- I didn’t speak Norwegian fluently
- My professional network consisted of two people (family)
- The country was facing a recession
- I wanted to work in the industry hardest hit by the recession
– Joseph Campbell
That’s when I became obsessed with finding a better way of finding a job. I read as many job-hunting books, blog posts, and articles as I could. I experimented with every technique. I had nothing to lose. What I ended up discovering was a simple process based on three ‘secrets’ that has changed my career and my life in Norway.
How to Get a Job In Norway
I didn’t change my profile, only my job-hunting approach.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the CV being obsolete after an article on the subject in DN. Yet there’s much life left in the CV because there’s 1,000+ ways to write one. However, when I’m a job hunter in Norway, I’ve found that it’s not the right tool for me.

Instead I created a simple one-pager that captures my skill strengths, interests and work environment preferences that intrigues hiring managers. What many hiring managers have said, is that this one-pager is what they would have written down as their interview notes.
The Career Outline has become my secret weapon (secret #2) to gaining valuable career advice that has pointed me in the direction of the unadvertised jobs (remember that’s 60%+ of the Norwegian job market).
The third secret is having a referral blueprint. Have you ever noticed how someone looks at you when you ask them for a job? You shouldn’t be surprised because you’re asking them to put their reputation at risk for you. I never ask contacts for a lead to a job because the chances of landing one is thinner than Donald Trump’s hairline.
Instead each meeting with a hiring manager is carefully crafted to build trust so that at the end I have a good chance of landing 2 or more referrals. (The current record of referrals is held by one of my students in Norway. She landed 9 referrals from one executive!) Why are referrals so important?
Remember I didn’t have a network and nor did I have time to build my own. My best strategy was to piggy-back on the existing networks of industry veterans in Norway by knowing how to consistently get referrals. Did it work? Within 5 weeks I landed 34 interviews with hiring managers.
Sure beats waiting for my dream job to show up on Finn.no.
The truth is, had I not hit the wall trying to find a job in Norway, I would have settled for any job. Little did I know that the mud on my face from stumbling 15 years ago, would shape the careers of thousands of job seekers around the world (107 countries and counting!).
For more insights into the job hunting strategy I teach, consider joining my free online training.