Land of Migrants

Kiwi Career Success Seminar
at Auckland Chamber of Commerce

Helen, the lady wearing a red top, kept me busy for the past three days. She facilitated the KCS seminar which covered things like the Kiwi work environment, tailoring your CV and cover letter and basically just equipping us migrants with all the right tools and linking us to their members. Did you know that 80% of jobs in NZ are not advertised? That most of the businesses here are SMEs. And that networking is essential? And it's often important to have NZ work experience. With this goes volunteer work. Volunteering seems to be well advertised to migrants as the best way to have their first NZ work experience.

It's great that there are so many programs here that aims to help migrants get settled. Maybe it's coz NZ is the 2nd highest migrant-welcoming country in the world. They even got all these refugees.

During the seminar, we found out that there were a handful of us who came in via Silver Fern Visa. We all got some strict personal deadlines on job seeking. There were the wives of principal applicants who are now looking into joining the workforce.

It's also a good experience just to be around people with different cultural backgrounds. Each one shared their challenges during job hunting and the cultural differences in the recruiting/ job application scene. After our mock interview session on day 3, everyone wished me well for my two interviews today. And that alone is already a big pat on the back for me for they've certainly given me that moral boost.