The Story – Part 6

In the background of all this moving and house selling stuff, I had been knee-deep in New Zealand paperwork. I did a lot of digging in order to get us “document-ready”. Once we were document-ready and the house was sold, it was time to apply for a job (Matt only, I’m going to remain a stay-at-home-mom as long as our finances allow for it). I applied for him since I’m the administrative one in the family and he had to work. Matt is a Master Electrician and New Zealand lists Electricians on their skill shortage list, which would allow us to obtain a job much quicker and immigrate much easier than if his occupation wasn’t on that list. This felt like another sign from God that we were supposed to go. Application time and I thought we would secure a job quickly. But 90+ job applications and almost two months later, we had rejections left and right with no viable prospects in sight.

I’ll back up for a moment here to tell you that we had been warned that New Zealanders take their time with everything–it’s the norm in their culture. In the US, we’re used to having everything done immediately. It took some getting used to and it was frustrating, as I have a hard time slowing down. I even emailed our immigration agent out of desperation, wondering what we were doing wrong. She assured me that it’s completely normal to not have a job offer within the first few months of looking. If we had gotten up to three months with not a single prospect, then she’d consider what we could be doing wrong. I was reassured, kind of. Disappointed, though. Regardless of my tiredness, I continued applying faithfully. Finally, a glimpse of hope! A company in Alexandra, New Zealand emailed us asking about Matt’s qualifications, and what the EWRB wanted him to do to obtain his limited certificate (I’ll touch on this in a moment). We responded to the email and that was that. Shortly after, a recruiter in the Otago area (South of the South Island) saw Matt’s resume and was impressed. We scheduled a Skype call and Matt had his first interview. The recruiter said she would seek out a job for Matt. I knew that it could take a while, so I persisted in applying to jobs for Matt.

A few more weeks of applying and I was very tired of applying for jobs; I felt like I needed a break. At this point in time, my best friend Sam decided to come visit us one last time before the big move. She came on a Thursday and left the following Monday. The company that we applied to in Alexandra wanted to schedule a Skype call with Matt for that Friday. We said yes, that would work perfectly with our schedule, but we failed to take into consideration the time/day difference. So Matt ended up Skyping them on Thursday (New Zealand’s Friday) from the cellphone waiting lot while picking up Sam from the airport. They had a great conversation and spoke for over an hour; Matt really liked them and they seemed interested in him.

While Sam was here, I told Matt that I was tired so I was going to enjoy my time with her and forgo applying, especially after the successful Skype call he had. He was totally fine with it and so was I. After all, we had two prospects already. That night came, and suddenly I felt like I really should apply, even though I had already told Matt that I was taking a break. So I did, I applied to a few jobs that just so happened to check everything off Matt’s list, which is a lot more than I can say about the other jobs we had applied to. This was exciting! The following night I stuck to my word and took the night off from applying. Not even two days after I sent in the applications, I get an email. It’s B&M Electrical, the job I applied to on the night I wanted to take off but didn’t. They were so direct with us: Matt was what they were looking for and they were eager to talk to him, so they talked on the phone that same day. WOW. No Skype interview, nothing. They saw what they wanted and they went for it!

Now this is when the floodgates opened for us because suddenly, Matt was getting calls left and right from interested employers! The company in Alexandra got back to us with an enticing offer. Another company in Hamilton on the North Island was interested in interviewing Matt. But we definitely had our favorite prospect: B&M Electrical. They just didn’t have an offer on the table, but we knew they were going to give us one soon. So Matt called them and told the kind gentleman that he had an offer on the table, but he wanted to consider a job offer from B&M Electrical as well. The man said “Well, it looks like I need to give you a job offer then”. And that night, we had the job offer.

Click for Part 7:

The Story – Part 7