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A chronic lack of skilled candidates in this country is forcing employers to look to Australia to fill job vacancies, a survey reveals today.
In the latest Global Workplace Survey from recruitment specialist Robert Half, 26 per cent of New Zealand employers said they were actively recruiting overseas and more than half (54 per cent) of those were focusing on Australia to fill vacancies.
It tied first equal with the United Kingdom as a source of skilled foreign staff, with Asia a distant third at 23 per cent. The least-favoured regions for sourcing staff were the Middle East and South America.
The most common reason for companies recruiting overseas was an inability to find suitably skilled candidates in New Zealand (57 per cent), followed by a desire to find candidates with international experience (28 per cent).
The internet was the most popular method of recruiting overseas, with 44 per cent of companies seeking foreign recruits using online job boards and 38 per cent of them using their organisation's website. Only 21 per cent used global recruitment firms and 20 per cent used industry associations.
However, the most common difficulty New Zealand employers faced in recruiting overseas was that once the new employees arrived, they weren't familiar with local work practices (31 per cent).
Steve McGowan, division director of Robert Half Technology in Auckland, says it is good to see New Zealand employers broadening their employment net outside the country, but they could be spreading it even wider by targeting non-traditional markets, such as Asia and the subcontinent.
"By concentrating mainly on the traditional countries of Australia and the UK to find new recruits, employers are cutting themselves off from the highly educated professionals from other countries, who have a lot to offer a growing multi-cultural business sector such as ours."
* The survey was answered by more than 4500 human resource and finance managers across 17 countries.
