The working class of Britain

Wanting to work in the UK while on your 'overseas experience'? Read this first, says ESTELLE SARNEY

David Bowes' first job on his OE in London was, by his own admission, a menial role in accounts receivable.

But within three years he was the UK sales and marketing information manager for Virgin Records.

Another three years and he's back home on contract as a business analyst for Goodman Fielder. And he's only just turned 30.

"The great thing about temping, or contracting in the UK, is that you get sent to all the blue-chip firms and can climb the ladder much quicker than if you'd stayed in New Zealand", says Bowes.

Nathan Koppens, 27, is travelling on a Dutch passport so can work full-time, and says securing quality full-time jobs is harder than temping.

After seven weeks he gained a job in the same field in which he worked in New Zealand, software product management. He held it for 20 months before going travelling earlier this year.

He is now back job-hunting in London, convinced that his overseas experience will be invaluable when he eventually returns to New Zealand.

"London is one of the hotbeds of the IT industry, but it can be hard to get your foot in the door", he says.

"You have to really chase up the job agencies, get interviews with them to personalise the process and find out what the companies want to hear".

Bowes and Koppens are two of about 8500 New Zealanders who travel to the UK each year on either a two-year working holiday visa, which allows them to work for up to half of their stay, or a four-year grandparent entry certificate, with which they can work full time.

Others can live and work there as they like if a parent was born there, if they are a spouse of such a person, or if they gain or are a spouse of someone who gains a work permit.

Work permits are becoming easier to get, and can be a ticket to a British passport, says Rob Snelling of UK Jobs, a Wellington-based agency that helps Kiwis find work in Britain.

"Late last year the British Labour Department set up the Overseas Labour Service, which monitors shortages in the workforce and makes it very easy for people to immigrate to fill those gaps".

"Current shortages include teachers, doctors, nurses, vets, pharmacists, electrical engineers, some IT and telecommunication positions, and others that the service keeps updating on its website (www.workpermits.gov.uk).

"Work permits are usually issued for a period of two years, but are renewable for up to four years.

"You can then go to the Home Office and get "permanent resident" stamped in your passport, and after a total of five years you can apply for a British passport without relinquishing your New Zealand one".

So keen was a London school to secure the expertise of Shelley Duffy that within 24 hours of UK Jobs sending over her CV, she was booking a one-way flight to England.

The 37-year-old had previously been the teaching principal at Puriri School near Thames, and after one term at her British school has been appointed deputy head.

"The UK is screaming out for teachers and New Zealanders have a proven reputation and are gobbled up", says Duffy from her new home in Maidenhead, just west of London.

Snelling says work permits have also facilitated a "profile shift" in the type of people heading to the UK for work these days.

"When I started this company in 1998 we were catering for backpackers. Now we're seeing a lot of new graduates with student loans they want to pay off in a hurry, and people in their 40s and 50s".

So how valuable is overseas experience back in New Zealand?

Gay Barton of personnel company Drake International says her firm is considering taking part in an expo in the UK in October to attract returning Kiwis onto the company's books before they board a plane home.

There can also be pitfalls in the jobs you take overseas, says Andrea Jopling of TMP Worldwide.

"You have to make sure the skills you gain there are transferable to jobs here.

"If you want to be a financial controller of a New Zealand manufacturing business, there's little point in being a product controller in a British investment bank".

Jopling adds there can be huge value in gaining experience in established UK industries which are still in their infancy here, such as digital television.

"And there is security for employers in knowing that you've already done your OE".

UK Jobs

Kiwi Connections

www.jobs.co.uk

www.jobsuk.org.uk

@Work Consulting Ltd