[kimandgareth]

Hi all

We are looking to make our move early 2008 but we're coming over for a holiday/research mission this coming March. We think we'll set up home in Wellington, but we want to make sure it will be OK for work. Does anyone know how Wellington is for IT jobs? Also, if anyone has any info/comments etc on the place, all thoughts very welcome! :D

Thanks all
Kim

[Helsandfamily]

Hi Kim,

Sorry I can't answer your questions, but wanted to say welcome to the forum.

Hels

[tigerlily]

Welcome to the forum!

I've seen quite a few IT jobs for Wellington on seek.co.nz. You can try a search there for your specialty. It is the quiet time of year for jobs in general though, with Christmas coming and then quite a few people take time off in January. So you might have a better sense of what jobs are available in February. Auckland has more jobs because there are more people there, but there are lots of government jobs in Wellington as well as a lot of IT companies from what I have seen.

I'm sure people here will sing the praises of Wellington any moment now.... You might also try a search here in the locations section, there have been quite a few threads comparing Auckland to Welly or just talking about the activities on offer.

[Smiler]

Welcome to the forum :cheers

Welly is good for IT jobs. You'll have lots of choice. Take some time out of your holiday to meet with a few agencies, sound out the market, salary etc.

What sort of IT are you in? Are you a member of any professional groups? My OH made some contacts that way when we came on our reccie trip.

Wellington is a great place to live and work. :nice1 If you need to know anything more specific, just ask!

[jo-and-jeff]

I'm in IT, and I have to say that one of the things that always irks me is how people say "Oh, you're in IT? You'll have no problem finding a job then! There are tons of IT jobs in NZ!"

There are a lot of IT jobs in NZ, especially in Wellington and Auckland. But companies in NZ – as companies anywhere else – are usually looking for a very specific skill-set. It's not common for a company to hire an IT professional who has no experience with whatever they need (although it does happen on occasion). So depending on your range of experience, you may – or may not – have an easy time finding a job in IT in New Zealand.

As Tigerlily says, your best bet is to check out Seek IT (http://it.seek.co.nz/jobsearch/) and do some searching on the skills with which you have experience, to see if there is a big demand for someone with your skill-set.

Jo

[kimandgareth]

Hi all

Thanks ever so much for all the helpful info and for the warm welcomes :D My husband is a Network Engineer with all sorts of skills from managing servers/networks to third line desktop support to backup solutions/active directory etc etc. We're fortunate as his skill set means he qualifies under one of the shortage categories. I'm an IT Project Manager, but I've also worked in manufacturing. I'm an auditor too, but project managing/planning etc are my main areas of experience plus all sorts of random things like procedural management and change management - I'm sure I could work for the government as I like writing documentation! ;)

We'll check out the Seek IT site - thanks for the recommendation. We've done some general research and there does seem to be quite a few positions we could both apply for, but I wanted to ask all the knowledgeable people on the Forum if it was really the case.

We can't wait for our trip in March - we're touring the south island including a stop for a few nights in Wellington so we can get a feel for the place. Is it really as windy as we've heard?! I don't mind 'warm' wind, but if its a cold wind like the good old UK then we'll suffer a bit.

Thanks everyone and have a lovely day!! :D

[sarahw]

Round March time you'll find that the wind has dropped (well lets hope so with the weather the way it is this year!!!) Usually drops Jan time for summer. The weather should be quite warm in March.

With regards to warm winds (northerlies) and cold winds (southerlies) it can vary a LOT!! You can wake up to a cold southerly coming off Antarctica & an hour later you can be basking in a warm northerly!! (Although March is pretty settled). Its August to Dec when the wind is the worst here. It can be very windy (for example we live at the top of a hill & I have woken to find a large wooden table from our deck which has been thrown against our ranch slider (patio door) about 5 metres from its original resting place!!) & a large bbq (with a big gas bottle attached! moved 5 metres across the deck!) but those days are few & far between - although we've certainly had more than our fair share this winter/spring! To be honest I don't notice the wind, the scenery & fantastic city more than make up for a few windy days! Plus most Wellingtonians will tell you it keeps the Aucklanders out!! ;)

Good luck with your reccy trip! If you're thinking about getting job offers before you move to NZ you might want to delay your reccy trip until closer to when you want to move out or pull forward your leaving date & get in contact with agencies to seek out suitable organisations for you to visit - most companies won't take you on from internet/phone contact - they need you here for interviews. We came over on a fact-finding trip with the view to moving here 2 years later - OH got a job offer on the first day & we moved out here 3 months later!!

[kimandgareth]

Hi Sarah

Thanks for all the info, its brilliant to hear from someone who lives in Wellington. I don’t think the wind will bother us really – as you say, everything else more than compensates! :D My hubbie is from South Africa (but is a British Citizen) and they have some strong winds over there too so its not something too unusual for us. Its good to hear it will be warm in March, although we picked Wellington as we liked the milder climate as neither of us are fans of the heat.

Thanks for the job advice too. Its not feasible for us to come down towards the end of 2007 unfortunately as we’re due to go back to South Africa in November, so we had to go with spring so our employers here would let us have the time off. We would dearly love to bring our permanent move forward but due to financial reasons we think we will be here until 2008. Our plan then (and it would be great to hear peoples thoughts) is to sort out our house and move into rented in the UK, apply for jobs then, if we get one, submit out EOI and get temp work visas so we can come straight down - by moving into rented in the UK it means we could come down to NZ with a months notice so hopefully that could help us get jobs in NZ even via the UK – we’ve read that it helps your chances if you can start in NZ quite quickly. I know it’s a little unlikely we can apply and get something whilst still in the UK, but we thought we’d give it a go. If we can’t get work we will go down on our passports and get jobs then apply to stay – a more risky option we know, but hopefully as hubbie is in the skills shortage area we can get something whilst still in the UK or at least get something quickly when we come down on passports.

Any suggestions/help on the plans always appreciated :nice1

[sarahw]

You can't get a work visa without a job (unless you go for the under 30's working holiday visa - depends on your ages).

You're best to arrive on a holiday visa (usually valid for 6 months & look for a job when you get here - unless of course you do find something from the UK - just don't be surprised if noone responds to you on the job front whilst you're in the UK - my hubby was desperately required in his co but noone would talk to us until we hit NZ soil & although there are people who have been employed in jobs without coming here so you never know it is worth a try - but if you don't hear anything just ask yourself - would you offer someone a job from the other side of the world without meeting them? I'm certainly sure I wouldn't - however desperate I was).

Then when you get a job offer you can apply for a work visa at NZIS either in UK (which I think takes about 2 weeks or in Welly - if you're in Welly you can physically go to NZIS & they'll issue it same day usually so you can start work straight away.

Good luck - hope all goes well!!

[sizzlingbadger]

Welcome to the fourm Kim :clap

My OH is in IT, a Team Leader with 10 years database support work. Provided you've got the experience and a good CV you shouldn't have too many problems finding work.

Moving out in 2008 sounds like a good plan especially as you've got a busy year with a holiday in NZ and South Africa :)

One thing I would suggest is putting your house on the market in the next couple of months, you don't want to be hanging around waiting for it to sell when you're ready to go. We sold ours before we had our ITA through simply because we knew we wanted to move anyway, we stayed in rented 5 months before moving out here. For us it turned out to be the best decision because as soon as our PR came through in 4 weeks we were flying out :)

[kimandgareth]

Thanks Sarah :) Hi Badger, thanks for the warm welcome :D

All the advice is brilliant - you've all told us more in the past couple of days than we have learnt in the past couple of months!!

We would dearly love to sell the house earlier than 2008, but for financial reasons we need to stay put, purely because we need to save up and it makes more sense not to use our money on house move costs just yet. We will be out of there as quick as we can though and we will start it in plenty of time. We're fortunate that we're in a good area and property tends to sell quickly, so we should be OK - although I know its never that easy!

Its so useful to know that we can get a work visa quickly when we're actually in NZ - reading that sure makes us feel a lot better about potentially coming down on our passports initially.

Thanks again for all the help :nice1

[Big Puku]

Depending upon what you read, Wellington has a bigger IT market than Auckland (especially high-end systems in Govt/banks etc), and many firms are still struggling to find skilled IT people. Even at this early stage, it would be worth joining a professional group like The Wellington IT Expats ("Wellies") - www.wellies.org.nz

Matt

[kimandgareth]

Hi Matt :)

Thanks ever so much for the advice, we'll check out the site this weekend. Its a real relief to know that Wellington has a strong IT market as both of us are in that field.

We can't wait for our trip over - it can't come soon enough! :D

[NooDleS]

Hi, i'm in the same boat as you. Although my IT skills are more in the Network Administration, Hardware and Web technologies side of things. I went straight to work after college. So i'm storming through a load of Certs and brushing up on my Java as much as possible.

I've been checking out a few agencies over the past year and scouring job boards etc. There is one place i cannot recommend highly enough.

ITmaniacs.co.nz - Sarah is an expat herself so understands the immigration/job process and I believe she mentioned that a few of her staff are also expats.

A bit of advice she gave me about the NZ market, they prefer a Skills Matrix on CV's.

Hope this helps.

Best of luck.