Migrant Tales – British Sparky Can’t Find Work (updated)

/ November 14, 2013

Welcome to our series of Migrant Tales, first hand account of the migrant experience of New Zealand taken from places around the net.

Today’s tale was published in the last 24 hours on an emigration forum.

Despite all the hype about the improving job market in New Zealand the truth is that it’s still damned hard to find work, and what work there is is likely to be given to the locals (aka “jobs for Kiwis”).

You may find this interesting if you’ve heard about the supposedly good job prospects in New Zealand, reading it could save you from making a very costly mistake. If you’re already in his situation it may help to know you’re not alone.

Here’s the Sparky’s tale.

HELP Please – British Sparky in Auckland – not able to find ANY type of work!

Hi I’m a 30yo UK qualified and registered Sparky with nearly 15 years of industry experience. I moved here on a Working Holiday Visa with my Kiwi partner and have been in Auckland, NZ for nearly 6 months now and have had very bad experience in finding work – Electrical related or otherwise! I did find work initially with a trades company and was signed till Dec. for $20p/h, 12 hour shifts. I was doing all their menial work and having a strong work ethic I zipped through the hard bits quickly, thinking that I can move on to the more exciting stuff. But unfortunately, this was about the time the 90 days kicked in and without any valid reason I was let go. Later I found that the employer does this on a regular basis to other tradesmen. Since then I have been looking for work. I have applied for customer services and retail work in Bunnings, Mitre10 and other trades stores and also apprenticeship jobs. I get called in for an interview but theri HR department are so lazy that they don’t even bother calling back or sending a letter to advise that the outcome of my application. I am a well articulated and presentable individual and yet it seems that I can’t even get retail jobs! It has been a struggle here for me and being at home without a job for the first time ever, and it is really a painful experience. I have never worked so hard for so little in return. Would really appreciate to hear from any other Sparkies or anyone in general about their experience and life in NZ. Thanks W

This is a response his post attracted

I’ve been looking for jobs since January which is when my most recent job ended. I’ve applied for dozens of jobs and had several interviews but I’ve yet to be offered a job. There’s huge competition for jobs in the provinces on NZ. Albeit we only came here for my husband’s job in June 2011 as we’d bailed out of Christchurch after a near disastrous start to our immigration three months earlier. We tried to find work in Auckland as we stayed there for three weeks on arrival in Feb 2011. That went nowhere fast and we continued on the way to Christchurch as our furniture was already there. Anyway, enough said. I applied on line for a seasonal Christmas/back to school job at Warehouse Stationery a couple of weeks ago. I filled in several pages of their online form answering the usual questions and some personality quiz type questions. On the last page of it there was written in red, ‘we are only recruiting to the Auckland stores’. Great. There’s a job advertised locally for fruit pickers at a nearby farm but it’s described as, ‘contract work’ i.e. the more you pick the more you earn. I decided to put my foot down and develop some self respect i.e. stop grovelling around for unsuitable jobs. I also applied to be a mystery shopper but that went nowhere fast i.e. I filled in the form and again, all I’ve had is the long silence. I chased up what was happening with the vacancy just to get the same automated e-mail that I got by way of reply when I applied in the first place. I e-mailed the sender of the e-mail direct, just to be asked to fill in the form again. I’ve registered at several employment agencies and just got the long silence. I’ve applied for jobs from various internet sites such as TradeMe etc all to no avail. As I’ve already mentioned, on the rare occasion I get interviewed I inevitably get turned down. There were a couple of admin jobs here in Wanganui that I applied for in the last couple of weeks. I got turned down without interview for both of them. I’m continuing to look for work but I’m so disheartened by all the turn downs that I’m coming to the conclusion that it just wasn’t to be.

Got a similar story to tell? we’d like to hear from you.

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14 thoughts on “Migrant Tales – British Sparky Can’t Find Work (updated)”

  2. Hi. We are an English family living in New Plymouth. I am not sure if this helps but we have large signs all over the town saying qualified electricians needed. We wish you luck with your search.

  3. We had a high end house built by a well known and reputable New Zealand building franchise. The standard of the electrical work within it was appalling, and potentially dangerous. From external light fittings left dangling from the soffits to incorrectly wired circuits that blew as soon as the switch was actioned, to omitting to fit the control panel for the alarm system. God knows how it ever passed its final sign off and what unseen problems lurked.

    During the construction phase I arrived at the house unannounced and found two of the teenage electricians (and I use the term lightly) lounging about on the kitchen worktops, obviously stoned out of their brains. A brief conversation with them revealed their inability to string a simple sentence together, how on earth were they ever to wire up my home? A severe lack of mental acuity and a fondness for cannabis seems to be the only prerequisites for being a sparky in New Zealand. Needless to say I no longer live in that backward country and have moved to somewhere that has standards and people who are competent enough to deliver them.

    • What, you managed to find a house whose amateur and totally unqualified owners hadn’t done the wiring themselves? We had some Kiwi friends whose husband was a construction contractor and their lighting system was always blowing, too. We lived in a rental house with kitchen appliances that kept blowing, and they got 4 contractors in there before one of them finally got it to work – by kicking it really hard. I am not sh*****g you! The cannabis everywhere – ugh. Awful. It’s such a relief not to live there anymore, we totally agree with you.

  4. It’s never taken me longer than 2 weeks from starting to look to finding a job. Not my life before NZ, and not for the 4 jobs I’ve had in NZ. But back to the original poster’s issues, Kiwis prefer to work for themselves.

    You get the guys who think they know it all because they’be been “CEO” for 20 years, and have had 4 employees under them (all family) for a business of importing something from China and reselling it on trademe out of their garage.

    But yeah, my best experience with sparkies was getting a self-employed one. So don’t “get a job” look on the listing sites for what sparkies work for, and list yourself on the similar sites. Get jobs directly.

    Stop trying to find a job, and just start working.

    The reason so many people have trouble after changing countries is trying to blame the country for them not doing things the way they’d prefer. If you don’t do things the local way, then it won’t work out for you. That’s why Kiwi’s prefer Kiwis. They don’t have to explain basics like this.

    Also, the jobs I looked at require NZ qualifications. If you haven’t gotten NZQA to recognize your qualifications, that could be one of your stumbling blocks.

  5. I am sorry to hear about your troubles. Conventional wisdom might suggest go to Christchurch, but I can assure you that Fletchers and the “preferred contractors” have established a cartel that is impenetrable to outsiders. Incidentally, many non-electricians have been doing electrical work in Christchurch, often of a substandard quality.

    The sad thing is that the intuitive things (hustle and apply for jobs, express a willingness to start at the bottom and work your way up, or be willing to try something new) generally earns the antipathy of the Kiwis. They will offer no help and secretly feel gleeful. I have lived in the United States, Venezuela, South Africa, UK, Spain, Switzerland, and New Zealand and I have never quite encountered a nationality of people that take so much delight in the failures of others, especially if they perceive the other person has more ambition, intelligence, beauty, money, or is in any other way better than they are. The Kiwis rather than the Germans should have been the ones to coin the word schadenfruede.

    My suggestion is to cut your losses now and leave. If returning to Europe is not an option, you can apply to go to Australia through your Kiwi partner. The partners of Kiwis in Australia can obtain a visa allowing them to work for five years. Use that to get into Australia and get permanent residence.

    Just for encouragement, my Swiss/Kiwi wife moved to Switzerland with me a few weeks ago. She found a job paying triple what she earned in New Zealand (over NZ $90k per annum plus bonus) within a week of starting her job search despite only knowing English. I hope you and I can take comfort knowing that an escape from New Zealand is possible. Now it is back to the job search for me!

    • I am sorry to hear about your troubles. Conventional wisdom might suggest go to Christchurch, but I can assure you that Fletchers and the “preferred contractors” have established a cartel that is impenetrable to outsiders. Incidentally, many non-electricians have been doing electrical work in Christchurch, often of a substandard quality.
      Yeah, and I am sure the insurance companies will not pay out on this.
      Also, I am VERY sure many of the unqualified will find a way to protest or conduct sabotage against measures to stop their “right to earn a living(by cheating other people)”.

      The sad thing is that the intuitive things (hustle and apply for jobs, express a willingness to start at the bottom and work your way up, or be willing to try something new) generally earns the antipathy of the Kiwis. They will offer no help and secretly feel gleeful. I have lived in the United States, Venezuela, South Africa, UK, Spain, Switzerland, and New Zealand and I have never quite encountered a nationality of people that take so much delight in the failures of others, especially if they perceive the other person has more ambition, intelligence, beauty, money, or is in any other way better than they are. The Kiwis rather than the Germans should have been the ones to coin the word schadenfruede.
      Yup. What I experienced looking for a job outside the university was “you should work for free, your qualifications are not recognised(began and completed my degree in a New Zealand UNIVERSITY NOT POLYTECHNIC”, “you don’t speak proper English(Cambridge qualification)”, “Asians are not suited for NZ culture(you mean the bit about getting blind drunk, incoherent or unable to state a point, and “I can do everything without qualifications”?)”.

      Of course, many immigrants who have managed to “get along” in NZ, will put the boot in on other people asking to be treated fairly.

      • The most common excuse that I encountered in New Zealand was that I lacked “local knowledge.” For example, I briefly worked for an entity that promoted tourism into New Zealand that marketed its activities to an international audience. My fluency in Spanish, strong knowledge of German, and previous ownership of a successful tour company that undertook marketing activities were irrelevant to this monolingual and semi-literate hillbilly that I had the misfortune to work with. She made it clear that she preferred to work with a local hillbilly that had acquired the requisite “local knowledge”, which is to say the hillbilly knew the town gossip.

        I mentioned to my manager that the local businesses needed to price their activities more competitively (i.e. lower prices to what real tourists were able and willing to pay based on what they received). She rejected my suggestion saying that the town businesses had made a decision not to undercut each other. I said that was fine, but the town’s tourism industry would continue to atrophy because travellers had other choices both within New Zealand and overseas.

        I also noticed that the people in the town viewed tourists as little more than walking wallets. They had no interest in offering the tourists a quality experience that might entice them to return or tell their friends. Rather, the focus was on getting as much money out of the tourists. They were too stupid to realise that the town would prosper more if they priced things reasonably. The short-term thinking was appalling. For instance, some people in the town openly snubbed backpackers. Again, if they treated them courteously, the backpackers will have a good experience and return in twenty years when they have money to afford the high-end products (assuming that what the Kiwis call high actually becomes high-end). Many of the locals also treated the Chinese tourists discourteously because they are too thick to understand that tourism from China is the future of tourism to New Zealand. Incidentally, the local Chinese restaurant in the town was full because they priced their food reasonably to the chagrin of the local Kiwis and their third-rate food. Everyone knows that Chinese food is not filet mignon, but you pay a low price and both the customer and the restaurant are happy because they each gain from the exchange.

        For the sake of comparison, a meal for two in this New Zealand touristy town (not Queenstown) cost the same as what I spent in Zurich taking my wife out to celebrate her new job. Zurich is supposed to be the world’s most expensive city. The difference was that the waitress and restaurant owners in Zurich were friendly and actually knew how to serve people and make them feel welcome. The quality of the food in Zurich was much better. Moreover, the cutlery was nicer, as were the tables, the floors were made of tile, and the building had central heating, whereas it is impossible to find the low-end New Zealand facilities in Switzerland. The middle of the road restaurant in Zurich was better than a “high-end” restaurant in New Zealand and the price in Zurich was about the same as what I would have paid in that backwater New Zealand town for an inferior meal. Across the border in Germany, the restaurants are half what the price is in New Zealand, but to the same standard as a Zurich restaurant. Likewise, I paid 30% less for budget accommodation in Frankfurt than the starting price of a motel in that town, but the quality of the hotel in Germany was much better with central heating, tiled bathrooms, more television choices, and free breakfast for two.

        BTW, you can read more about the unsafe electrical wiring here http://eqctruths.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/warning-unsafe-electrical-wiring/ and view the relevant documents. No wonder why this poor Brit cannot find a job in New Zealand.

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