They called it luck.

When I told people about the H2 Green Steel offer (Europe's first green steel plant, a €6B program, an industry I'd never worked in), the most common response was: "You really got lucky."

I didn't argue. But I started counting backwards.

The offer took 18 days. Since 2017, I had been through versions of this process: adapting CVs, targeting international roles, reaching out to people, preparing for interviews, learning how international hiring actually works. Since 2022, I had been helping dozens of my career consulting clients through theirs. Six years of it, from both sides, before I ran it again in August 2023.

The Sunday

It was a Sunday. My daughter was three weeks old. I'd made a commitment to myself a few days earlier: we were moving to Europe. I gave myself 6 months to get an offer. Reasonable. Maybe too ambitious.

That Sunday I found H2 Green Steel's listing. A company building Europe's first fossil-free steel plant in northern Sweden. A role I had no direct experience for: my career had been in EPC project management, oil and gas, offshore. I'd never touched steel or metallurgy. The company had been searching for someone for six months.

I applied. Then I found the recruiter's name and sent him a message on LinkedIn the same day.

The first call

He called the next afternoon. What I noticed: he opened with the salary. Not at the end, not "we'll get to that later." Right at the start. Upper bar stated clearly. A good sign — and a reminder that if a recruiter doesn't bring it up, you can. Knowing the range early saves everyone time, including them.

The role needed someone who could build processes and procedures from scratch. A startup environment. I'd never worked at a startup, but I'd spent two years at a major Chinese EPC contractor building an engineering department from nothing: no templates, no systems, no people. Starting from scratch without the label. The experience was relevant, and I knew how to frame it. Years of my own moves and dozens of clients I'd helped through similar processes. The reps were paying dividends.

Sweden hadn't been on my target list. I'd had one day to research the company before the call. When the salary came up, I said: "The ballpark is right. But I'd like to understand a bit more before I can fully commit to the number." That was enough. The door stayed open.

He came back the same day. Next interview confirmed: end of the week.

The surprise

The second interview was a surprise.

I was expecting one person: my future hiring manager. What I got was two. His boss, the project director, joined the call quietly. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, he mostly listened.

The first part of the conversation flowed. My hiring manager asked about my background, the projects I'd led, how I'd operated across complex EPC programs. Direct questions, concrete answers. I found the conversation easy.

Then the project director started asking questions.

I understood the words. I just couldn't find the question inside them.

I asked him to clarify.

Then again.

By the third or fourth time I was asking him to repeat or restate, I felt genuinely embarrassed. The kind of feeling you get when you're not sure if you're failing or just confused.

This is going badly I thought.

After the call, I opened my email to send follow-ups to both of them. I'd already added them on LinkedIn the day we first spoke, and that was the next step. But the recruiter had beaten me to it. Positive feedback. Next steps already confirmed: an assessment, then a conversation with the head of talent acquisition.

I only learned months later, once the project director and I were working together, that he was juggling three things at once during that call. His questions were often like that when he was split across tracks. Not a test, not me failing. Just the way he was sometimes.

Under thirty minutes

The final interview was with the Head of Project Delivery. Under thirty minutes. No preamble.

After a small talk, one of his first questions: "If you had to build this plant just outside Moscow — where you are right now, today — how would you approach it?"

He wasn't asking what I'd do after I joined. He was asking what I'd do if I were already there. Less an interview question, more: here is the seat, what do you see?

Then he asked what actually drove me in work. I said something about leadership. Accountability. Owning decisions fully, not just executing. What I hadn't planned was how clearly the frustration of the past two years came through as I answered: the stagnation at my current role, the inability to take full ownership, the feeling of needing a different dynamic than the system allowed.

I don't think I articulated it especially well. But I think he heard it exactly.

Eighteen days

On September 5, I got an invitation to discuss the details. On September 6, we'd verbally agreed on everything, conditionally, pending the background check. No formal document yet. But the 18 days were done.

I was already in Stockholm, February 2024, when I understood who I was actually working for. Not my hiring manager. His boss. The project director, the one who had spent the first fifteen minutes of our interview in near silence. I had landed above the role I'd applied for, in a team I hadn't known I was auditioning for.

The ice cube

James Clear describes an ice cube in a cold room in Atomic Habits. The room is at minus eighteen degrees. Someone starts heating it. Minus fifteen. Minus ten. The ice cube doesn't move. Minus five. Minus one. Still nothing. Then at zero, you see it: clearly, visibly, starting to melt. And every degree after that accelerates it.

People see the melt. They don't see the degrees.

What looked like an 18-day sprint had a longer history. Since 2022, I had been helping dozens of clients land their offers: debriefs after a rejection, follow-up messages after calls, salary conversations where someone learned to say "the ballpark is right, but I'd like to explore more." All of it had been adding a degree to the room.

The six-month search that ended in 18 days wasn't luck. Or maybe it was. But only the way an ice cube melting is luck. H2 Green Steel, later renamed Stegra, got their Interface Manager. I got Stockholm.

This week

One thing. But start earlier than you get to an interview.

Most people begin preparing when they find the role: research the company, update the CV, practice answers. That's useful. But compounding doesn't start there.

If there's a company you're already watching, one you could see yourself working for in the next move, reach out to someone there now. Not with an ask. Not with your CV. Just a normal human conversation: what they're working on, how they see the market, what the programme actually looks like from the inside. People are more open to this than you'd expect.

I didn't have that with H2 Green Steel. I found the listing on a Sunday and applied the same day. But the reps I'd accumulated elsewhere meant I could run the process cleanly when it mattered.

The relationship you build before you need it. The follow-up you send when no one asked you to. The salary conversation you handle calmly instead of avoiding.

None of it looks significant in the moment.

It just adds a degree.

Until next Saturday, Vitalii

Find me on LinkedIn. You're reading The Next Move — a weekly newsletter by Vitalii Lavelin.
​