My Silver Fern 2016 experience
Hello everyone. Thank you for this forum, and specifically to Karen Phillips, who helped me 3 years ago to visit NZ.
I'd like to share my experience hoping it will be useful for someone.
I was lucky enough to get Silver Fern visa last year.
As an introduction, I visited NZ in 2014 to "look, see and decide" if I wanted to live here. I also attended numerous job interviews, but didn't manage to secure a job offer.
However, that let me understand what I needed to improve:
1. English. In fact, I only started speaking English in NZ after I landed. I had no practical experience in speaking before that.
2. Work experience. I worked in a small engineering company, as a system administrator. Those skills didn't value that much. At least not enough to give a job to someone who would have to deal with immigration.
Ok, lesson was learned, and I started thinking about how to improve things.
First, I found a new job in a big company, constantly increasing my expertise in my work field. It was a very good fit for me, and I was the best fit for that company.
Then, there were English lessons in that company. I attended all of them, improving my speaking skills, together with rest 3 ones of course.
In Sep 2016 I decided to go to intensive courses for IELTS preparation. It was really hard: 3 hours of learning, two days a week. Plus 2 hours two other days a week of ordinary English lessons. I took the exam in Oct 2016 and scored 7.0 overall.
And then in November...I forgot about Silver Fern 2016 and missed the first give away.
Luckily, there were so many people, that the website went down completely, and applications reopened on 14 Nov. I was ready then.
I spent the whole night, trying to get through this lagging website, swearing and refreshing the page. In the morning, after 6 hours of trying, I was able to get to the application form and filled it in.
However, I got "no places available".
I felt really down, but still had some hope left in me.
Then, on 1 Dec they opened it for the last time! I was ready! That time, however, I had had my application form pre-filled from the previous try, and all I needed to do was to click on "Submit" button (well, technically, there was a dozen of checkboxes, then submit). I spent two hours clicking on that button and got through it to the payments page!
I paid instantly, but the money was not deducted. I just fell asleep and when I woke up it was done! The money was deducted, and I got the email about my application.
The rest was strictly technical. NZQA, translations, proof of funds. I got my diploma assessed in two weeks. And got my visa in two weeks after sending the documents.
Then, together with my wife, we sold our car, most of our stuff, I left my job, my wife at her parents, and went to NZ.
So, here are the tricks:
1. Be stubborn. I read on some forums, that some people were able to apply hours after opening the application. Check the website daily. They might give new spots 3 months after the initial opening.
2. Have personal information pre-filled in your Notepad.
3. Internet connection speed doesn't really matter, I think. It just needs to be stable. I had 3Mbit/s ADSL.
4. Don't give up.
And again, there are other options. Funny enough, you starting to understand it after you get into New Zealand.
There was LookSee Wellington this year: https://www.wellingtonnz.com/work/looksee-wellington/ Many people were successful.
There is Accredited Employer visa, and there are many of the accredited employers! There is real shortage in web developers (both frontend and backend). NZ is a bit slow to adopt new technologies, so it seems like at the moment Python is trendy. I'm sure there will be time for Golang in future
P.S. I'm not a good writer, I know it
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Originally Posted by ekini
