How to find a job in New Zealand as a foreigner

Australian citizens and permanent residents can visit, work and live in New Zealand. They are given a resident visa on arrival, at no cost. Everyone else needs a visa that allows work, and having the visa before you start is your responsibility as much as the employer’s.

For skilled people without residence, the main door is the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV). It needs a full-time job offer from an employer Immigration New Zealand has accredited. That is why the job search usually comes before the visa, not after it. If you are 18 to 30, or up to 35 for a few countries including the UK, a working holiday visa lets you arrive first and look for work in person. Residence routes such as the Green List and the Skilled Migrant Category also build on a job. Our work visa guide sets out every route, with its conditions.

Immigration New Zealand names the main sectors as agriculture and forestry, business and finance, construction, education and training, energy, engineering, health care, health technology, science, and tourism and hospitality.

The best official signal of demand is the Green List: roles where New Zealand needs people, split into Tier 1 (a Straight to Residence Visa) and Tier 2 (a Work to Residence Visa after 24 months in the job). The list is long. It includes registered nurses, midwives, GPs and many medical specialists, civil, electrical and structural engineers, software engineers and developers, secondary and primary school teachers, electricians, plumbers, welders and diesel mechanics. Search it for your exact title and read the qualification, registration or experience conditions next to it.

Being on the Green List does not mean an employer will sponsor you. It means your offer has a clearer route to residence. That matters to an employer weighing a local candidate against an international one.

Immigration New Zealand notes that most people here look for jobs on employment websites or through recruitment companies. Work and Income, the government employment service, lists these general job sites:

• Seek (seek.co.nz) and Trade Me Jobs: general listings across sectors and regions.
• Indeed, JOBSPACE and ZEIL: extra coverage, useful for set alerts.
• jobs.govt.nz: New Zealand government jobs.
• Kiwi Health Jobs for health roles, the Education Gazette for teaching, and Engineering New Zealand for engineers.
• MyMSD Jobs: Work and Income’s own job search, where you can also create a jobseeker profile and get job matches.
• Student Job Search (sjs.co.nz) for casual and part-time work while studying.

Immigration New Zealand also says approaching employers directly is “an accepted and often successful approach”. A short email to a hiring manager, with your CV and your visa route in one line, reaches roles that are never advertised. Recruitment agencies are paid by the employer, so you never pay them to place you.

Yes, but it is harder than applying locally, and it helps to be honest about why. A New Zealand employer hiring you from abroad must be accredited and pass a job check, and wait for your visa. That takes weeks before you can start. Recruiters shortlist overseas candidates when the role is hard to fill, when the candidate is clearly ahead of local applicants, or when the employer already hires internationally.

Three things raise your odds. First, apply only to accredited employers: Immigration New Zealand publishes the accredited employer list, and it is the fastest filter you have. Second, remove the risk from your application: state your visa route, your earliest start date and any registration you already hold in the first lines of your CV and cover letter. Third, be available: offer interview times that suit New Zealand hours, which run ahead of Europe and the Americas.

If you can come on a working holiday visa, being in the country changes the conversation. You can interview in person, start quickly, and an employer can meet you before committing to a job check.

Expect an informal but professional tone. Immigration New Zealand describes workplaces with flat structures, where you usually call your manager by their first name. That shows in hiring: a warm, direct cover letter works better than a formal one, and interviewers want real examples, not titles.

• CV: keep it to 2 pages if you can, as Tahatū Career Navigator (the government careers service) advises. Put your most recent job first, add a short personal statement and tailor it with keywords from the ad.
• Interview: answer questions about past work with the STAR method (situation, task, action, result). Our STAR examples show the shape.
• References: have 2 to 3 people who know your work ready. Employers should only contact the referees you name, and need your permission to contact a current employer you did not list.
• Offer: every employee must get a written employment agreement. An employer may agree a trial period of up to 90 days with other staff, but not with someone on an AEWV.

Your IRD number is your tax number, and you need it to be paid correctly. New arrivals on a student or work visa apply online with their passport, their Immigration New Zealand application number and their most recent overseas tax number, if they have one. If approved, the number arrives by text or email in 2 days. Give your employer a tax code declaration (IR330) as soon as you start. Without one, tax is deducted at the non-declaration rate of 45%.

Immigration New Zealand says you may be able to open a bank account before you move. For health, a work visa that lets you stay 2 years or more makes you eligible for publicly funded healthcare. ACC accident cover applies to everyone in New Zealand, including visitors. Enrol with a GP near where you live: it is free to enrol and cheaper to be seen.

For an overseas skilled worker, plan on months, not weeks. A realistic sequence is several weeks of preparation, which is longer if you need registration or an NZQA assessment. Then comes an active search of one to four months, interviews and references over a few weeks, and the job check and visa after that. Immigration New Zealand currently decides 80% of AEWV applications within 7 weeks.

The fastest cases are candidates already on a working holiday or student visa in a Green List role. The slowest are registered professions that start registration late. If your savings set a deadline, work backwards from it and start the registration or assessment now.

Immigration New Zealand is blunt: “New Zealand employers cannot charge you fees for a job or make you pay any of their recruitment costs.” Treat any request for money in exchange for an offer as a scam.

• Nobody can guarantee a visa, a faster decision or residence. Offers that do are a red flag.
• Immigration advice must come from a licensed immigration adviser, a New Zealand lawyer or someone else legally allowed to give it. Check a licence with the Immigration Advisers Authority.
• Check the employer on the accredited employer list before you share documents.
• Official emails and forms come from addresses ending in immigration.govt.nz. Never agree to give false information in an application.

Tahatū Career Navigator, run by the Tertiary Education Commission, has free guides on CVs, cover letters and interviews. Work and Income, the government employment service, runs MyMSD Jobs and lists job sites by sector. Citizens Advice Bureau offers advice for migrants (Migrant Connect) and a free interpreter service (Language Connect). For visa questions, use Immigration New Zealand’s own pages or a licensed adviser. Immigration New Zealand decides every application, and nothing on this page is legal advice.