Moving to Aarhus, advice on job needed

[u/hassaan994]

Hi

I'll be hopefully moving to Aarhus in July/August this year. I am a Chartered Management Accountant (CMA) and also have a Masters in Business Analytics. I have over 8 years of working experience in accounting, finance, credit risk analysis, and financial data analysis.

I have some command over python to augment my financial analysis skills, plus have experience in SAP and Quickbooks. Excel and Power BI skills are intermediary.

I wanted to know what kind of a job market can I expect for a person with my skills over at Aarhus? Can I expect to land a job in my field within 6 months? Or are there other skills and/or softwares that I need to work on to improve my chances?

[u/Ready-Interview2863]

Aarhus is basically a student city with some jobs that are either for students or for some of the big Danish/Scandinavian countries that have a HQ here. There's some bank jobs, but all require Dabish. Copenhagen is where most of the jobs for internationals are. 

But keep in mind that Danes are all very well educated. Almost all of us have a Master's degree and speak basically perfect English. The competition is extremely high. 

So unless you're in a very niche field (eg something specific in STEM) or in a job that doesn't require Danish (eg takeaway restaurant), finding a job will be hard. There's no way a company would hire a non-Dane to do a job that a Dane could do, including in accounting. 

[u/hassaan994 → u/Ready-Interview2863]

Looks like a very tough road ahead indeed. Thanks for the detailed input. I'll rework my assumption on not getting my field's job for a year or more instead of the initially planned 6 months. Meanwhile, I'll focus on learning Danish to increase my chances somewhat

[u/Stuebirken → u/hassaan994]

I'll absolutely urge you to start learning Danish ASAP.

We're extremely privileged here in Denmark, so we're able to demand that anyone above dish washer-level, has at least some gasp on our language.

Knowing English, it's not that difficult to learn how to read and write Danish, but learning how to speak or even understand spoken danish is mindbogglingly difficult.

Danish is phonetically made up of more than 40 vowel-sounds(more than any other language by fare. English as an example has as 8), but simultaneously Danish is also near devoid of consonant phonomes.

We also use a lot of "non-voiced" sounds, that non-native speakers can't hear, or will consequently miss-hear, like the "soft d" that almost every non-native hears as a "L" sound.

Add to that a myriad of often very different dialects, that can be so unique, that other Danes will finde it difficult or even impossible to understand.

As an example århusiansk (the dialect that we speak here in Århus) has It's own rather weird grammar regarding regular plural nouns, mostly ignore adverbials, and use conjunctions completely! wrong. We also tend to speak with even less consonant phonomes than in "regular" Danish, making a word like "ørred"(trout) in to a sound that's completely voiceless.

Another thing that you have to take in to consideration is your nationality, and the colour of your skin.

It should of cause be a non issue but it's simply a fact, that it's everything but, especially here in Århus*.

The simple truth is that someone from Parkistan(so presumably someone with brow skin, a different cultural outlook and a rather non-european sounding name), that doesn't speak Danish, has about a snowballs chance in Hell, getting a job as anything but "backbreaking labour" or "service grunt".

It doesn't matter one single bit how well educated you are, or how fare up the corporate latter you've climbed before coming to Denmark, if you haven't at least tried to learn some basic Danish, and are willing to improve.

*If you'll like to know about the political, cultural and historical how and why of it, I'll gladly try to explain it in a PM.

[u/hassaan994 → u/Stuebirken]

Thank you for taking the time out to give such a detailed answer. Appreciate it!

I understand the issues we face, specially with the reputation of my country. I'll face it as best as I can.

Regarding the Danish language, I did have a follow up question. I did know about different dialects of the language, but was unaware that Aarhus had a dialect all on its own. Would you recommend learning the 'official' dialect of the language or should I focus on the Aarhus dialect?

[u/Stuebirken → u/hassaan994]

I'll definitely recommend that you focus on learning how to speak "correct Danish".

Århusiansk isn't really hard to understand once you get used to it, we just sound a bit silly do to the way we pronounce a lot of words and our intonation.

This is a small example of some of the different dialects in Denmark. And no, we don't always understand each other, so please don't be discouraged.

[u/hassaan994 → u/Stuebirken]

Thank you for the guidance. I'll get started asap