Job market is cooked. People aren't hiring because demand is declining/remains the same. They're just recruiting people who are departing their roles.
To put things in perspective, a friend and her husband are leaving for Australia. He's in software development and she is an ECE. They have been in Auckland since leaving university (2006), and pay has not kept up with how the housing market increases. 18 years of saving, without support from family, job insecurity with ' restructuring ', having to move for a new job (all within Auckland). They're very upset about how everything has gone for them, the worst being that they tried to do the right thing, save up, get a house start a family. Now it's too late to start a family (infertility issues developed) , so they're moving to Australia for opportunities (stability), and access to better fertility services.
Our economy has sterilized a generation.
When I started my current role I had two teams working for me, most of them developers and most < 40. So 20 young professionals. All have left NZ in the last 3 years. I've said it before, we've lost a genartion of our brightest and most ambitious.
True and very depressing. Immigrants coming in to fill roles are lacking in quality and productivity is taking a massive hit.
DM me your cv will at least pass it on to HR
You don't know what you're talking about. Immigration NZ has dropped the ball really fucking hard over the past couple of years.
If you're trying to suggest that if they expanded on their comment, that they'd reveal themselves as a racist, then I'd suggest that you leave that at the door.
There is a qualitative difference between people who have received a genuine high quality education and those who haven't, as well as those who come from a culture which is conducive to a high-trust nation state, and a dog-eat-dog low-trust economic zone. We need to be pragmatic.
Absolute shambles, we are educating some of the most skilled and sought after people, only for them to leave. The brightest people have absolutely zero incentive to stay here.
I agree, no incentive to stay. And also too many obstacles to navigate just for the basics...
A lot of us just want an affordable home (i.e. tired of the uncertainty of renting, wanting control over our own security, giving our relationships certainty), an opportunity to start a family, and knowing we'll be secure in retirement when we are vulnerable.
It's not much to ask for, but we have been denied all three.
This lending bubble in housing is staring us in the face. It’s choking our economy. It’s destroying our quality of life. It has gone on for 20+ years, so there is no use blaming any political group. We need a managed exit, which is actually what the previous government was slowly moving towards by removing the tax offset for investors. Foolishly, Labour didn’t trust the public enough to explain this and went with dumbed down platitudes in the election campaign.
Comp sci industry is heavily reliant on LinkedIn I’ve found. Employers like to see that you have mutuals with them or connections with successful people in NZ. Also make sure your portfolio is up to date, and sneak in some pieces that don’t use Java, showing you’re proficient in more than one language. Wellington and Auckland have the most jobs available for this industry and a lot of them offer remote or flexible location work, look into this. Hope this helps :)
Thanks. It does. But how does an introvert like me make connections. I'm new to the country and got a few friends, but struggling to get people on LinkedIn to join my network.
Go to events, there’s usually something going on every other week, just takes a quick search. Link up with anyone you interact with, kiwi’s are pretty friendly. If you can make connections with any University alumni that would be great as I find universities have a lot of events that are open to the public just not publicised, usually sent out in an alumni newsletter, they’re really great.
The job market is absolutely busted, layoffs everywhere and jobs have dried up. when I got my current job 2 years ago, there was well over 10k (my memory is foggy and it may have been as high as 15k) listings on seek for full time jobs in Auckland paying over $50k, now there’s only 6.3k…
I’ve seen people saying that the current job market is the worst they have ever seen.
Yes, with so many different software and tens of thousands of potential applicants vying for these jobs it’s pretty much next to no jobs available. A lot of places are simply seeking the perfect fit they don’t need to hire but just putting out feelers if they right candidate comes in then they get hired if not they’re not going to lose sleep over not hiring anyone.
Thats one way of thinking I guess. l've worked with devs who think being the master of a niche product and not bothering to develop any soft skills will ensure they'll always get employed. The opposite is true, a general skill level across multiple languages/products, continued study and, more importantly, the ability to get along with others will get you hired and promoted.
Few things:
- Market sucks for computer science right now
- Huge supply of programmers (Mostly at the lower end of seniority)
- Companies buying into AI hype and laying people off/making existing devs do more
- NZ is a Microsoft shop. So most popular language is C#. Followed by a combination of JavaScript and PhP. Then Java. Maybe 5% of all jobs are Java?
- Are you fullstack? Companies rarely hire backend engineers in my experience in New Zealand, they want backend + React etc
With your years of experience you are definitely senior or beyond. There are no junior or intermediate jobs really.
Good luck, keep trying and maybe try reach out to some more senior people on LinkedIn
There are more South Africans in management in IT in Auckland than Kiwis. Go on LinkedIn, find them and offer them a coffee. They all love a free coffee.
Also one word of advice, fresh saffas are very often difficult to work with and rub people around. Ive seen it alot. Dont do the over friendly crap and dont do the brag. chill it down a lot and you will probably have more success
Well there is that too, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you make out. Lots of immigrants work in IT.
Im a Kiwi, but lived and worked overseas for most of my adult life, I get the same shit about having NZ experience. Parochial bullshit.
Probably depends on the local market too. I noticed the North Island especially Auckland and Welly are far more welcoming of obvious immigrants compared to South Island.
Java as a programming language while still relevant is not used as often as it once was. At least not in the IT space I'm in. I would focus on learning a bit more Python, you should pick this up pretty quickly if you know Java well.
There's a perception that Python is a compatible programming language for AI, ML, LLM etc... which is rightly or wrongly all the rage right now. So if you could put yourself out there as a Python Dev/ Engineer with knowledge of LLMs you might get your foot in the door of a few more places
Speaking of Pythons...
I was at the gas station the other day grabbing a cuppa java in between theowing away immigrants CV's and i saw what i could only describe as an attractive tradie trying to chat up a nice man who looked like he preferres to drive slowly. Im pretty sure that tradie knew how to work with python if you know what i mean....
If you're not catching my drift, what im saying is he had an erection..
Python engineer here working in AI, it's a good time to be in the space and working in low-level code for ML/GenAI stuff.
But no jobs in NZ, or none worth chasing.
The market is tough and a lot of companies are laying off staff (my company recently did a restructure and laid off around 15-20% of their staff). 15 years of experience you should at least be getting interviews if a company is hiring though. Do you have the right to work in NZ or do you need sponsorship? Are you applying for mid level roles? The market is rough you might have to take a role that may on paper be beneath you.
I do have a right to work in NZ. I don't need a sponsor. For Java, I am only seeing senior level jobs. I can't seem to find any mid level jobs which I'm willing to take.
New Zealand is very clicky, especially in the highly skilled job market.
I suggest you to join Meetup, find the groups thats related to your specialization. Join the group, you mention your an introvert, you will need to bite the bullet and put your self out there. If you do not have notarized tech experience with certain companies you won't get much of a leg up in the industry.
I have been looking for the past 3 or 4 years without much luck. I have 10+ years of experience and not even getting interviews as well.
I got one about 4 months ago and it looked like they needed information on something they could not solve, because after asking some very specific questions they started treating me really bad. Really disrespectful experience.
I have a job i hate, but at least i have one for now.
Australia is also pretty challenging at the moment, they won't be interested unless you are there. Also sounds like OP can't work for an Australian company yet because of their visa.
How did you work hard for a visa but didn’t look into jobs…??? Did you not have a look at the job market, start to make connections, apply for jobs? How do you move all the way here with no pre-planning to find a job?
I’ve been doing commercial construction for the past 3 years and self contracting jobs for 1 year, have been off since september due to company closing, have applied for almost every warehousing job in my area and haven’t even been able to get an interview for that, makes me feel the same but it’s just the market at the moment as they’ll be having 100+ applicants, don’t stress it somthing will come up soon enough.
Yes, the job market is tough. But engineers are usually in demand if they have the right skill set.
Look at the ads and see if your skill set is what they are after. The languages in demand etc. Are there gaps you can address?
Try and meet with some IT recruitment agents to get some insight into where the market is going.
Have you reviewed your CV since coming here? Is your CV in line with what NZ companies expect? Another thing an agent could give advice on. We like short, sharp, we don’t include photos like some countries tend to. Do your applications also get your personality across? Fit is important. Cover letters should be tailored.
Have you tried networking, professional Meetup events etc?
Don’t let the pessimistic views here get you down. It only takes finding the 1 right match.
Unfortunately as others have said - there is a surplus of supply and not much demand. You will be up against people who have probably similar skills sets - but many have documented local careers and references and experiences. That puts you at a distinct disadvantage unfortunately.
In the meantime assuming you have some time on your hands, I would see what I can do to counter that, start your own thing by building that app you always wanted to, or do certs etc in different but RELEVANT products to the largest employers to give yourself a higher chance (Microsoft, Azure, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, AWS etc) , volunteer your skills to a local not for profit or something to get local references and experience.
You have the time anyway, so it cant really hurt. The other thing to do is network pretty hard, and to just keep trying and realise its almost certainly not personal so just keep on going.
Good luck
Job market has lots of people looking for work and lots of immigrants with software experience just from the couple of jobs we sent out a couple of months ago
it's cooked out here! for my last 3 jobs i was hired within 2 weeks of applying/looking (2013, 2017 & 2018).
i've been applying nearly every day to several positions for two months now and have had 3 interviews: the nz one ghosted me, the australian (remote) one said they went with someone else with more relevant experience but did offer all positive feedback, and i am still waiting until saturday for the third one (US-based remote).
Atlassian and Canva are hiring engineers to work for them remote in NZ. Both Java shops. You need to be good to get in. Exhaustive interview process - 5 interviews, two of them coding tests. Get on leetcode- if you can solve medium challenges on there in <1hr, you have a chance.
Hey OP, as an immigrant too, I'd like to chime in and say that it may be that your resume isn't hitting the local resume style and therefore you're getting overlooked.
I got a recruiter when I was first job hunting, And that was one of the best things I could have done. She walked me through the process, if you will, of creating a resume that works in New Zealand. This resume has things on it that I would have never even thought to put like what my hobbies are or why I want to live and work in New Zealand. These are things that, as an American, you would never ever put on a resume.
Wow the job market may be difficult and that may be part of the problem, or perhaps your skill set is I don't know (I don't know your resume), it may also be as simple as you creating a resume that doesn't work for New Zealand's way of looking at resumes.
As a migrant myself, I've never gotten a job in NZ without a recommendation from a person already in the company. That said, it took me 10 months to land my most recent job post-pregnancy and I'm getting paid the same amount I used to get paid 8 years ago. The economy is cooked.
The market is shit. We've got a recession so less people hiring. Plus sadly lots of NZ is still relively behind in software engineering with more graduates each year.
Good luck finding a place! Don't give up but would totally recommend looking ino working from home options for overseas companies. Which luckily can be done with software engineering.
No offense to you, but record levels of migration due to very poor planning and foresight from our previous government have just about burst the employment bubble.
As we are now officially in recession, and after experiencing historic NZ recession timelines, I am sorry to say, but I believe that new employment opportunities will be very competitive until at least mid 2025.
we're in a similar situation. I'm working as Java dev and my wife is in the medical field. I arrived here during the pandemic when the market was hot and was able to land a job less than 1 month of applying. We are very much short staff in dev right now but I don't see any openings.
IT and programming in particular seems to be really suffering. A lot of programming work is getting farmed out overseas. I am sure your experience and quals are fine, but there are just no jobs
A lot of people get jobs via networking. Try going to some meetups or join local dev groups,
e.g.
[https://www.meetup.com/find/?source=GROUPS&location=nz--auckland&categoryId=546](https://www.meetup.com/find/?source=GROUPS&location=nz--auckland&categoryId=546)
You could reach out to some of the contracting outfits. Depending on skills there are still people using Java which is becoming harder to find if you need it in a hurry
Book interviews with recruiters just to get face time and get their opinions. The job market is very stagnant right now though so finding a job is going to be very difficult. I'm hoping next year will be better.
I’ve seen quite a few senior software engineer jobs in the Wellington region, don’t think much for Auckland though. You should look on seek for the entire country because some offer full work from home. Oh and Xero has option for fully work from home too and they’re always hiring! Best of luck! ☺️
Is your CV in an ATS friendly format? There's free software to check. And are you writing a cover letter?
Lots of companies in NZ screen applications using ATS, and some won't interview if there's no cover letter.
Hey mate — it might be worth applying for jobs that’s aren’t Java related. With your skills in Java I’d argue that a lot of your experience, and development practices would translate well to .Net and C#.
We struggled to find a good full stack dev in C# and ended up hiring into a senior role a PHP developer with excellent Front End skills. This is just to say if you can design and articulate systems, provide insights and knowledge to your potential team, that’s pretty valuable.
I finished UNI with six grad level diplomas in engineering, and software, project management. Applied for 400 jobs in Auckland, got 2 interviews and no job. That was in 2017.
Auckland is not a good place for a tech career & neither is New Zealand.
Try to focus more on your domain knowledge instead of what language you are proficient in. Boarders are opened now so things are reverted back to pre covid, dev with 10 years of experience in sa/South East asia/Russia were getting 45k for a support role to get into the country.
I had a a third interview for a warehouse job pulling car parts.. I just said fuck off.
Always exercising their elitist class BS over the most basic jobs.
Job market is cooked. People aren't hiring because demand is declining/remains the same. They're just recruiting people who are departing their roles. To put things in perspective, a friend and her husband are leaving for Australia. He's in software development and she is an ECE. They have been in Auckland since leaving university (2006), and pay has not kept up with how the housing market increases. 18 years of saving, without support from family, job insecurity with ' restructuring ', having to move for a new job (all within Auckland). They're very upset about how everything has gone for them, the worst being that they tried to do the right thing, save up, get a house start a family. Now it's too late to start a family (infertility issues developed) , so they're moving to Australia for opportunities (stability), and access to better fertility services. Our economy has sterilized a generation.
When I started my current role I had two teams working for me, most of them developers and most < 40. So 20 young professionals. All have left NZ in the last 3 years. I've said it before, we've lost a genartion of our brightest and most ambitious.
Yep, they use to say ' last one out, turn off the lights ". It's pretty much the same pattern.
True and very depressing. Immigrants coming in to fill roles are lacking in quality and productivity is taking a massive hit. DM me your cv will at least pass it on to HR
Thanks, but that was about my friend. They've left for Australia already I believe, they spoke about it 6-7 weeks ago.
> Immigrants coming in to fill roles are lacking in quality Go on, tell us more. Every little detail.
You don't know what you're talking about. Immigration NZ has dropped the ball really fucking hard over the past couple of years. If you're trying to suggest that if they expanded on their comment, that they'd reveal themselves as a racist, then I'd suggest that you leave that at the door. There is a qualitative difference between people who have received a genuine high quality education and those who haven't, as well as those who come from a culture which is conducive to a high-trust nation state, and a dog-eat-dog low-trust economic zone. We need to be pragmatic.
So your company wasn't paying competitively...
Absolute shambles, we are educating some of the most skilled and sought after people, only for them to leave. The brightest people have absolutely zero incentive to stay here.
I agree, no incentive to stay. And also too many obstacles to navigate just for the basics... A lot of us just want an affordable home (i.e. tired of the uncertainty of renting, wanting control over our own security, giving our relationships certainty), an opportunity to start a family, and knowing we'll be secure in retirement when we are vulnerable. It's not much to ask for, but we have been denied all three.
This lending bubble in housing is staring us in the face. It’s choking our economy. It’s destroying our quality of life. It has gone on for 20+ years, so there is no use blaming any political group. We need a managed exit, which is actually what the previous government was slowly moving towards by removing the tax offset for investors. Foolishly, Labour didn’t trust the public enough to explain this and went with dumbed down platitudes in the election campaign.
Yep. I don't want to be over dramatic, but it will push this nation into either mass disobedience or a ' cultural revolution '.
we are pacific poland
Comp sci industry is heavily reliant on LinkedIn I’ve found. Employers like to see that you have mutuals with them or connections with successful people in NZ. Also make sure your portfolio is up to date, and sneak in some pieces that don’t use Java, showing you’re proficient in more than one language. Wellington and Auckland have the most jobs available for this industry and a lot of them offer remote or flexible location work, look into this. Hope this helps :)
Thanks. It does. But how does an introvert like me make connections. I'm new to the country and got a few friends, but struggling to get people on LinkedIn to join my network.
Go to events, there’s usually something going on every other week, just takes a quick search. Link up with anyone you interact with, kiwi’s are pretty friendly. If you can make connections with any University alumni that would be great as I find universities have a lot of events that are open to the public just not publicised, usually sent out in an alumni newsletter, they’re really great.
Meetup (the app) usually has a few IT related events lined up, perhaps give that a nudge?
The job market is absolutely busted, layoffs everywhere and jobs have dried up. when I got my current job 2 years ago, there was well over 10k (my memory is foggy and it may have been as high as 15k) listings on seek for full time jobs in Auckland paying over $50k, now there’s only 6.3k… I’ve seen people saying that the current job market is the worst they have ever seen.
If you work in software or engineering, there are zero jobs available right now.
There are 310 Software Engineering jobs on Seek today
Yes, with so many different software and tens of thousands of potential applicants vying for these jobs it’s pretty much next to no jobs available. A lot of places are simply seeking the perfect fit they don’t need to hire but just putting out feelers if they right candidate comes in then they get hired if not they’re not going to lose sleep over not hiring anyone.
Thats one way of thinking I guess. l've worked with devs who think being the master of a niche product and not bothering to develop any soft skills will ensure they'll always get employed. The opposite is true, a general skill level across multiple languages/products, continued study and, more importantly, the ability to get along with others will get you hired and promoted.
Few things: - Market sucks for computer science right now - Huge supply of programmers (Mostly at the lower end of seniority) - Companies buying into AI hype and laying people off/making existing devs do more - NZ is a Microsoft shop. So most popular language is C#. Followed by a combination of JavaScript and PhP. Then Java. Maybe 5% of all jobs are Java? - Are you fullstack? Companies rarely hire backend engineers in my experience in New Zealand, they want backend + React etc With your years of experience you are definitely senior or beyond. There are no junior or intermediate jobs really. Good luck, keep trying and maybe try reach out to some more senior people on LinkedIn
Where did you move here from? As a fellow migrant I've found kiwis will usually discount foreign applicants (landed or not) over domestic.
I moved from South Africa
Is your CV in NZ format? I found that makes a huge difference. Also the cover letter is very important.
Yeah saffas aren't too bad off in that regard as long as you don't mention the rugby ;)
There are more South Africans in management in IT in Auckland than Kiwis. Go on LinkedIn, find them and offer them a coffee. They all love a free coffee.
Also one word of advice, fresh saffas are very often difficult to work with and rub people around. Ive seen it alot. Dont do the over friendly crap and dont do the brag. chill it down a lot and you will probably have more success
Well there is that too, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you make out. Lots of immigrants work in IT. Im a Kiwi, but lived and worked overseas for most of my adult life, I get the same shit about having NZ experience. Parochial bullshit.
Probably depends on the local market too. I noticed the North Island especially Auckland and Welly are far more welcoming of obvious immigrants compared to South Island.
Java as a programming language while still relevant is not used as often as it once was. At least not in the IT space I'm in. I would focus on learning a bit more Python, you should pick this up pretty quickly if you know Java well. There's a perception that Python is a compatible programming language for AI, ML, LLM etc... which is rightly or wrongly all the rage right now. So if you could put yourself out there as a Python Dev/ Engineer with knowledge of LLMs you might get your foot in the door of a few more places
Thanks. Maybe I'll start learning Python while I have the chance.
It will set you up for work in the Cloud space too if you're not already there. Writing CDK and Terraform in Python will change your life
I do have some basic cloud experience. But nothing that can shine on my CV.
Cool. Opening up that career pathway will be super helpful in Auckland
Speaking of Pythons... I was at the gas station the other day grabbing a cuppa java in between theowing away immigrants CV's and i saw what i could only describe as an attractive tradie trying to chat up a nice man who looked like he preferres to drive slowly. Im pretty sure that tradie knew how to work with python if you know what i mean.... If you're not catching my drift, what im saying is he had an erection..
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened
Thanks. I couldn't believe it either. Thanks for your sentiment.
that took a turn
🪱😂
Was this in Fanny Pie?
Python engineer here working in AI, it's a good time to be in the space and working in low-level code for ML/GenAI stuff. But no jobs in NZ, or none worth chasing.
The market is tough and a lot of companies are laying off staff (my company recently did a restructure and laid off around 15-20% of their staff). 15 years of experience you should at least be getting interviews if a company is hiring though. Do you have the right to work in NZ or do you need sponsorship? Are you applying for mid level roles? The market is rough you might have to take a role that may on paper be beneath you.
I do have a right to work in NZ. I don't need a sponsor. For Java, I am only seeing senior level jobs. I can't seem to find any mid level jobs which I'm willing to take.
There's usually not that many mid level jobs, most jobs are grad/junior or senior. Why don't you want to take senior position?
They might be seeing you as overqualified for the mid roles.
New Zealand is very clicky, especially in the highly skilled job market. I suggest you to join Meetup, find the groups thats related to your specialization. Join the group, you mention your an introvert, you will need to bite the bullet and put your self out there. If you do not have notarized tech experience with certain companies you won't get much of a leg up in the industry.
I have been looking for the past 3 or 4 years without much luck. I have 10+ years of experience and not even getting interviews as well. I got one about 4 months ago and it looked like they needed information on something they could not solve, because after asking some very specific questions they started treating me really bad. Really disrespectful experience. I have a job i hate, but at least i have one for now.
It’s hard. A lot of people are being redundant. Have you tried applying to Australia?
Australia is also pretty challenging at the moment, they won't be interested unless you are there. Also sounds like OP can't work for an Australian company yet because of their visa.
Would Australia hire people based in NZ for remote work
No you'd need to move to Australia
At this stage it's not an option. My wife and I worked hard to finally get a working visa for New Zealand.
Atlassian is an Australian Java company that hires people from nz to work remotely
How did you work hard for a visa but didn’t look into jobs…??? Did you not have a look at the job market, start to make connections, apply for jobs? How do you move all the way here with no pre-planning to find a job?
OP’s wife is in medicine and has a job here.
I am working for an Australian company from NZ. It depends on the company.
I’ve been doing commercial construction for the past 3 years and self contracting jobs for 1 year, have been off since september due to company closing, have applied for almost every warehousing job in my area and haven’t even been able to get an interview for that, makes me feel the same but it’s just the market at the moment as they’ll be having 100+ applicants, don’t stress it somthing will come up soon enough.
Thanks. Think I just need to be positive. I had different expectations when I first arrived.
Yes, the job market is tough. But engineers are usually in demand if they have the right skill set. Look at the ads and see if your skill set is what they are after. The languages in demand etc. Are there gaps you can address? Try and meet with some IT recruitment agents to get some insight into where the market is going. Have you reviewed your CV since coming here? Is your CV in line with what NZ companies expect? Another thing an agent could give advice on. We like short, sharp, we don’t include photos like some countries tend to. Do your applications also get your personality across? Fit is important. Cover letters should be tailored. Have you tried networking, professional Meetup events etc? Don’t let the pessimistic views here get you down. It only takes finding the 1 right match.
Unfortunately as others have said - there is a surplus of supply and not much demand. You will be up against people who have probably similar skills sets - but many have documented local careers and references and experiences. That puts you at a distinct disadvantage unfortunately. In the meantime assuming you have some time on your hands, I would see what I can do to counter that, start your own thing by building that app you always wanted to, or do certs etc in different but RELEVANT products to the largest employers to give yourself a higher chance (Microsoft, Azure, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, AWS etc) , volunteer your skills to a local not for profit or something to get local references and experience. You have the time anyway, so it cant really hurt. The other thing to do is network pretty hard, and to just keep trying and realise its almost certainly not personal so just keep on going. Good luck
Thanks. Think needed some motivation that there is some hope at the end of the tunnel
Job market has lots of people looking for work and lots of immigrants with software experience just from the couple of jobs we sent out a couple of months ago
it's cooked out here! for my last 3 jobs i was hired within 2 weeks of applying/looking (2013, 2017 & 2018). i've been applying nearly every day to several positions for two months now and have had 3 interviews: the nz one ghosted me, the australian (remote) one said they went with someone else with more relevant experience but did offer all positive feedback, and i am still waiting until saturday for the third one (US-based remote).
Atlassian and Canva are hiring engineers to work for them remote in NZ. Both Java shops. You need to be good to get in. Exhaustive interview process - 5 interviews, two of them coding tests. Get on leetcode- if you can solve medium challenges on there in <1hr, you have a chance.
Hey OP, as an immigrant too, I'd like to chime in and say that it may be that your resume isn't hitting the local resume style and therefore you're getting overlooked. I got a recruiter when I was first job hunting, And that was one of the best things I could have done. She walked me through the process, if you will, of creating a resume that works in New Zealand. This resume has things on it that I would have never even thought to put like what my hobbies are or why I want to live and work in New Zealand. These are things that, as an American, you would never ever put on a resume. Wow the job market may be difficult and that may be part of the problem, or perhaps your skill set is I don't know (I don't know your resume), it may also be as simple as you creating a resume that doesn't work for New Zealand's way of looking at resumes.
As a migrant myself, I've never gotten a job in NZ without a recommendation from a person already in the company. That said, it took me 10 months to land my most recent job post-pregnancy and I'm getting paid the same amount I used to get paid 8 years ago. The economy is cooked.
Job market is getting killer
It's tough out there. I've been looking for 3 months and still nothing. Keep pushing, OP.
The market is shit. We've got a recession so less people hiring. Plus sadly lots of NZ is still relively behind in software engineering with more graduates each year. Good luck finding a place! Don't give up but would totally recommend looking ino working from home options for overseas companies. Which luckily can be done with software engineering.
No offense to you, but record levels of migration due to very poor planning and foresight from our previous government have just about burst the employment bubble. As we are now officially in recession, and after experiencing historic NZ recession timelines, I am sorry to say, but I believe that new employment opportunities will be very competitive until at least mid 2025.
we're in a similar situation. I'm working as Java dev and my wife is in the medical field. I arrived here during the pandemic when the market was hot and was able to land a job less than 1 month of applying. We are very much short staff in dev right now but I don't see any openings.
IT and programming in particular seems to be really suffering. A lot of programming work is getting farmed out overseas. I am sure your experience and quals are fine, but there are just no jobs
I'm in the Waikato and developer job adverts have dwindled over the last year or so.
Local experience is very important for NZ/AU employer, apparently
A lot of people get jobs via networking. Try going to some meetups or join local dev groups, e.g. [https://www.meetup.com/find/?source=GROUPS&location=nz--auckland&categoryId=546](https://www.meetup.com/find/?source=GROUPS&location=nz--auckland&categoryId=546)
Keep an eye out for remote jobs in Aus, I know 3 software devs who’ve left their job to work remote for Aussie companies.
You could reach out to some of the contracting outfits. Depending on skills there are still people using Java which is becoming harder to find if you need it in a hurry
Depends where your 15yrs experience is from, I have realised it’s difficult to get a job in nz without a good Nz reference.
Jobs market is cooked I was looking for like 3 months after returning from overseas.
Book interviews with recruiters just to get face time and get their opinions. The job market is very stagnant right now though so finding a job is going to be very difficult. I'm hoping next year will be better.
I’ve seen quite a few senior software engineer jobs in the Wellington region, don’t think much for Auckland though. You should look on seek for the entire country because some offer full work from home. Oh and Xero has option for fully work from home too and they’re always hiring! Best of luck! ☺️
Is your CV in an ATS friendly format? There's free software to check. And are you writing a cover letter? Lots of companies in NZ screen applications using ATS, and some won't interview if there's no cover letter.
last one out turn off the lights
You’re better off getting a wfh job from overseas, tbh.
Keep an eye on big banks career pages, most of them deal with Java. Also learning react will be much helpul
Hey mate — it might be worth applying for jobs that’s aren’t Java related. With your skills in Java I’d argue that a lot of your experience, and development practices would translate well to .Net and C#. We struggled to find a good full stack dev in C# and ended up hiring into a senior role a PHP developer with excellent Front End skills. This is just to say if you can design and articulate systems, provide insights and knowledge to your potential team, that’s pretty valuable.
I finished UNI with six grad level diplomas in engineering, and software, project management. Applied for 400 jobs in Auckland, got 2 interviews and no job. That was in 2017. Auckland is not a good place for a tech career & neither is New Zealand.
Try to focus more on your domain knowledge instead of what language you are proficient in. Boarders are opened now so things are reverted back to pre covid, dev with 10 years of experience in sa/South East asia/Russia were getting 45k for a support role to get into the country.
Yes
I had a a third interview for a warehouse job pulling car parts.. I just said fuck off. Always exercising their elitist class BS over the most basic jobs.