Tips for new migrants to find IT Jobs in New Zealand
Develop a job search plan. Do you want to apply directly, use contacts and referrals in the local market to recommended roles or approach recruitment agencies as a advisors and mentors to help you get your ideal role. Be familiar and do your research on how each recruitment process works, it may be different from where you come from.
Get your visa and immigration details in order – that will be the first thing which will be asked by the company or the recruiter. Be honest
Late December to early January are lean recruitment times, however with changing global market and international export perspective of New Zealand this is changing.
Match your knowledge and skills with the roles and companies you’re applying to and avoid getting the demotivating rejection letter. Remember it’s not a number game.
If you have not heard back regarding your applicaiotn, Follow up your application with a polite email within 48 hours. Most organisations In New Zealand with come back to you with status of your application. If they have not then there may have not received your resume.
Crucial is to be upfront about your availability for the role along with ability to attend interview with the sourcing person and the role lead.
Do share your other approaches for the job search with your recruitment agency as they will drop you quickly if they find you are double tracking. It will be to your advantage if you establish a good working relationship and trust with your recruiter.
Resume Tips
Less is good or more is right – there is no right answer. It’s all to do with relevancy. A wordy irrelevant long winded resume will find its way to the trash box as quickly as a short undetailed general 1 or 2 pager.
Make you resume relevant to the job. Ensure you cover all points which are requested in the job advert and even highlight them in your open covering profile or within the various sections
The person recruiting may be a busy executive so it helps to give a quick snap shot like a table of skills, rating and years of experience.
Senior the role, give your expertise by sharing achievement targets and budgets or detail a project which may fast track you to the front of line because of its relevancy to the role.
Give valid reasons for gaps in the resume, it’s a sure sign of something you’re avoiding telling the hiring person.
Education and work history is a must in the resume. Give more emphasis on the work history if you’re a senior person and education status may be not be too crucial for the role, however if for a mid to senior roles try and cover the relevancy of your skills to the role by explain the relevant internship or project work to give you’re the credibility.
A common resume format uses
Contact details with visa status
Short profile
Education and work history
Availability
References – not necessary initially however would be crucial further down the recruitment cycle. Usually covering last 5 years of your working career.
Sanjiv Deva is the General Manager of Rec-i.com a general recruitment agency in Auckland which does part time, casual, contract IT and industrial roles in Auckland and client services director at Total Business Solution You can contact him on sanjiv@rec-i.com for any further detail
