A Swedish job application is two documents, not one, and Sweden's public employment agency treats them as having two separate jobs. The CV states facts: contact details, experience, education. The personligt brev, the personal letter, explains motivation and fit in prose. If you repeat the CV's bullet points inside the personligt brev, you waste the one page that document gets. A CV built on a US or UK résumé template also carries assumptions Swedish hiring practice does not share.
This guide sets out the exact length, structure, and inclusion rules Arbetsförmedlingen publishes for both documents, what to leave off a Swedish CV, and where an English-language application still works.
How Long a Swedish CV and Personligt Brev Should Run
A Swedish CV runs one to two pages. A personligt brev runs to a maximum of one A4 page.
Arbetsförmedlingen states directly that "1–2 pages is sufficient for a CV." Separately, it states that "a good length for a personal letter is a maximum of one A4 page." The length limits exist because the two documents are read together, not as substitutes for each other. If your CV already lists three years at a given employer, you do not need to restate that fact in the personligt brev. Use the personligt brev's single page to explain why the role fits and to cover what the CV's bullet points do not show. If you are translating a five-page US-style CV into Swedish, cut content rather than shrink the font, and build the personligt brev as a separate argument rather than a cover-page summary of the CV.
The Elements a Swedish CV Includes, and Why the Order Is Not Fixed
Arbetsförmedlingen's own guidance does not mandate a single section order for a Swedish CV. It states plainly that "the structure you choose will depend on what job you are applying for."
What stays constant across its sample structures are four elements: contact details (phone number, email address, and postal address), a short summary, work experience, and education. Beyond those four, Arbetsförmedlingen's templates allow additional sections such as language skills, computer skills, and professional-association memberships; include them only where relevant to the specific posting. If you are used to a fixed CV template, note the practical implication: a single CV reused unedited across every application is a weaker document than one you adapt per job. Arbetsförmedlingen's own flexibility is meant to let you foreground whichever section matters most for that specific role. Once your documents are ready, see the rest of the Sweden job-search sequence for what comes next.
What to Leave Off: Personnummer, Photo, and Privacy
Arbetsförmedlingen's contact-details guidance names only a phone number, an email address, and a postal address; it does not ask for a personnummer. Its own CV templates exist both with a photo and without one.
That silence on the personnummer is itself informative: Sweden's employment agency does not treat the country's 10-digit personal identity number as a CV field at all. Recruitment guidance aimed specifically at applicants unfamiliar with Swedish norms, such as ResumeAIMatch's Sweden Resume Rules Guide, goes further. It recommends you leave a personnummer off your CV altogether, since it is sensitive personal data with no bearing on a first-stage application and no requirement to disclose it before an employer relationship exists. A photo sits differently: Arbetsförmedlingen's own template set includes options with and without one, which signals the choice is optional rather than a fixed norm in either direction. If you include a photo, the agency advises choosing one that looks professional.
A personnummer does become relevant later, just not on the CV. Skatteverket issues a related but distinct samordningsnummer, a coordination number, to people not yet listed in the Population Register. This includes many people working in Sweden for under a year, who instead register for preliminary A-tax or apply for special income tax for non-residents depending on their circumstances. That step belongs to onboarding paperwork after you have an offer, not to the application documents themselves. For the full picture of the identity-document timeline, see when you actually need a personnummer or coordination number.
Recruitment-focused style guidance for applicants unfamiliar with Swedish norms, distinct from Arbetsförmedlingen's own pages and not itself sourced to them, commonly recommends three formatting habits. Write dates in ISO order, year-month-day, for example 2026-03-15. Submit your file as a PDF rather than an editable document, and build the file name from your name and the document type, such as "CV Forename Surname," rather than a generic "resume-final-v2" file.
None of these three conventions is a legal requirement, and this guide states that distinction plainly rather than attributing them to the employment agency. What is consistent across Arbetsförmedlingen's own published CV samples is restraint in visual design: plain layout, clear headings, and no heavy graphic styling. This matches the wider pattern behind the understated design sense behind Swedish workplace norms. If you build your CV around a colorful infographic template, common in some other job markets, it reads as a mismatch against that norm rather than as a differentiator.
Structuring the Personligt Brev
Arbetsförmedlingen's guidance on writing a personal letter sets out six specific instructions, in this order:
- Start with the most important information.
- Customize the letter for the specific job.
- Express yourself professionally, without being overly formal or using jargon the reader may not know.
- Provide concrete examples that illustrate personal qualities.
- Avoid clichés.
- Close with a positive statement.
For the fourth point, the agency's own guidance suggests drawing examples "from your work, studies, or leisure activities" rather than restating job-title claims the CV already makes. For the fifth point, it names specific phrases to avoid, including "I work well under pressure" and "I'm outgoing," on the basis that generic claims like these do not distinguish one applicant from another. For the sixth, its own sample closing line reads: "I look forward to meeting you and having the opportunity to share more about myself." Build your personligt brev around these six instructions, rather than around a generic cover-letter template translated from another country, and it matches the version Arbetsförmedlingen's own guidance is describing.
Whether you can submit a personligt brev in English rather than Swedish is not settled by a single Arbetsförmedlingen rule, and no primary source confirms which employers accept an English-language letter. Treat this as employer- and sector-dependent rather than a fixed norm. The most direct signal is the job posting itself. A posting written in English, or one that names English as a working language, is stronger evidence that an English-language application will work than any general assumption about Swedish hiring practice.
The Mistake That Undermines an Application Before a Recruiter Finishes It
Two separate risks sit inside Arbetsförmedlingen's guidance for your application, and they are easy to conflate. Its CV guidance warns that "incorrect file formats or missing information can result in automatic rejection," which is a mechanical, format-and-completeness risk rather than a content judgment. Separately, in its guidance on avoiding clichés in a job application, the agency warns that text which reads as entirely AI-generated risks being filtered out. This filtering happens not through an automated system, but through a recruiter who has grown tired of reading impersonal, uniform-sounding applications that all say the same thing.
That second risk is about tone, not detection. If you draft a personligt brev with AI assistance for structure or grammar checking, that is a different document from one you submit as unedited AI output that never reflects your own examples or voice. Whether a specific employer's recruitment process runs any automated screening at all depends on that employer's size and systems, and Arbetsförmedlingen's own guidance does not say every employer does. No primary source confirms this branch employer by employer, so treat it as a caveat rather than a rule. What its guidance does confirm is the underlying reader: a human recruiter evaluating whether your letter sounds like one specific person applying for one specific role. For the job search timeline overall, including where a permit deadline adds pressure to move quickly, see if your job search is tied to a work permit timeline.
A Swedish CV Runs Two Pages, and the Personligt Brev Must Not Repeat It
Three rules cover most of what you are likely to get wrong on a first Swedish job application. Your CV runs one to two pages and your personligt brev runs to one A4 page; read them together rather than separately. Arbetsförmedlingen does not fix the CV's section order, but its core elements (contact details, summary, experience, education) stay constant, and you should reorder them to match the specific posting. Leave the personnummer off the CV entirely, and treat the photo as optional rather than expected in either direction.
Unemployment among foreign-born residents in Sweden sat at 12.1 percent as of October 2025, against 3.4 percent for those born in Sweden. That gap makes it worth the extra care to get your application documents right on the first attempt.
Sources
- Arbetsförmedlingen, "Writing a CV": CV length, section elements, photo guidance, and the automatic-rejection risk from incorrect file formats or missing information. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- Arbetsförmedlingen, "Writing a personal letter": personligt brev maximum length and the six-point structure, including named clichés to avoid. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- Arbetsförmedlingen, "Se upp för AI-klyschor i din jobbansökan": the recruiter-fatigue risk behind entirely AI-generated application text. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- Statistics Sweden (SCB), "Population by Labour Market Status, October 2025": foreign-born and Sweden-born unemployment rates for October 2025. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- Skatteverket, "Coordination numbers": who receives a samordningsnummer and how it differs from a personnummer. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- Skatteverket, "New in Sweden and will be employed here": preliminary A-tax registration and the SINK alternative for people working in Sweden under one year. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
- ResumeAIMatch, "Sweden Resume Rules Guide": the personnummer-exclusion recommendation, plus the ISO date, PDF submission, and file-naming conventions, cited here as commonly recommended practice, not as an Arbetsförmedlingen requirement. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
About the Author
Keerthi Murugesan writes Sweden Unpacked's guides for people moving to and living in Sweden, covering permits, work, and identity-document topics like this one. Moved to Sweden from India, and went through the permit, the personnummer queue, the bank, and BankID directly. See more about Sweden Unpacked. Every rule and figure in this guide is sourced directly to Arbetsförmedlingen, Skatteverket, or SCB, cited inline throughout. The exception is the personnummer-exclusion recommendation and the formatting conventions, in the third and fourth sections, which are explicitly attributed to a named secondary source rather than to the employment agency.
