I made a similar move a couple of years ago. The way I did it was to come over on a working holiday visa (only available to under 30s), then apply for some jobs when I arrived, the company I accepted an offer from sponsored me for a business visa, and then I applied (and was accepted) for residency last year.
The visa situation is not really a Catch-22. There's not much to stop you applying for a residents visa without a job. Whether or not you'd have success without a job offer is a different matter. The residency rules have changed considerably in the last year (certainly in what was the old General Skills category, not sure about the others). Previously you had to obtain a certain number of points, and once obtained, you pretty much got your residency. Now you have to obtain a certain number of points to get into a pool of eligible people, and then it's more a by-invitation process after that - the most eligible people will be invited to apply for residency. We had a QA engineer from the UK moved over here about 6 months ago, and started through the process. At the time, one needed about 100 points to get into the pool, she had 140 points, and she said there were lots of people there with 180+ points and she concluded that she was never going to obtain enough points to compete and moved back to the UK about a month ago. I didn't find a need for the services of an immigration agent, but with the higher uncertainty now, YMMV. I also believe a lot of overseas Kiwis have returned home over the last couple of years, so you have to understand that New Zealand prefers to offer jobs to Kiwis, hence the requirement on every job posting that you must already be a resident or applying for a visa. If you haven't checked it out already, the Immigration Department website is very useful: www.immigration.govt.nz You'll probably find differences in salaries between the different cities, so you'd need to decide on where you aim to live before asking that question. I'd have a rough stab at 45-55K for junior developer, 55-75K for senior developer, 75K+ for analyst etc. As Kyley suggests, you may find it useful to investigate bringing your business over - the old residency category for something like this was something like "Entrepreneurs" or something, not sure now. More than happy to answer any other questions you may have, so email me off-list if you like. Cheers, Conor -----Original Message----- From: Derek Davidson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Found this list and hoped someone might be able to help. I'm currently based in the UK but am collecting information on living and working in NZ. I am a senior IT executive and have looked at both employment visa's and business visas (I've just started my software business - Enterprise Blue - URL in my sig). I'm interested in knowing the state of the IT employment market. How difficult might it be to get a job in NZ in IT? What are the sort of salaries people can earn? I've taken a look at a couple of job boards but they seem very reticent to mention salaries and they also seem to state that the applicant must either be a NZ resident or already have a visa to work there - which seems a little Catch-22 to me unless I misunderstand? I have a ton of other questions, but the above is more than enough to get started with :) I'd be grateful for any and all responses. Thanks -- Derek Davidson http://www.enterpriseblue.com For the world's EASIEST Help Desk Software Now Verified for Windows Server 2003 _______________________________________________ Offtopic mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/offtopic _______________________________________________ Offtopic mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ns3.123.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/offtopic
