Bosses leave migrants to flounder

New Zealand tries to recruit migrants but many find the country is not what they expect.

Most employers agree there are barriers to migrants participating in the workforce but are doing nothing about them, a survey shows.

Recruitment firm Hudson asked 1705 employers whether barriers existed for migrants working or seeking work, and found those saying yes outnumbered those saying no four to one.

Most - 78 per cent - cited non-technical skills, especially communication, as the biggest problem.

Only in professional services and, to a lesser extent, utilities, were technical skills cited as an issue, and then only by one in five or one in six firms respectively.

"To be granted work or residency permits, skilled immigrants must have achieved minimum language and professional qualification standards, and are mostly from jobs identified as long- or medium-terms shortages," the Hudson survey says.

"Yet many people who are doing the hiring do not consider these candidates as ready to fit into their New Zealand organisations."

Hudson's staff find employers more open to using foreigners in back-office roles. But it is a different story when people interact with customers. The accent matters.

Hudson's survey found fewer than a quarter of employers had formal integration or settlement programmes for migrant employees. About the same proportion gave informal support.

New migrants in small companies - those with fewer than 20 staff - are unlikely to get formal or informal support. Seven out of 10 such companies told the survey they did nothing specific.

The Hudson survey cites Labour Department projections that in 15 years, a quarter of the workforce will have been born outside New Zealand.

"But migrants still find it difficult to find work in New Zealand and those who do are often placed in jobs well below their skill level," it says.

This is despite a labour market which, despite an economic downturn, remains tight and is expected by the Department of Labour to stay that way.

The net inflow of permanent and long-term, migrants bottomed out in October last year, and is now back in line with its long-term average of 10,000 a year.

Hudson says employers are in a bind.

Many young New Zealanders are going overseas, growth is constrained by a shortage of skilled workers and unemployment is close to a record low.

"Unless employers find ways of accessing the skills of non-traditional talent pools such as new migrants, the problem will show no signs of diminishing."

Most migrants in its experience were prepared to learn new skills or acclimatise to the New Zealand way of doing things and made it through recruiter screening only to fall at the final, hiring step.

"While many migrants are satisfied eventually with their work and lifestyle in New Zealand, some 22,000 a year are leaving the country because their expectations were not met," the survey said.