common sense prevails

2 major stress points resolved.

firstly i mentioned earlier that we had read on the nzis site that they were not requiring full nzqa assessments as part of the application – and our dilemma since we didn’t have one and didn’t have time to get one (not to mention the NZ$ 900 for the application). fortunately someone else in the same situation contacted nzis and posted the response to the nz immigration forum that we have leaned on so heavily.

“The requirement of having to submit a full NZQA Assessment applies only to those applications that have been selected from the pool from December 2006. As you were selected from the pool well before this date, your application is not affected.”

so one issue down. the other was around a critically important item of what position on the long term skill shortage list i would fill. since we were filing under the skilled migrant category it is vital the my education and work experience match up against a position on their list. oddly their list didn’t have anything that was a obvious match for software development – despite one of their stated goals was building up the software industry in canterbury (around christchurch). there were two positions that were possibilities, but neither was the clear winner. the first was “Information Technology (IT) Professional” and the second was “Electronics Design”. in the states “IT” usually means the the support staff that keep a companies computers running – not the core software development staff that work on the main product. so that didn’t seem right. but “Electronics Design” didn’t seem right either since nothing i’ve ever done was hardware related. so i went with “IT Professional” thinking that they must view “IT” in the broader sense – but I couldn’t back up my theory. so when another unnamed co-applicant questioned my decision things got a bit stressful. we were both uncomfortable with the other choice, but neither had anything to go on other than a strong gut feelings. since we were hoping to submit the next day (today) we were short on options to resolve the issue. we agreed to see if anyone on the nz immigration forum has any insights. fortunately i found someone from the US who has a similar background that was at a similar stage in the application process. their response is below.

The occupation I picked was “Information Technology (IT) Professionals: Programmer”.

I remember that I could not find something like “Software Developer” or “Software Engineer” or any other phrase quite like what is used in the United States. In NZ and the UK they tend to use the term “IT” or Information Technology, whereas in the United States when someone says they work in “IT” I tend to think that they are a sys admin or networking type guy.

so second issue also close. everyone feeling much better.

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