Navigating NZ’s Tech Scene

Background:

Our panellists have been hiring and recruiting technology professionals for a long time now and some of the best hires that they have ever worked with are originally from overseas. We often meet people coming into New Zealand with excellent technical skills but lack the ability to sell themselves in an interview. In fact, many of them are great but they are not familiar with the art of interviewing (especially with English not being their first language). They also get told that they don't have enough local experience’ which is a classic reply. What does local experience even mean? Does it mean ‘culture/team fit’ does it mean ‘ability to speak English properly’ ? 

Join our panel discussion to explore strategies for fair and inclusive hiring practices.

Our Panellist:

Stories:

We recently met a brilliant engineer who worked for Bytedance and Baidu - 2 of the largest companies in China next to Tencent and Alibaba but he really struggles to navigate interviews. His technical skills are strong and he has worked on some very complex problems back in China but he is missing out on opportunities because of the tricky interview process in N.Z.

A few years ago we met a brilliant DevOps candidate who had worked for Tencent. His English was okay but he didn't interview very well. We offered him some interview tips and coached him a little bit about how to sell himself in an interview. It worked, in 3 days he called us and telling us how excited he was about his first offer. We tole him that he could get 20k more easily but he didn't believe that it was culturally appropriate to ask for more. By all accounts he should just be grateful for getting an offer. Like most migrant candidates his perception of the world was this.Classic mentality of migrant candidates. How many times do migrant candidates believe this to be true? He went back to the company and did exactly what we told him to do and they increased his offer by $20k. He was completely blown away by this. He learned many things from that experience but we also validated what we’ve always believed which is experienced people from overseas are some of the best in the world and they deserve the same respect as local candidates. He is now working over at ASB Bank as a Principal SRE Architect, one of the highest levels of technical competency in NZ’s technology field.

Mission:

We believe that getting some experienced people in a room together to talk about how we can help migrants navigate the interview/recruitment world is going to be hugely beneficial to everyone.

Our purpose is to provide some much needed guidance to these candidates and provide a pathway for them, if we can show them a few life hacks along the way then I think we will be the better for it.

At a broader level, we want to create an open dialogue amongst the community of technologists which will enable people to heighten their awareness and hopefully make them 1% better than what they were before they participated in our event. We think there is a lot of value in people listening to the journeys of their countrymen and how they integrated into N.Z culture and how they overcame some of the common challenges that they all face. I think there is huge comfort in knowing that they are not alone.

In our humble view, if one person comes away from our event learning how to navigate the interview and recruitment/placement process then that’s a roaring success.