Selling Godzone to international talent

The global economy is increasingly borderless, which presents both challenges and opportunities for those wanting to skim from the international talent pool, according to Mike Carden, co-CEO of employee engagement startup Joyous.

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If you want to hire someone to fill a specialised role and you can’t find them in New Zealand, those who have done it before have some tips: be prepared to wait a while so plan ahead, collaborate with others in your sector, tap into free recruitment campaign resources, and be open to the employee or contractor working remotely before they relocate to New Zealand.

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Carden says the world has changed since the pandemic. 

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“Before Covid, we were all obsessed with the border. We all wanted to get people across the border to join our companies in New Zealand. We might have been searching for some specific technical expertise that we didn't have as much of in New Zealand, and so we needed to bring people out here for that.’’

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But now it’s possible to hire people to work remotely, irrespective of their nationality or location. With rising global mobility, the challenge is competing with other countries and companies trying to recruit the same talent.

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That point is reiterated by the CEO of HainesAttract, Hamish Price, who says: “The war for talent is played out, not just company versus company, but country versus country. The world is after the same skills.’’

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Since 2014, HainesAttract has focused on luring highly skilled migrants to New Zealand. Part of this includes the creation of its WorkHere platform, which has a database of more than 65,000 'New Zealand curious' registered candidates – of which about 40 percent are tech professionals eager to work for a Kiwi company, according to Price.

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On tips to lure offshore staff, Price says it can be easier to work with a recruitment agency or combine forces when trying to recruit staff from offshore. Post-pandemic, it’s no longer necessary to jump on a plane to recruit. “The really key thing with international talent is just accepting that it takes time, so there's seldom any overnight success story.’’

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Location, location

Price advises businesses to tailor their recruitment campaigns to the location – a point reiterated by Xero country manager New Zealand, Bridget Snelling.

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One study of 4,000 recent migrants done by Immigration New Zealand found the key reasons for moving here differed for each market: South African migrants were lured by New Zealand’s safe culture, while Asian, UK and North American migrants were primarily drawn to our lifestyle and environment.

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Since last year, HainesAttract has been part of global recruitment campaigns; an engineering campaign with ACE (a membership organisation for consulting firms representing surveyors and engineers) generated 130,000 visits to the campaign page in New Zealand’s first major post-pandemic campaign of its type.

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From June, it has worked with New Zealand Story – part of NZTE – and NZTech on luring tech employees here; the Recruitment Storyteller campaign has been seen by 26 million people worldwide and HainesAttract has got 4,000 tech people on its books.

NZ Story has provided free resources that anyone can tap into if they’re interested in international recruitment, to ensure the same key messages get across about living and working in New Zealand.

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To convince them to come, though, Price says offshore employees or contractors have to be “interested, qualified and available’’. 

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“Interested could be as simple as they have always loved Kiwi coffee or followed the All Blacks or loved the story of a company like Xero or their cousin lived in New Zealand or they holidayed here. There's just got to be a little bit of a connection.’’

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Post-pandemic, companies are open to hiring someone remotely, however, the employers in the engineering sector that signed up in the pilot started to get hires this year, so workforce planning is key. 

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“There are a lot of tech roles, naturally, that can be done remotely. Smaller startup companies may not be able to pay for full relocation or take that risk now,” says Price.

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“The way to think of it can be ‘we need your skills, and we'd like to get involved with you. It may lead to a move to New Zealand, it may not’.’’

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Xero’s Snelling says it’s fantastic to see a rising number of tech businesses in New Zealand but that’s a challenge for those trying to attract tech and engineering talent “especially when we overlay our diversity objectives at Xero – for example in attracting female engineers’’.

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She says companies grouping opportunities as New Zealand/Australian jobs without differentiating the location and salary packages are able to have greater hiring success. 

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Relocation success

Companies specifically recruiting for New Zealand should offer attractive relocation packages and focus on the great Kiwi lifestyle.

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NZTech CEO Graeme Muller agrees that workforce planning is key for companies seeking staff from offshore.

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Muller says the Recruitment Storyteller campaign has generated remarkable interest from candidates all over the world, and given New Zealand tech companies the opportunity to make some exciting hires. “Many candidates are open to remote opportunities before they consider a permanent move to New Zealand, which can help fulfill talent shortages in the shorter term.” 

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Melvin Fong, a lead developer at Datacom, moved with his wife from Singapore last October as part of the HainesAttract recruitment campaign. His Datacom job gives him the same career opportunities as he had in Singapore, although he’s not expected to work as hard, which is a good thing. 

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New Zealand’s cost of living is the biggest struggle. However, he raves about the lifestyle: home is now a house with a garden, where their son can play.

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“We had spent all that time locked in our unit in Singapore so the space and lifestyle here is what we really love,’’ says Fong. “You can have a very good work/life balance here. The environment is more relaxed, which means we can have more time with our son.’’

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Fong agrees companies that offer a hire the ability to work remotely from their home country initially with an end goal of relocation are likely to be more successful. Fong spent a year working remotely for Datacom before he shifted, and he now goes into the office two days a week, and works from home the rest of the time.

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Industry collaboration

ACE CEO Helen Davidson says sector collaboration is key.

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“We need to get better at leaving competition at the door around some of these massive challenges that we deal with as a sector. And think about, ‘okay, what's our role in a greater sense towards bringing a strong talent pool to New Zealand in this sector and how we'll benefit from that?’” she says.

The talent flow goes both ways. At Joyous, Carden has lost tech engineers to US-based firms and Australian startups, “and those engineers haven’t even left their bedroom. They’re still working from New Zealand”.

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Joyous currently has employees and contractors in three hubs: Auckland, Sydney and Harlem, near Amsterdam. It recently hired a customer service officer based in Dallas, Texas, who was drawn to New Zealand’s reputation as “trustworthy, innovative and green’’. 

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The biggest challenge to bringing them all together are the time differences; it’s impossible to get everyone on the same video call. 

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But Carden says: “The thing to remember is once you get to a certain size, if you're building a global tech business, you're going to have customers all around the world and you’ll have other things which drive you to having to deal with the time-zone challenge.’’