Recruiting staff in Sweden: first steps from job advert to week one

Anchor the salary to the applicable agreement and to market data; Swedish law itself sets no wage minimum to fall back on. Pay floors are written into kollektivavtal (collective agreements), and Medlingsinstitutet counts around 300 central agreements with minimum-pay levels out of roughly 650. With close to nine in ten Swedish employees under an agreement in 2025, most applicants will hold your offer up against those terms.

Decide the package before you advertise. The items candidates usually ask about are monthly salary, occupational pension, holiday, working hours and whether overtime is paid or included in salary. Under white-collar agreements the pension is usually ITP1, which in 2026 takes 4.5% of pay below SEK 52,125 a month and 30% of pay beyond that point.

Budget for the employer’s side as well. Arbetsgivaravgifter (employer social contributions) put 31.42% on top of gross pay in 2026. A young hire born in the years 2003 to 2007 costs 20.81% on salary up to SEK 25,000 a month, and a hire past 67 costs just 10.21%. For a SEK 50,000 monthly salary, the statutory annual employer cost is SEK 788,520. Benefits in kind, such as a company car or a housing allowance, carry the same contributions as cash salary, so include them when you compare the total cost of different offers.

Pay transparency rules are on the way. Sweden’s government intends the EU Pay Transparency Directive to take effect on 1 January 2027, and telling applicants the pay range is part of what it brings. Check the enacted date before you build it into your hiring process, and consider stating a salary range in adverts already.

Advertise where your candidates look, and add a public listing if a work permit might be needed. Your own careers page and professional networks reach most applicants, but for roles that may require a permit, Migrationsverket expects the job to have been advertised through Platsbanken or EURES for at least 10 days before the application. Posting there from the start avoids a delay if the best candidate turns out to need a permit.

A clear advert saves time later. Useful details include:

• the employing company, which in an EOR hire is the employer of record, and the team the person joins
• permanent or fixed-term employment, and whether probation applies
• full-time or part-time hours and the main place of work, including remote options
• the salary range or how pay is set, and the collective agreement if one applies
• the language requirements of the job

Keep the selection criteria tied to the job. Agree the assessment steps in advance, note how each applicant was scored, and keep those notes, since a documented process makes it easier to explain later why one applicant was chosen over another.

When you recruit through an employer of record, you still run the search and the interviews yourself. The difference shows at the offer stage: the contract is issued by the employer of record, so the advert and your early conversations should make clear which company the person will actually be employed by and which team they will work in day to day.

The offer should state the form of employment, start date, salary, working hours, holiday, pension and notice, and it should match the contract that follows. Under LAS § 4 the default form is tillsvidareanställning (permanent employment), and other forms have to fit one of the permitted categories.

Fixed-term options are limited. The permitted list in LAS § 5 is short: särskild visstidsanställning (special fixed-term employment), a vikariat covering someone’s absence, seasonal jobs, and people aged 69 or older. Each has a conversion trigger, one year of special fixed-term work in a five-year span, or two years as a substitute in the same span, after which the job is permanent.

Working time needs a line too. Arbetstidslagen allows a normal week of up to 40 hours and 200 hours of general overtime in a year, and it protects an eleven-hour nightly break plus a 36-hour break each week. The statutory holiday allowance under semesterlagen is 25 days; if the employer’s collective agreement sets more, the offer should say so.

Many candidates in Sweden will be serving notice with their current employer. Under LAS, employer notice runs from 1 to 6 months depending on service, and an employee who resigns gives 1 month. Ask about notice early so the start date in the offer is realistic.

For senior international candidates, mention expertskattelättnad if it may apply. Forskarskattenämnden can exempt 25% of salary from income tax for 7 years, and for work starting in 2026 one route is a monthly salary above SEK 88,801. The relief is decided case by case, so present it as a possibility rather than a promise in the offer.

Seven calendar days after the start date is the limit: by then LAS § 6 c requires the core terms to exist on paper or in electronic form. This rule has applied since 30 June 2022, when Sweden implemented the EU directive on transparent and predictable working conditions. Any remaining information must follow within one month.

The written information covers, among other things:

• who the parties are, and where the work is done
• the job title, role or type of work
• the form of employment
• pay
• working hours
• holiday entitlement
• notice periods
• any kollektivavtal the employer applies to the post

In practice, issuing a signed contract before the first day meets the deadline with room to spare. Keep a copy of what was sent and when, and update the written terms whenever something listed above changes, such as the place of work after a move to remote working or a new collective agreement. Our guide to Swedish employment terms in writing covers the content in more detail.

LAS § 6 sets half a year as the outer limit for provanställning (probation). Within that window either party can call a halt, and if the window closes with nobody having done so, the person is simply a permanent employee.

Use the probation period deliberately. Agree what good performance looks like in the first weeks, hold check-ins at fixed points, and keep brief notes. If the fit is not right, raise it in good time before the six-month mark, because once probation runs out the protection of LAS applies in full and a dismissal then needs sakliga skäl (objective grounds).

If a trial period does not suit the role, the alternatives are limited. A special fixed-term contract covers a set period, yet it hardens into a permanent job after a little over a year’s use in five years, which makes it a clumsy stand-in for probation where the role is meant to last. Most employers therefore combine a permanent contract with a six-month provanställning at the start.

Probation does not change the pay rules. Sjuklön (sick pay), holiday accrual and any agreed pension all run from the first day, so the cost of a probationary employee is the same as that of a permanent one.

The first weeks bring the employee onto payroll and into the practical rules of Swedish working life. The employer places the employee on the right skattetabell (tax table) for their home municipality, runs the first salary and reports it on the monthly arbetsgivardeklaration på individnivå (AGI), which most employers must file and pay by day 12 of the following month.

A short welcome pack prevents questions later. Cover how to report sickness, since the employer pays 80% sick pay for days 1 to 14 after a karensavdrag (waiting-period deduction) and needs a doctor’s certificate from day 8. Explain the holiday year, which usually runs from 1 April to 31 March, and how leave is requested.

The first payslip often prompts questions. For a SEK 50,000 monthly salary and a Stockholm resident under 66 who is not a Church of Sweden member, tax table 31, column 1, deducts SEK 11,000, leaving SEK 39,000 net. The employee settles the exact tax in their spring inkomstdeklaration, and in this example the year-end result is a refund of about SEK 3,354.

Remote setups need a check. Arbetsmiljöverket states that work-environment responsibility stays with the employer during distansarbete (remote work), so agree how the home workstation is assessed. Confirm how intellectual property created in the job will pass to your company, particularly for software, where upphovsrättslagen § 40 a gives copyright to the employer.

For hires made via Employer of Record Sweden, these payroll tasks fall to us as legal employer; the team induction stays with you. The Swedish EOR onboarding sequence sets out how we handle each stage.

A candidate from outside the EU/EEA needs a work permit before starting, and the employer has specific duties in that process. Migrationsverket’s employer guidance lists the preconditions: ten days or more of public advertising, a contract signed ahead of filing, pay and conditions no weaker than agreement or industry norms, and an opportunity for the union concerned to give its view.

Pay has been measured against nine-tenths of the median since June 2026, currently SEK 34,470 a month and SEK 28,725 for exempt categories. The employer arranges four kinds of insurance, covering health, life, work injury and pension, and each permit runs for two years or less. Staffing employers face an extra test, proof that three months of wages are secured.

Once the permit is granted, a start delayed beyond four months has to be reported to Migrationsverket. Build the permit stage into the timetable from the outset, because the 10-day advert and the signed contract both have to come before the application is filed. For an overview of what an employer of record covers in these cases, see our EOR services, and for how employer and client roles divide, the Swedish employer of record basics.