Get a Job and Then Move to New Zealand

Why it makes sense to get a job offer before applying for a residency visa to emigrate to live in New Zealand

The easiest way to get residency in New Zealand if you don’t have family in the country and you are not an at risk migrant is through applying to emigrate under the Skilled Migrant Category.  To do so you submit to the New Zealand immigration authorities a document called an ‘Expression of Interest’ in which you detail facts about yourself on which you are then scored.  The higher you score, the better your chance of moving to live in New Zealand.

To score highly on the ‘Expression of Interest’ form it’s far better if you can get a job and then move to New Zealand, because if you have a job offer when you apply for residency, your application is likely to be assessed and regarded more highly.  So, in this article we look at ways you can get a job offer before you get residency to live in New Zealand.

The Skilled Migrant Category for immigration to New Zealand covers such a broad array of skills types and of industries in which the NZ authorities would like to welcome workers from overseas.  There are vacancies for those in the IT industry for example, the medical and educational professions and even for engineers and social workers…but generally, if you have applied for a job and been accepted as having skills in demand but not deliverable by New Zealand citizens, you should rank highly enough to be considered for immigration.

When you submit an Expression of Interest application it is placed in a pool and assessed eventually by an immigration officer.  According to the very latest figures about the applications selected as being eligible for residency, of the 769 applications assessed, 519 were from people who already had a job offer.  So as you can tell, it is far more likely that you will be positively assessed for immigration to New Zealand if you have first secured a job.

In the UK we are lucky enough to have exhibitions about moving abroad and specifically there are exhibitions and seminars for Brits who want to move to live and work in New Zealand or Australia.  At these types of events employers do head hunt and that can be a great way to be considered for a position.  Find out about the next big event in the UK, take along copies of your resume and see how you get on.

For those who cannot attend such an event or who don’t meet the type of employers they require, it will be a case of applying for jobs remotely from overseas.  As a result of video conferencing now being easily available and of psychometric testing being available over the internet for example, you can realistically apply for a job in New Zealand and get an offer without ever attending an interview in person.  You just have to be very proactive in finding employers who may require your skill set and targeting them with an ad hoc application – or of finding jobs over the internet or through recruitment companies for which you can directly apply.

If you’re serious about going to live in New Zealand, do as much of the groundwork as you possibly can before submitting your Expression of Interest application – that way you stand the highest chance of achieving residency status.