KEY POINTS:
A job expo in London this weekend is expected to lure thousands of New Zealand expatriates home.
Michael Barnett, chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce, says the United Kingdom is losing its appeal as a career launchpad and job insecurity is rife.
"In markets around the world at the moment there is a shake up occurring and there is job risk for a lot of people," he said.
He expected the expo to generate much more interest from expatriates than it did last year.
Recruitment website nzrecruitme. co.nz already receives about 50 expressions of interest per day from people wanting to move to New Zealand, and had 4000 skilled people from across the world registered, Barnett said.
"We've had increased activity from people who think New Zealand is a safe haven and stability," Barnett said.
Hudson's executive general manager Marc Burrage said the company had noticed an increase in the number inquiries from Britain over the past two weeks: "We know the United Kingdom is not as attractive as it was."
Burrage said this was New Zealand's opportunity to brand itself as a destination that can provide skilled workers with a higher quality of life as well as career opportunities.
While New Zealand's remuneration packages will never match that of overseas, Burrage said the scope of of the roles could be competitive.
But OCG recruitment said expatriates were not likely to move home if they were pushed out of London.
Their British partners Badenoch & Clark recently conducted a survey of 180 New Zealand and Australian professionals living in Britain which revealed the economic downturn is failing to tarnish 77 per cent of the respondents' overseas experience. Bernadette Ryan-Hopkins, manager of financial services at OCG, said markets outside New Zealand were increasingly sought after.
"We keep in regular correspondence with a large database of expat Kiwis working the UK finance markets and the feedback from them is that when they do consider a move out of the UK their preference is to look to Asia and Dubai first."
She said there was still an undersupply of candidates, particularly for roles in the middle-salary bracket.
Turbulence in the banking sector, a global economic slowdown, and profit and bonus cuts may have led to increasing concerns over the future in the British financial sector, but it was too early to see many of the thousands of Kiwis who work over there return to New Zealand just yet, Ryan-Hopkins said.
