how long is it?

redido · Testing The Water Joined: 16 Dec 2003 Posts: 4

if i get a job offer as a motor mechanic, and dont like the place i am working at .how soon can i leave, and do i have to stay in the same proffesion, are we talking months or weeks or days?and if i get an offer how long does the process take,because surely an employer wont wait 6 months for a mechanic when the job is vacant when the offer is made.....hope ive made myself clear.....please help im new to all of this.. Confused

JCM · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:24 am Post subject:

Hi redido,

Most employers who are willing to take overseas people are also willing to wait several months for you to get the paperwork sorted out.

Having started a job here, it's three months before you can move on to pastures new.

I posted this in another thread which may also be of interest to you:

Let's say you come to New Zealand on 'holiday' for a few weeks and decide you love it here. You find yourself with a job offer. If you take all of the required paperwork along to an Immigration Dept. office in the same locality as you've been offered the job, it is possible to have a work permit issued on the spot. This is most likely to happen if the offered job is on the Occupational Shortage List or Priority Occupations List.

If the offered job is not on one of these lists, your employer-to-be will almost certainly have to submit a "Labourmarket Check" to establish with the Dept. of Immigration that they have advertised the job and there is no New Zealander able to do it. If you're lucky, the employer will already have had the labourmarket check carried out. If they haven't, they have to send off paperwork to WINZ, for WINZ to carry out the check. This will take 2 -3 weeks. Your employer-to-be can then pass the labourmarket-check paperwork on to you to enable you to get a work permit.

It should be said that many smaller employers are reluctant to do the paperwork, etc, required for a labourmarket check and would much prefer to find someone that they don't need to do all this for.

N.B. If you arrive here 'on holiday' and turn up at a Dept of Immigration office within a few days with job offer and all of your paperwork filled in, they will almost certainly doubt that your true purpose in coming to NZ was a holiday. This might cause problems.

Hope this is of use to you redito, and others.