Hi,
I came across this site after surfing around to find out more about migrating to New Zealand. Me and my fiancée are really keen on making the move to New Zealand.
In short, we're both engineers who have worked in our respective industries for two years. I'm a 28 year old chemical engineer, my fiancée a 26 year old mechanical engineer.
We recently met with a migration specialist based in Auckland who told us as we're not living together, our score is 110 each. His advice was for us to plan 6-9 months in advance, get a ticket to New Zealand and source for a job in person. He mentioned that 70% of his clients went through this route and was confident we'd both land a job since we're in the long term skill shortage pool. He also did mention that it was important to be in the country physically as a lot of job offers aren't advertised and can only be found out through a phone call (hence the homework before flying over). I believe I read somewhere on this site too that most jobs are by word of mouth.
We have no reason not to believe him, but we'd like to hear more opinions on this and also others' experience in migrating.
We've also read horror stories about how migrants from certain Asian countries fly into New Zealand and cannot land good jobs despite their qualifications. Do Singaporeans face the same problem? Both my fiancée and me graduated from National University of Singapore (recognized under the Washington Accord) and would like to know if there is a good recognition of our qualifications in the country. We're not worried about taking a pay cut etc, but we'd like to stick to our professions and are concerned about having to work in a different, if not worse, vocation.
On a lighter note, I'm a chemical engineer and I understand most of the jobs for me are inTaranaki, which I've not been before. How does it compare to say, Taupo?