Jobs for Nurses in New Zealand : Jobs for Doctors in New Zealand

Where’s the catch' That’s the question me, my wife Jane and daughter Charlotte, aged 7, have been asking ourselves since February 2004. At that time, we couldn’t think of one.

Our adventure began last year, over a glass of wine, one dark February evening in Yorkshire. I’d been considering how to change the path of my career for some time, but not coming up with any satisfactory answers. A chance comment by a work colleague raised the possibility of taking my skills “down under”, and this seemed worth consideration. Over the next two weeks, Jane and I started researching where we would like to go and this led us to choose New Zealand. By chance, this decision coincided with an advert by a recruiting agency in my professional journal, inviting those interested in a move to New Zealand to attend interviews in London in March. A couple of emails later, we were on our way to meet Prudence Shaw for the first time.

At this stage, it still seemed like just a good idea but something that would take a long time to realise. We enjoyed an informal meeting with Prudence and were able to ask some of the questions that we’d not found answers to in our research so far. She needed some background information about me professionally, and us as a family, to make sure that she was clear what I was looking for. There was also the matter of timescales to discuss; Jane said, perhaps optimistically, that to be in New Zealand for Christmas would be good. Prudence’s response was to say she’d pencil us in for an October arrival! When we left that meeting, Jane and I both felt that October suddenly didn’t seem that far away.

I now started on the process of professional registration in New Zealand, which was a necessary step both for employment and for applying for residency. All in all, the paper trail needed to achieve these aims was protracted but not especially difficult. It’s all a matter of careful preparation of your applications, to make sure that they meet the needs of the organisations receiving them.

It wasn’t long before Prudence was back in touch to organise a telephone interview with a prospective employer. From that first contact, it was obvious that this was going to be a good match and, by June, the job offer was in place ready for a move later in the year. The summer seemed to pass quickly and involved lots of paperwork and phone calls to keep the adventure on track. Prudence kept in touch throughout and kept us up to date with what was happening in New Zealand.

With a residency visa finally in our passports by mid October, our house sale set to complete a week later and tickets booked for the journey, the scene was set. We flew out on the second of November, took a weeks holiday on the way down, finally arriving in New Zealand on the eleventh. So Prudence wasn’t far off with her October target after all!

So, where’s the catch' We’ve been in New Zealand for four months now and we still haven’t found one.

Accent Case Studies:

Guy Woolston, Optometrist from United Kingdom