Your Stockholm office is closing. Here is what happens next.

When a Swedish employer ends employment for redundancy, the Employment Protection Act sets a notice period that grows with your time there: one month at the shortest, rising in steps to six months once you pass ten years. You stay employed and paid throughout, and normally you keep working. A collective agreement can improve on the statutory floor, so read yours before you assume the minimum.

That gives you something most job seekers never get. You are searching from inside a job, on salary, with a known end date you can put in front of a hiring manager. It is the strongest position anyone searches from. You can afford to be selective, to run three processes instead of thirty applications, and to turn down an offer that is worse than the job you already have. Our guide to interviewing while you are still employed is written for exactly this position.

Do the arithmetic, because the numbers are closer than people assume. Industry surveys through 2025 and 2026 put a tech job search at a median of about twelve to sixteen weeks from layoff to accepted offer, with software, product and data roles at the longer end. United States labour statistics put the median at 11.6 weeks and the mean at 26, the gap being a long tail of searches that run much longer. Set that against one to six months of notice. Three months is roughly one median search with nothing spare. A search started in month four is a median search begun with none of the notice left. Swedish hiring also runs slow, with consensus loops, several rounds, and July written off entirely. Work backwards from your end date, not forwards from today.

One email to send before you leave, if you are declining the move. Företrädesrätt till återanställning is a priority right to be re-hired for work you are qualified for. It runs until nine months after your employment ends and generally needs more than twelve months of employment there across the last three years. It is not automatic: you have to claim it in writing. It attaches to the employer, not the site, so if the company hires later for something you could do, that email is what puts you in the queue.

The headlines are about the cuts. The hiring is happening at the same time, in the same city, and some of it is happening fast. Dealroom counts 38 of Sweden's 58 unicorns in Stockholm and $4.1 billion of venture funding there in the twelve months to the end of Q2 2026.

The clearest example is Lovable, the AI software-building platform, which passed a $500 million annual revenue run rate by June 2026 with around a million projects started every week, and raised €343 million at an €11.4 billion valuation. Then Legora, the legal AI company, whose Series D extension took its total to €513 million at a €4.7 billion valuation in April. The number that matters to you is not the valuation: Legora has said it plans to go from 700 people to 1,500 by the end of the year. That is one Stockholm company hiring roughly twice the population of the office you are leaving.

The one to look at first, if you have been doing vehicle software, is Einride, which builds electric and autonomous freight and has raised over $752 million. Your experience maps onto that almost directly. Around it sits a health-tech wave that is expanding rather than holding: Neko Health is opening clinics in the United States, and Tandem Health had 33 open Stockholm roles in July alone. Truecaller has been building out AI teams from a Stockholm base of around 450 people, and Spotify, King, Kry, Sana Labs, Epidemic Sound and Mentimeter all keep hiring engineers here.

One caveat on the household names, because it matters when you pick where to spend a week of preparation. A big logo is not the same thing as a growing company: some of the best-known Swedish tech brands have been reducing headcount while the scale-ups above add it. Check the direction of travel before you invest in a process, not after.

If your background is automotive software, AI or digital product, you are on the right side of that split, whatever the news cycle says. What usually goes missing is the framing, not the experience, and framing is fixable.

If your last serious job search was a while ago, you can lose rounds to conventions nobody tells you about. Swedish tech interviews are conversations between peers. Hiring usually runs on team consensus, which makes it slow and means one unconvinced person can stall an offer. The register matters too: credit the team, say we more than I, and let the work speak. Heavy self-promotion counts against you here.

Pay, notice, vacation and the loops at the companies above are laid out in our Sweden tech interviews guide, the companion to this page. Read it before your first screen, not after your first rejection.

The research on what gets people re-employed after a mass layoff is unusually consistent, and the thing that works best is not what most people spend their first month doing. Four things, in this order.

First, tell people, and be specific. This is the best-evidenced move available to you. Work by the San Francisco Fed on recovery from mass layoffs found that people with stronger job-market networks were re-employed faster, and that the jobs they found through those connections paid more and lasted longer. Not just quicker: better. The catch is that a network can only help you if it knows what to look for, so “I'm open to opportunities” wastes it. Give fifteen people a sentence they can act on: the role, the level, and the kind of company. Someone who hears exactly that thinks of you.

Then pick the few roles that actually match you. Applying widely feels like progress and is the main way a notice period disappears. Before you write anything, read a posting against your own record and find out where you would stand: what lines up, what does not, and what a hiring manager would push on. Three roles you fit well beat thirty you half fit, and knowing which three is a research problem you can finish in an afternoon.

Then get the CV through the screen for those roles. A CV that reads well to you can still fail the automated pass and the recruiter skim, and the fix is almost never a rewrite. It is the specific gap between what the posting asks for and what your CV says plainly, closed for each role, not once in general.

Then rehearse out loud, not in your head. Everyone plans their answers and almost nobody says them, and the gap between a story you have thought about and one you have told shows in the first round. There is real evidence behind this: Maurer and colleagues tested three levels of interview coaching and found that the people who got the most comprehensive preparation scored higher. What worked was coaching that helped candidates find and say the things the interview was actually about, not coaching that taught them to game the scoring. Take the questions the role will ask, answer them aloud, listen back, and fix the two that came out worst.

One question changes in your situation, and it is the one people fumble. Why are you leaving? You have the cleanest answer anyone gets: the site is closing, the decision was made above you, and it says nothing about your work. Say that in one sentence and move to what you want next. The mistakes are all in the other direction, over-explaining, apologising for it, or letting bitterness about the relocation show. An interviewer who hears a short, unbothered answer stops thinking about it, and one who hears three minutes does not.

Sweden has built more infrastructure for this than almost anywhere, and most people in tech have never had to use it, so they do not know what they are entitled to. None of the following costs anything.

• Your transition organisation. If your employer has a collective agreement, private-sector white-collar employees are covered by TRR: career guidance, coaching and practical help finding the next role, plus a possible income top-up. Free to you, paid for by the employer, and you do not have to wait until your last day to start.
• Your union. Unionen and Sveriges Ingenjörer cover most people in Swedish tech and will read your specific situation, check the employer followed the process, and tell you what you can claim. This is the phone call that answers the questions this page deliberately will not.
• Retraining, paid at 80 percent of your salary. This is the one almost nobody in tech knows about. Omställningsstudiestöd from CSN pays a grant of 80 percent of your previous salary, capped at 5,773 kr a week in 2026, for up to 44 weeks of full-time study, with an optional loan on top. It runs from the year you turn 27 to the year you turn 63, and you need at least 96 months of work in the last 14 years. A statement from your transition organisation about whether the course strengthens your position is not required but is strongly recommended. Applications open roughly six months before studies start and decisions take months, so look at it during your notice, not after.
• Your a-kassa. Unemployment insurance only pays if you were already a member. Check today. Many unions bundle an income insurance on top that raises the ceiling well above the basic level.
• Arbetsförmedlingen. Registering on your first day of unemployment matters for later benefits, so it goes on the calendar even if you never intend to use the service itself.

And what we do. The free tier is generous enough to run a real search on, and it does not expire.

• Read a real posting, three times a day. Paste a job description or a LinkedIn link and get the questions that role will ask, a snapshot of the company's loop, and, with your CV, a match score and the specific places an interviewer will push back. Three a day and fifteen a month, which is more than a real search needs.
• Your first voice mock interview. The questions from your posting, asked out loud, with a debrief on how you answered rather than how you meant to.
• A CV read against the posting. How it scores for the automated screen and for a recruiter skim, and the edits that move each.
• Every guide here. Around a hundred of them: the Swedish market with pay and notice by level, the loops at named companies, and the questions themselves.

Your CV stays on your device and is never used to train models. If your office is closing, use this during the notice you are already being paid for, not the week after it ends.

Calibrd was built by Xiaochen Guo, a former Director of Engineering at King and Microsoft Gaming, based in Stockholm. Over a decade he led engineering teams and ran hiring, sitting on the other side of more than 500 interviews, and he now coaches people through interview preparation. Calibrd members can reach out to him directly for coaching. If you would rather talk to someone who has read the CVs and sat in the debrief than read another page about it, he is a short walk from wherever you are reading this. He has written up why he left the job to build this if you want to know who you would be talking to first.

• Check you are actually a member of an a-kassa, and join if you are not. It does not help retroactively.
• Call your union and your transition organisation and ask what you specifically qualify for. Write down the numbers they give you.
• If retraining is on your mind at all, look at omställningsstudiestöd now. Applications open around six months ahead and decisions take months, so this is the one with a queue in front of it.
• Work backwards from your last day and mark the halfway point. That is your deadline to have live processes running, not to start looking.
• If you are turning down the move, send the one-line företrädesrätt claim before you leave. It is worth little for the office that is closing and something for the employer that is not.
• Tell fifteen people specifically what you want next. Not “open to opportunities”, but the role, the level and the kind of company, so someone can match you to it.
• Get two or three real processes running before you decide anything about the relocation. Decide with offers, not with guesses.

None of this is advice about your specific contract, and this page is not a substitute for your union. It is the map of what to go and ask about, from people who spend their time on the interview half of the problem.

Sources

• Volvo Cars press release, 31 August 2026 , the closure date of 1 March 2027, the number of people affected, and that the work moves to Gothenburg.
• Seedtable, best AI startups in Stockholm (2026) , the ranking that puts Lovable, Einride and Legora at the top, and the funding raised by Einride.
• What is driving Sweden's startup boom, from Lovable to Legora , the Dealroom count of 38 of Sweden's 58 unicorns in Stockholm, the $4.1 billion of venture funding to the end of Q2 2026, and Lovable's revenue run rate and valuation.
• EU-Startups, Legora extends its Series D , the €513 million total at a €4.7 billion valuation, and the plan to grow from 700 people to 1,500.
• San Francisco Fed, do job market networks help recovery from mass layoffs? , that stronger job-market networks predict faster re-employment after a mass layoff, and that jobs found through those connections paid more and lasted longer.
• Maurer, Solamon and Lippstreu, Journal of Organizational Behavior 29 (2008) , that more comprehensive interview coaching produced higher interview ratings, and that what worked was helping candidates convey relevant content rather than manipulate their scores.
• Careerminds, how long it takes to find a job after a layoff (2026) , the 11.6-week median and 26-week mean from United States labour statistics, and the twelve-to-sixteen-week median reported for tech roles.
• Ericsson press release, January 2026 , the proposed reduction of around 1,600 roles in Sweden and its share of the Swedish workforce.
• Unionen, företrädesrätt till återanställning , the nine-month window, the twelve-months-in-three-years qualifying period, that you must claim it yourself, and the order when several people qualify.
• Unionen, avgångsersättning (AGE) , the common conditions of 40 or older with five years at the employer, and that they vary by transition organisation.
• CSN, omställningsstudiestöd , the 80 percent grant capped at 5,773 kr a week in 2026, 44 weeks full-time, the age range of 27 to 63, and the 96-months-in-14-years work requirement.
• CSN, how to apply for omställningsstudiestöd , that a statement from your transition organisation is recommended rather than required, and that application rounds open around six months before studies start.
• Calibrd, tech interviews in Sweden , the pay bands, notice norms and company loops referenced above.