Adaptability and perseverance have helped Lai Ching settle into her new life in New Zealand. Lai Ching moved to New Zealand from Malaysia in 2007 with her husband and young children after her husband took up a job in Auckland in telecommunications. The family then re-located to Wellington when her husband was offered another position.
Lai Ching has a university degree in Biochemistry and in Malaysia worked successfully as a Sales Representative selling medical devices. She started looking for work immediately after arriving in New Zealand but met with little success. "I soon realised that it would be unlikely that I would get a job in my field without New Zealand experience, especially at the same ranking I had in Malaysia." Lai Ching broadened her job search but found it difficult even when applying for entry level positions in the health care sector. "In general the health care industry is quite small here and the employers are looking for people with local experience who have their own contacts with hospital personnel." Recruitment consultants also had told Lai Ching that there was little staff turnover in her field and therefore few positions come up.
Lai Ching estimates that in her two years of job searching in New Zealand she has applied for over 60 jobs. Disappointingly, none of these have resulted in interviews. Part of the problem, she feels, is that most applications are now done on-line through recruitment agencies who act as gatekeepers immediately screening out applicants that lack local qualifications and experience. In Malaysia, having built up a solid profile of experience, Lai Ching was often head-hunted for jobs and didn't have to approach job seeking in this way.
Lai Ching found out about the job mentoring service last year and was matched with a mentor several months ago. They meet weekly and Lai Ching has found it to be a huge support. "After two years of job searching, your morale and motivation start to get low. My mentor encourages and motivates me." At their meetings, Lai Ching and her mentor, whose own career background is in Human Resources, will go through any potentially suitable job advertisements, make sure Lai Ching's CV is tailored to the job and to local employers' expectations, and discuss interview scenarios, even role-playing questions and suitable answers. Lai Ching has found the "localising" of her CV especially useful. "It has also been useful learning from my mentor about employers' expectations, how they think and how best to approach them. It is important to be able to understand their perspective."
Lai Ching's perseverance has paid off and she is presently working as a temporary part-time Administration Assistant at the National Office of ESOLHT. She is enjoying the role and the part-time hours are ideal as she can be with her children after school. This is Lai Ching's second job in New Zealand – she worked for the Ministry of Justice for a month around the time of the 2008 General Election helping with issuing ballots and vote counting.
While the job seeking process has been frustratingly slow, Lai Ching sees every small contract and position as valuable for accumulating local work experience. Her advice to other migrant job seekers is to be flexible and broaden the scope of their job search and be willing to start at entry level. "It's important to gain whatever local experience you can, even taking temporary jobs." She stresses how important it is to make sure your CV is locally appropriate, noting that in New Zealand there seems to be more emphasis placed on a candidate's skills and these need to be clearly set out in the CV.
Lai Ching has a very positive outlook and at present is happy continuing with her current position or working in similar roles to keep building on her local work experience. In the long term she is considering the possibility of studying to gain a local qualification. She praises the Job Mentoring Service in providing support for job seekers like her but wishes more people could benefit. "The service needs to be more widely publicised as many people don't know it's available and it helps so many people."