—and eventually finding one. Read about stories, hurdles, and how they overcame them.
Yes, these are anecdotal stories, so don’t take this at face value. Instead, let them serve as a little inspiration. Oh, and one last thing: I’ve changed all names (and gender in some) for privacy. Enjoy!
Community
We’ve all heard it: networking, networking, networking. Blah, blah, blah.
When talking to Freddie, IT Manager, he admitted networking wasn’t something he’d thought of as extremely essential—at least not for finding a job. Accelerating a career? Sure. Getting ahead? Absolutely. But landing a job? Not so much.
Back in the UK, Freddie’s role was well-paid and highly sought-after. Recruiters always came to him. So naturally, he assumed finding work in Denmark would be easy, and well, it turned out not to be quite the case.
After being in DK for a while, Freddie had burnt through his savings and was feeling the pressure. He took a few contract roles from the UK and one in Denmark. That gave him a bit of breathing room to dive into LinkedIn: posting, connecting, and even cold-messaging people in his field. Freddie was able to foster a nice group of connections. Some he got to know via the contracting role, some via meet-ups, and some he randomly messaged on LinkedIn. It took months of effort, but he eventually built up a network in Copenhagen. And that network helped him land his current job.
Fight for the 30%
The hidden job market. I’m sure you’ve heard of this not-so-urban legend. Around 70% of jobs are never advertised, and several people I spoke to said they were approached for roles they didn’t even know existed.
For example, Marta, who works in procurement, has had her former colleague reach out directly to ask if she’d interview for a role on his new team. No job posting, no announcement—just a casual opportunity that came from being good at your job but also in the right network.
Of course, not everyone will be lucky enough to have opportunities to approach them. Liam, who works in consulting, said reaching out to his network helped him schedule calls with headhunters.
Putting yourself out there, even if not in a super public way, allows for doors to open that you didn’t know existed.
Danish work experience
Just like any other country, Denmark has its own set of quirks when it comes to hiring. It seems Denmark is particular about having common ground with you. Familiarity matters—a lot. A CV with a recognisable (preferably Danish) university, a Danish company, or even just a connection in the company’s orbit can make a big difference.
Finance Manager Adrian learnt this the hard way. After months of futile job searching, he finally got an interview through a friend of a friend. He didn’t get that job, but when their first choice fell through, Adrian got the call.
It wasn’t a dream role—it was part-time and underpaid—but it gave him something valuable: Danish work experience. That step, however unglamorous, was the key to getting noticed by a recruiter later on. And that led to the job offers and the role he has now.
One piece of advice that stuck with me came from Ron, a compliance lawyer who spent seven months job hunting:
It’s a full-time job to look for a job!
I guess why it felt so relevant is that job searching shouldn’t be this dreadful activity that you hate to do and only do on occasion. It is a routine one should stick to, and even from this small sample combined with available literature, there are simply more ways to look for a job than to apply for one. And that can look different depending on your position/sector.
Finding the right angle to connect with people (instead of “I’m looking for a job, help!” use → “you’re in a similar role as me; let’s chat about XYZ that’s relevant to both of us”). It is also worth remembering that people will not be in the positions they are now forever. They will also want to move on and get a new job, so having a network is a two-way street.
I’d love to wrap this up with some profound words of wisdom, but honestly, the truth is far more mundane. There’s no ground-breaking strategy or magical formula that got people their jobs. That said, I don’t want to downplay the issue—it’s a real struggle that affects so many of us.
If you can afford to join a union or an A-kasse—other than let’s beat the current narrative and just do it—you can lean on them for advice and network.
The last piece (congrats to making it here btw!) of acknowledgement I’d like to emphasise, even more so after reading this piece by a fellow substacker, though a much more talented one—Lala Thaddeus from I Was Cooking:
Not everyone has an equal footing. We still live in a world that is all unpleasant things (racist, misogynistic, discriminatory, filled with prejudice etc). And here, as a white person, I am not going to pretend I know this from a first-hand experience and reference someone who knows more about this topic than I do: Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I think if he tried to describe the forces shaping his life, my father would see his own actions first: his credits, his mistakes. But if he widened the aperture to the world around him, he would see that some people's credits earned them more, and their mistakes cost them less. And those people who took more and paid less lived in a world of iniquitous wealth, while his own people lived in a world of terrifying want.
Maybe a bit pompous & dramatic but very pointedly said—meritocracy is a lovely yet naive idea, that unfortunately doesn’t properly work. And we should do our part to deal with (read: dismantle) it via any means we have in our back pocket. And I strongly believe that organising ourselves in communities (such as ours) is working toward such a goal.