Perry Groves

Has anyone been successful in securing employment from outside New Zealand? I have been trying on Seek.com mostly but have had no luck so far.

alanmacc

In the whole most employers will not offer a job to anybody who does not have the right to work in NZ, if you have a permit to work here it should make it easier.

Certain professions also will employ people outside NZ, mainly health occupations.

Most of it stems from employers looking for almost immediate start dates

gags

OH was offered employment in 2008 by a telephone/computer interview done in London. It didn't work out, for house sale reasons but we are hoping that he can secure another position this way again this year.

We need employment to qualify for the visa. If he has to go to nz for interviews then so be it, but if not ,that would be better and cheaper.

Best of luck to you in your searching.

ukkiwi

Have you tried contacting companies directly?

Seek will be mainly agencies looking for a quick turnaround as well as competing against other agencies for comission - so someone without a visa will be more difficult to place than someone who has the right to work.

MOSO

It's the famous or infamous catch 22. Obviously it depends on your line of work and exact visa details.

What kind of work are you in? My OH works in comms/marketing but only found work when he had an exact date for being in NZ. Before that the agencies were all positive but didn't secure him any employment before he got here. Looking at it from an employers perspective, there are lots of unemployed at the moment, and people actually in NZ are bound to take preference in most circumstances.

We came knowing we had at least 3 months money to tide us over to secure employment - could you do the same, being 'on the ground' and able to knock on doors makes a huge difference.

Good luck in your hunt.

Wooly_Cow

As has been said, it’s really catch 22. No job no visa, no visa no job.

I tried to square that circle for 14 years! (Well only seriously for about a year). My OH used to send me jobs adverts from Australia and NZ EVERY day for years. Each one said “Applicant must be authorised to tasker up work in….” …quite why these were on a UK or International job search site is puzzling.

However I eventually got a job in fact two jobs, via the much maligned ‘NZ Expo’ – a job fair. In fact I found out which employers were attending, the first time I didn’t attend as no-one in my area was going. The second time there were 4 possible companies. My thought was, that they wouldn’t be coming to London unless they were actively recruiting overseas people so I checked their internal web sites, and applied for relevant jobs I found there, explaining I would be attending the Expo. From this I got 2 formal interviews around the time of the Expo, in London but not at the Expo, and two other informal interviews at the Expo. This led to two really good job offers with emigration support including working visa application. I then immediately applied for PR, which given my job offer (in writing) was a pretty much a formality.

So you can secure employment from overseas. The trick is to identify employers who are actively looking for overseas people, and to find out how they are planning to secure this. Some times they will use agents. If you are unsure, contact them to find out.

Perry Groves

I am an electrical engineer, and I have Permanent Residence.

Persephone

Would you consider coming over for a short holiday/ job hunt?. You could try and line up interviews for then.
Obviously it would activate your PR but you would still have 2 years in which to return on your RRV if not successful that time.

MOSO

I agree with above. We came over for a reccie and my husband met with several job agencies while we were here. At that point we were waiting for our house to sell - we weren't expecting it to take 18 months though!

Once we had sold, he then contacted the most suitable agencies and employers again when the flights were booked and ended up getting a job following an interview from the UK on skype and found out he'd got it the morning he left Heathrow!

I wish you the best of luck, as it's not easy, but if you can get over here and line some things up, it should make a big difference.