[mick&clare]

Hi,

Both myself & my girlfriend want to head over to New Zealand within the next 12 months. We were told by the NZ immigration officials that a WHV would be best and cheapest for us.

I would however like to secure work possibly before heading over to NZ and was wondering about submitting our CV's to potenial employers and recruitment agencies.

We can't really head off until next summer as I need to sell my business, and maybe raise some money together.

I was wondering would it seem cheeky or forward to submit our CV's now or would it jeopardise our chances for work in the future. We haven't started the VISA process either as we were originally just going to go on a WHV and then convert to a work permit over there. Its just a little scary going over without work lined up and limited funds though ( < £15K).

We attended the Down Under Expo in Dublin but found it was more OZ related so have booked a flight to London this weekend to see if we can speak to employers and get the ball rolling.

Please help :)

[BkyMonster]

I'd recommend sending out CVs a few weeks before you plan to be in the area. State in the CV that you will be available for in person interviews from x-y dates etcetc. Concrete and imminent travel plans go a good way toward making them want to talk to you. Not all the way...but some of it. :D

You could try sending out earlier depending on your field. We found most IT employers were not that interested unless they could interview in the next few weeks (we started about 2 months before arrival) but then when here moved really fast (probably to grab up applicants). YMMV.

[adinic]

I'm in the same boat. Question is where do you find a list of potential employers? I've found numerous recruitment agency sites but is there a nz yellow pages on-line?

[mick&clare]

Hi BkyMonster,

Cheers for the prompt reply! Should we just go along with plan A then? - i.e get to NZ first on a WHV and then apply for jobs whilst changing to a work permit?

I think I read somewhere that you can't get a work permit without a job offer and you cannot get a job offer without a work permit. Is that true?

With regards to the type of work - I'm in IT and have IT Helpdesk Level 2 Server Support but also a lot of Software Eng work - mainly web. Clare is a Events Management Planner in Marketing.

Thanks,

Mick.

[BkyMonster]

We were able to get a job offer without a work permit and thus got our work permit that way. I think it really depends on the employer. We had to submit some extra paperwork from the employer saying they hadn't been able to fill the position and so on.
Your plan A sounds good and will probably give you a fair amount of flexibility in terms of job offers and employment.

As for finding jobs--well we mostly hit up TradeMe and seek.co.nz The job my OH ended up getting wasn't on TradeMe but we applied for one with the recruitment agency and they suggested the job he is currently doing.
I think there is a Nz yellow pages online called finda.co.nz but I don't really have much experience with using it. You might also try the council community web sites for businesses in the area.

[Ellie&Ris]

Hi Mick&Clare..

Great news we are off next week.. anyways that chat can wait until later...

Ris got his job offer over the phone.. but then again once his referances confirmed that yes he could in fact drive a tractor thats all the employer needed!

As you know i work in accounting and i started sending out CV's to recrutiment agencies about 2months ago.. they all replied with the same e-mail 'please contact us once you arrive in New Zealand'.. except for one.. that was Hays recruitment.. had a telephone interview with a guy in their UK branch a month ago, he has forwarded my details to the Christchurch office and i have an interview lined up. (drop me a mail and i'll send you his details if you want them).. in fact this guy used to manage the Christchurch office!

I have to say i got a much better responce from recrutiment agencies and individual companies when i had a) Working Holiday Visa and b) arrival date

I used Seek.co.nz and trademe.co.nz to find out who was recruiting....although i find their adverts really different to the way we do things here in Ireland!!!:D

[Bunstar]

Here's NZ yellow pages...

http://yellow.co.nz/index.jsp