Finding a job in New Zealand

In New Zealand, a lot of emphasis is placed on what you CAN DO. So there’s no need to insist on your education and knowledge. Here, your CV should reflect your skills and know-how. The form of your CV is essential, since it must show your integration into the New Zealand working world you’re trying to join. You’ll need to write a CV in English, of course, but also offer your future employers an Anglo-Saxon-style CV.

Possible CV forms

You can present your CV in two different ways.

The skill-focused CV

This type of CV highlights what you know how to do, without putting too much emphasis on work experience as such. With this CV, you show what you know how to do, your achievements, but without specifically mentioning periods of employment. It’s a way of “disguising” your lack of experience in a particular field. You can, of course, show your experience (with the corresponding periods) at the bottom of your CV.

This type of CV is particularly useful for highlighting experience that’s a little dated, but which matches the qualifications of the job you’re applying for. If, for example, you worked in sales during your studies and now want to showcase this, this type of CV is for you.

However, not emphasizing the length of your experience can have a disadvantage, especially when employers specifically ask for a certain number of months or years of experience, which is very common in local job offers (some employers even ask for several years of experience exclusively in New Zealand).

You can find a template for this type of CV on
CareersNZ.

The experience-focused CV

The chronological CV is the most common form of CV. It gives an employer a quick overview of your career.

The CV shows a chronology of your experience (starting with the most recent). It’s not necessary to list all your experiences (especially those that won’t be useful in your job search), but the chronological CV will serve above all to highlight a progression in your career, a consistency in your jobs. The chronological CV is therefore the best CV to use if you’re looking for a job in your field.

If, on the other hand, you’ve had a more varied career, with a lot of shifts and odd jobs, it may not be the best choice.

In this CV, the skills section should be less important, since skills are self-evident in your career path.

You can find a template for this type of CV on CareersNZ.

CV presentation

An employer spends very little time analyzing a CV. In just a few seconds, they need to be able to identify your profile and skills. Your CV must therefore be as clear as possible, and be relevant to the position for which you are applying. It’s best to adapt your CV to each job you’re interested in. Your CV for a small job and your CV for a job in your field should not be identical. They don’t have to show the same thing.

How long should your CV be?

If you’re looking for a job in your field of expertise, related to your education and training, you might consider a 2-3 page CV with fairly developed sections, your employment history or your skills. If you’re looking for a small job, prefer shorter CVs, with fewer details, which will enable employers – who don’t want to waste time when they’re sifting through the dozens of CVs they receive almost daily – to get to know you quickly. One or two pages, no more.

What should you include in your CV?

Contact details

Make sure your contact details are correct. It may seem trivial to mention, but you’ve just bought a new mobile phone (with a new number) and you may have several different e-mail addresses. It’s easy to make a mistake.
Also prefer “serious” e-mails (no [email protected]) ending in .com or .co.nz.
For those looking for a job in their field, if you have a profile on LinkedIn, you can also add the link (remember to update your profile!).
You don’t have to mention your age or nationality. You can include that you have a one-year work permit, for example.

New Zealand CVs do not include a photo, except in certain cases. If the job advertisement for which you are applying stipulates that you must be well presented or refers to expected physical qualities, you may include a photo.

A personal summary

In 2-3 sentences, briefly explain what you have done (your work experience, for example) and what you plan to do from now on. This statement should be as consistent as possible with the job you are looking for and the qualifications the employer is looking for. You should adapt this presentation to the type of job you are applying for.

Qualifications and skills

List your main skills. This could be an area of activity in which you excel and/or skills that your employer is looking for. Then, under each of these skills, explain how it has translated into your work or studies.

Example: an employer is looking for someone with good organisational skills.

Here, the aim is to highlight a particular quality by quantifying the results.

Depending on the format of your CV, your skills may be more or less detailed:

• If your CV is skilled-focused, then the skill section needs to be well developed.
• If your CV is work-focused, then the skill section should be less detailed.

You can also highlight qualities you have acquired outside your job or training. If you’ve done some voluntary work, you’ll no doubt have acquired certain skills that could be useful to an employer. In New Zealand, they call these “transferable skills”. These are qualities acquired outside a professional context that you would not have been able to include elsewhere on your CV.

Example: you’re applying for a job where you could be responsible for a small team. You may not have any professional experience that could demonstrate leadership skills. But because you were captain of a football team for 2 years, for example, you could use this experience (in your hobbies) to demonstrate this skill, which is in demand for management jobs.

Your employment history

In this section, you should list your jobs, starting with the most recent. Start with the date, then the name of the job, the company and the location of your job (city and country). Note that indicating the country is useful because New Zealanders probably won’t know your hometown. Similarly, if one of your previous companies is made up of an acronym, write its full name. Don’t hesitate to use a few words to describe the type of company it is. Your CV will be much clearer.

Studies

You must show your level of education acquired outside New Zealand by trying to make your employer understand what such a diploma would correspond to in New Zealand. Without official recognition of your diploma, you cannot be sure that your home diploma corresponds to a diploma in New Zealand. However, you can indicate what your diploma acquired outside New Zealand might look like.

Note that your diploma has little value in New Zealand. Even if you think your school is internationally recognised (because it says so on its brochures), this is not the case for most employers in New Zealand, who live on the other side of the world. So don’t rely on the title of your degree or your school, but rather on what you learnt during your studies.

For your studies, you can indicate the title of your degree in your home country, then indicate the number of years of study and “Equivalent to a [the name of your equivalent degree in New Zealand]” to be as clear as possible.

If you are applying for a job directly related to your field of study, you can list the main subjects you have studied, the dissertations you have written (with the title of the dissertation translated into English) or the projects you have carried out during your studies. These will show more concretely what you have studied. Otherwise, it is not necessary to list them.

If you’re looking for a small job, stick to the bare minimum.

Exemples :

If you finished top of your class or won awards during your studies, you can add them in a sub-section entitled “achievements”.

If you have taken any training courses (particularly in IT) that may be useful in the job you are applying for, you can also include them.

If you have done work-linked training, you can state in your employment history that you were on an apprenticeship. Even if this does not necessarily correspond to work-linked training, this expression will be more comprehensible to a potential employer.

Should you include hobbies and interests?

This part doesn’t have to be very long. Only add elements in this section if they can be truly useful in your job search, if they can reveal particular skills or personality traits that could be relevant in the eyes of your employer. Avoid hobbies such as reading, cinema or cooking (unless you are applying for a job in the kitchen of course). Your hobbies and interests can show your appetite for team spirit or your organizational skills, for example.

Note that more than 95% of businesses in New Zealand have fewer than 10 employees. The human aspect of your application and talking about your soft skills can be decisive.

Referees

They are very important in New Zealand. It does not have to be a former employer (although having at least one is ideal). It can also be a former superior, colleague, teacher, coach… These people must be able to communicate in English. You will need to indicate their last name, first name, job, the relationship you have with them and useful information to contact them (telephone and email address). If the person is abroad, you can indicate the country (so that your potential employer knows what time they can contact them).

Make sure you notify this person beforehand, so they know what to answer and know the jobs you are applying for. If you can obtain letters of recommendation in English from your former employers or superiors, you can indicate at the bottom of your CV (instead of references for example) “written references available on request”.

Essential websites to help you with your CV

Several job sites offer a lot of advice, as do government sites. The CareersNZ site offers a set of links on the CV, taking stock of the various elements it contains:
CVs and cover letters. You can also look at New Zealand university websites that show their students how to write a CV.

• University of Otago: You will find an excellent PDF document in English which offers you a list of action verbs highlighting the different skills (pages 11 and 12).
• University o =f Auckland
• University of Canterbury
• University of Victoria (Wellington)