Jobs & Money Detail
Auckland IT job opportunities
Maike van der Heide heads to Auckland to find out about the employment opportunities presently on offer in New Zealand’s biggest city
There are many upsides to basing yourself in New Zealand's biggest city. It has the big-city cafés, restaurants and entertainment. It has plenty of beaches and lots of nice green spots. But, perhaps most importantly, Auckland also has lots employment opportunities for new migrants. A quick glance at the popular Kiwi employment website Seek shows that most advertised jobs in the city are currently in the IT and telecommunications sector. This is followed by accounting, administration, and sales and marketing, with more than 1,200 job advertisements in each of these occupations posted on the website.
Most of the jobs being advertised were located in Auckland's Central Business District, namely 6,031, followed by 2,282 in South Auckland, 1,221 on and around the North Shore and just 360 in West Auckland. But in spite of boasting a population of 1.33 million – almost a third of the country's entire population – the city is nevertheless facing a skills shortage. According to Career Services, employment in Auckland is based around its large population and business services. "Hence, recreation, social and business services are major employer sectors and are likely to be the growth areas in terms of employment." The website states that Auckland has a large manufacturing base, "but this is fairly mature and unlikely to grow significantly in the future." Auckland is the gateway to the country for most international tourists and, of course, migrants – a fact which encourages tourism-related industries. The international airport and seaport also account for most imports into NZ and a large proportion of exports. "As such the wholesale and distribution sectors are fairly significant," the website says.
So, with so many jobs available, is it easy for Brits to find work in Auckland? Icon Recruitment account manager Tracy Bumstead only arrived from the UK eight months ago, but she is already helping other migrants find jobs in the city, mainly in the IT industry. When she got to Auckland, Tracy went to three different companies looking for work and was in for a surprise when all three job offers landed on her table. "There really is a skills shortage in the IT industry here," Tracy says. Most IT jobs are found in the central city and parts of the North Shore, she says. Tracy lives on the Shore but works in the city and despite the notorious harbour bridge bottlenecks she says this doesn't necessarily mean a lengthy commute for workers each day. "It only takes me about 25 minutes to get to work," she says.
Though she can't say if there are more Brits than ever before looking for recruitment services at this present moment in time – "I do see Brits all the time, though" – Tracy does believe that the job market, particularly in the IT sector, is growing in Auckland. "It's a big city, so people are going to come and look here for jobs. There's obviously going to be more around here than there are in, say, Paihia in the Bay of Islands, or some place like that." Although Wellington also has a large IT industry, Auckland's is a lot bigger, Tracy says, making it an even more attractive place for Brits in this industry to start their job search. She advices anyone looking to enter the job market – in no matter what occupation – to research via the internet and then join up to at least four recruitment agencies.
British migrant John Martin also believes that there are plenty of jobs available for new migrants in Auckland, but like anything, he says, it all depends on what your skills are.
Like Tracy, John also works in the IT industry, a sector which is seemingly always screaming out for more employees in Auckland. So much so, in fact, that John's visa came through in just seven days. John decided to move to New Zealand after he was made redundant in the UK. A planned holiday Down Under suddenly became "the big step" instead. Arriving in the city back in December 2001, John and his wife meandered around Auckland for a while before settling into a central city flat. When he eventually became bored with not working, John signed up with a recruitment agency and within two weeks they had placed plenty of opportunities before him. Today, John works at IBM as a pre-sales technical consultant in the security and privacy portion as part of the global technology services group.
Auckland's IT industry, he says, is suffering from a severe skills shortage. While much of the industry is centred in Auckland's CBD area, John says that IT jobs in areas such as city and district councils and educational institutions can be found in the outlying cities such as Manakau, Waitakere and the North Shore. He also states that working in the IT industry, and indeed other industries, is totally different from working in the same sector in the UK. As a result employers like to see who they are hiring face-to-face because there is no probation period. In addition, says John, most companies in New Zealand, even in Auckland, are quite small – "or, as I refer to them, every man and his dog companies. "Even British professionals working for Telecom, New Zealand's national telecommunications company, find it a sea-change from working for larger global organisations such as TelstraClear," he adds.
John has found working in the city centre suits his lifestyle perfectly, as he lives on scenic Waiheke Island where his wife is pursuing her art. When not working at home, John is a 35-minute ferry ride from the downtown ferry terminal, followed by a ten-minute walk to work. With around 70 per cent of all migrants choosing to settle in Auckland, and many of them on the job hunt, Auckland's Chamber of Commerce recently set up a website specifically aimed at helping them with their mission. On New Kiwis, employers can post job vacancies and download curriculum vitaes. Someone checks all the migrant CVs that are posted, to ensure they contain sufficient detail to enable an employer to make the decision to approach them. The Auckland Chamber of Commerce also runs the Kiwi Career Success (KCS) Programme to provide a similar service. Every two weeks in Auckland, and quarterly in Manukau, around 15 skilled migrants take part in a three-day workshop to polish their job hunting skills.
So if you're one of the many migrants looking to settle in NZ's biggest city, you should feel fairly confident about your chances of finding a job there – especially, it seems, if you happen to work in the IT industry.
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