I can always hear that a colleague’s life after going abroad is so good, when he bought a villa house, when he basked in the blue sky and white clouds without haze, which makes people envy.

But we also ignore the efforts and hardships behind immigration. Little do they know that immigrants need to give up a lot. Just think, who would leave their homes if they didn’t feel hopeless? Let me take my own immigration experience as an example to tell you the story behind immigration.

I currently live in New Zealand, a country where there are more sheep than people. Visa status is PR (permanent residence). By the way, New Zealand’s permanent resident visa is currently the only one in the world that does not have to go to immigration detention, and can leave New Zealand for a long time and come back at any time after getting it. We will talk about the details later when we talk about visa.

Failure is English, success is English

Going abroad is a Dream I had thought about going abroad when I was in college. At that time, I was limited to studying abroad. However, as I was born in a rural area, my family did not have financial support, so studying abroad was regarded as a dream.

I am so close to my dream so far before graduating from university, the closest opportunity to go abroad is huawei graduates overseas technical support recruitment. In the recruitment process, I was confident to “show” the CCIE written test results, and talked with the interview leaders about my network technology. Compared with other graduates, I was much better and experienced, but in the end, I was rejected, while several other graduates got offers.

The reason for being rejected made me feel helpless: CET-6

We were all sitting in the same taxi when we received huawei’s message. On the way to the interview, everyone said I would be ok, but on the way back, everyone got an offer except me. Now recall, can not help but sigh providence lane people.

Huawei gave up, but the idea of going abroad was still there. As a person who has not passed cet 6 and has been deeply despised, the first task is to make up for English.

Chinese people learn English, most of them are good at listening and reading, but they are dumb when they open their mouths, and their hands are broken when they write. Me too, so the top priority is to improve oral English first.

Before I went abroad, There were two kinds of English training classes: exam-oriented and practical

  • Exam-oriented group: first class training institutions led by New Oriental and Global IELTS

  • Practice: represented by local oral training courses in various cities

There is no superior or inferior between the two. It can only be said that it is suitable for certain people in certain circumstances.

I was so consider, since the plan to go abroad, the first is communication, if communication is a problem, how can you live, such as the communication this thing done, considering things, and this kind of thing, learning a language is the language sense in fact will improve soon, perhaps is almost finished practicing spoken English test.

My first job was in a foreign communications giant. As A correspondence worker, I had to go on A business trip for A long time, so I applied for A training course during my business trip in A province. The teachers in the training class are all foreign teachers except for the low-level courses. There are two types of courses:

  • It’s a professional course at my level

  • It is an open class in the lobby of the training center, with a corresponding theme every day, regardless of the number of students and learning levels.

Compared with the two, the open class is more flexible and open to imaginative chat.

After I started the training class, I returned to the role of a student and began to have weekly English classes, and my life became very busy. While other people play Dota after work, I take English classes after work. I want to play Dota, but I have to live with it for my dream.

The good times did not last long. After three months of study, the project in Province A was about to be completed, and I was transferred to province B as A permanent resident. It was A pity that the English course worth 20,000 yuan was not finished. Thanks to the strength of the motherland, high-speed rail is such a convenient means of transportation. So I worked in A province on Monday and Friday, and went back to B province to continue my English classes on weekends. At that time, I was wondering why the railway bureau didn’t sell annual tickets.

In English class, I think the most useful is the open class, because there is no limit to the topic, you can chat far and wide, but you will certainly encounter the embarrassing situation of insufficient vocabulary, in this case, I learned a trick, that is drawing. Every time I have an open class, I prepare a notepad and a pen. Other students think I use it to memorize words, but they get the wrong idea.

For example, there was a time when the open class teacher was an old Canadian man in his sixties. He served in the army, ran a business and married a woman in China. Because he is very knowledgeable, I talk to him about all kinds of world problems. From the Iraq war to American policy, what missiles or new weapons do not say, I will draw the way, combined with some of the most basic vocabulary. He’ll tell me what to say when he sees it. Here comes the word.

After half a year, from the first day when my mouth was stuck like tape, I could talk casually with foreigners on the bus. All the people around me turned their heads to look at it. At that moment, I finally found that my hard work was not in vain.

Speaking is ok, next we need to determine the direction. The so-called direction is the follow-up test ielts, or to test TOEFL. After all, they represent different countries, one in the Commonwealth, one in the United States. After some analysis, decided to develop towards the Direction of the Commonwealth countries, ielts was determined. As for the selection of countries, the follow-up analysis.

The next step is to prepare for the IELTS study test. Remember the training institutions I mentioned before, when preparing for the test, they will come in handy. After finishing the oral English training, I applied for global IELTS in B province, because it is close to my hotel, which is convenient for me to spend less time on transportation after work.

But at the same time, I also found a problem, basically all the training classes are weekday morning to evening, and the weekend class cycle is too long. Looking for a long time found that they also have a VIP class, as long as the money is enough you can one to one VIP training. So willfully spent the blood of the newspaper. In addition, some people may question whether I have a high income and can be so luxurious. At that time, the market price of communication engineers in manufacturers and their travel expenses were almost 10,000, which was either high or low. But you can either make money by eating and drinking or by investing in yourself. I prefer the latter.

Incidentally, aside from the topic: many domestic and foreign masters have a consistent consensus that ordinary people should concentrate on investing in themselves rather than investing in stocks, funds, bitcoin and other things outside of their own lives. Only by investing in themselves can the return be thousands of times.

Back to IELTS training, I trained for 22 days in total, during which I learned test skills and writing skills under the guidance of teachers. Of course, the teacher is not enough to teach, after class I also bought a lot of IELTS learning books, such as: IELTS, writing books, listening practice books and so on. It was not long before I tried my first exam. Sadly, the day of the oral exam, the company’s senior leaders inspected the work and the first exam was abandoned.

Not long after that, I made another test appointment. The exam went well, with a score of 6.5. As it is the first time for me to take an official exam, I am very satisfied with my score and know where my weak points are. If I need high scores in the future, I can know where to start to break through.

In Love with New Zealand

After having the foundation of English, you can consider the matter of choosing a country. There are basically four places in front of me: The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

At that time, ACCORDING to my own knowledge, I also bought relevant books to understand relevant information, and made the following analysis (note: this is a situation several years ago, the specific information may change, and it is a personal analysis, please refer to the official information) :

Advantages of the United States: good natural environment, the first choice of IT people, after all, IT is the most powerful country in all kinds of new technologies. Material resources are abundant. Disadvantages: the immigration schedule is long, and job-hopping bears great psychological pressure.

Canada advantage: good natural environment. Weaknesses: Ignorant I always thought that the places where I could immigrate were too cold, so I didn’t consider it.

Australia’s advantages: good natural environment, many world-renowned companies, many job opportunities. Disadvantages: Parental migration is relatively complicated. If pay money, the arrangement of 2 years or so, if not pay money, it is longer.

Advantages of New Zealand: good natural environment, low immigration requirements compared with Australia. The population is small and the quality of life is relatively high. Parent immigration is relatively easy (PS: The policy of parent immigration has been updated, until now, New Zealand parent immigration is temporarily closed, open in 2018, it is expected to change the corresponding policy) Disadvantages: the city is relatively small, and the city is not well-known in the world.

The above analysis was made when I was preparing to find immigrants from other countries. Compared with the fog at that time, now after living abroad for a period of time, the experience of some of the above countries is more profound. USA and Canada I can’t comment on. However, Australia and New Zealand often visit each other because they are close to each other. After a long time, I am very clear about the advantages and disadvantages of these two countries. If necessary, I can have a separate discussion on the topic.

Back then, I was in love with Australia. One of the most outrageous reasons is that when I heard my friends talking about the annual salary of pulling optical fiber and equipment installation in Australia, they would automatically convert these salaries into RMB, which would be millions. CCIE people are in high demand there and so on.

However, once the target is set, it comes with all kinds of difficulties. After assessing their EOI scores, they find that the total score is not enough. They either improve their IELTS to four sevens or endure several years of work experience. As you know, the four 7s of IELTS are very difficult, and it’s very difficult for non-English majors to do it without peeling off several layers of skin.

Just when I began to prepare myself for getting the four sevens of IELTS, I needed to choose a destination for my honeymoon due to my marriage. I started to consider Europe at first, but it was difficult to travel by myself because of my language barrier and my wife’s friend who was studying in Europe told me to pay attention to safety there.

While chatting in the company, my colleague recommended me to go to New Zealand. English speaking countries, and both in terms of the location of the Lord of the Rings and its natural beauty, consider New Zealand a good choice for a road trip. When I think about it, that solves all the problems OF my free travel. This is where the story takes a turn.

When I was searching for New Zealand on Baidu, I came across an “online rating system for New Zealand immigrants”, so I tried it and found that my score was already 100 points. In theory, you can submit an EOI with a score of 100. Because New Zealand and Australia are commonwealth countries with similar social structure and geographical location. It suddenly dawned on me that IT looked like I could consider emigrating to New Zealand. At the same time, my wife and I can take the opportunity to visit the local natural and cultural environment.

Speaking of which, I personally think that if you are interested in emigrating to a certain country, it is best to find out if that country is suitable for you, after all, this is the place where you may live for the rest of your life. The easiest thing to do is to travel. Had better not newspaper group, after all, travel mentality and real living is not the same. In addition, the scenic spots that the tour group takes you to are the most beautiful places in the region, and you can’t really experience the local conditions and customs.

After I settled down in New Zealand, many friends asked me how THEY wanted to emigrate, but every time I suggested that they should at least visit this country before making a decision, but they often refused to do so for various reasons. What’s more, when you ask him where New Zealand is, he can’t give you a good answer.

During our honeymoon, we drove around the entire South Island of New Zealand, saw the beautiful scenery and experienced the friendly people of New Zealand, just as Gao xiaosong said in the New Zealand station of The Second Season of Xiao Shui: “I haven’t been angry for eight days.

This honeymoon trip is more important for me to investigate this country. We met many Chinese living here and talked with them about immigration methods and living experience in New Zealand. In addition to the relatively honest offshore application for permanent PR, there are two shortcuts:

1. The working Holiday visa launched for China in recent years was originally designed to allow young Chinese before the age of 31 to experience life in New Zealand, and at the same time to help provide low-skilled local workers. For example, farm work, orchard work, and can only work for the employer for 3 months (later changed to 6 months in New Zealand), then change to the next job. But you can also use the visa to find other skilled jobs, and if you find one, you can exchange it for a regular one.

The Silver Fern visa is an open work visa for skilled workers. The downside of the two visas is that you have to swipe places on open days, and so far the competition has been fierce.

After consulting with my wife, I decided to try to brush silver fern first, so I found an intermediary to help brush silver fern, but failed. Then I applied for Working Holiday Visa, and it was also a difficult process to snatch the quota. My wife and I landed in New Zealand in March of the following year.

He left for

In the three months before landing, I did the following:

  • On the one hand, it is to refresh the validity period of IELTS. On the other hand, it is to take this opportunity to consolidate English. From the result, there is some progress compared with last time, and the total score is 7. I was satisfied with it.

  • Second: learner driver’s license before their honeymoon island in New Zealand to swim all the daughter-in-law, found in understanding the local situation, don’t have a car in New Zealand travel more difficult, the public transport system is not very rich, so consider friends must first driver’s license test to, come here in a local driver’s license is relatively easier.

  • My wife and I carefully summarized the immigration experience of other immigrants, listed many matters that need to be prepared in advance in China, and completed them one by one, including but not limited to: university scores, salary slips, preparation of recommendation letters, proof of no crime, etc. Also consult after landing at the same time, need articles for daily use and deal with documents and so on.

  • The last thing is to complete the exams of the three courses of CCNP. Some people will wonder why you want to take the EXAM of CCNP since you have double CCIE. This is absolutely impossible according to the way of thinking in China. In fact, in foreign countries, there is such a situation called overqualified.

Here, there are two reasons: 1. People in western countries are quite rigid. Some enterprises only need CCNP level talents, but they will not consider hiring a CCIE, because they know that CCIE personnel will be more expensive, so there is a cost factor.

2. On the other hand, since the recruitment agencies are basically unskilled, when the employer describes the Job to the agency, it only indicates CCNP on the Job Description, then it will not benefit me personally to write ONLY CCIE on the resume, because they do not know that CCIE talent is better than CCNP. Instead, they just check the resume for a match with JD. But for immigration purposes, if you can find a skilled job, you can get enough points for PR. So one more certificate, one more chance. But at the same time I also need to emphasize a point is that I hope you do not want to textual research after reading, be sure to have the corresponding technical ability to endorse it! After all, you need hard knowledge when you’re interviewing.

departure

In the twinkling of an eye, it was time to say goodbye to our motherland and relatives. I still remember that my wife and I were walking away from each other in the international departure hall of Guangzhou Baiyun Airport under the eyes of my parents. Compared with the relaxed and happy mood of our last honeymoon trip, this time we set foot on this land of New Zealand again with expectations and challenges for the future.

Before recounting my search for work in New Zealand, I felt compelled to devote a few pages to a story that changed my outlook on life, subverting the idea I had developed back home that strangers needed to be wary of each other.

I was flying from Sydney to Auckland, and my wife and I had a window seat and an aisle seat with a big white woman in her 50s. Unfortunately, after boarding the plane, the captain informed the plane that there was an engine problem that needed to be repaired. So we waited on the plane for almost three hours, and the flight took about six hours. During the entire six-hour trip, we didn’t communicate. She just listened to us chat in Chinese while playing on her iPad.

As we approached landing, we exchanged a few pleasantries, just asking her why she came to New Zealand, where she came from, etc. When we told her she was coming to settle down. After packing a lot of luggage, she offered to drive us off the plane to the place we had booked, not worrying about the two strangers, who arrived in Oakland after 8 p.m.

We left our contact information for each other, and after learning that I was engaged in technical work, we took the initiative to let me send my resume to her, saying that her husband could help recommend and so on. To be honest, because it’s getting late, if at that time, without her help, we estimate that will be for a long time, may finally have to take a taxi, and expensive taxi fee (about 500 yuan) for no work at that time, the future for a long time can only rely on in the domestic savings to maintain life in the us, is a not small cost.

This selfless help for a young couple in a strange country, is undoubtedly a great comfort to the soul, that day we even the stars in the sky feel warm. It is worth mentioning that the elder sister and her husband also helped me to recommend the largest broadband operator in New Zealand and got the offer.

Back to the point, after landing is to adapt to the new environment and start the journey of looking for a job. When you first enter a strange country, everything is new. Because you have done enough homework in China, all the preparation including tax number, bank card, renting a house and buying a car will be done within one week.

After I settled down, in addition to feeling new things every day, I spent more time looking for a job. It took me two and a half months to sign a permanent contract for the job. Compared with the common 3 months for IT engineers in China to find a job, MY time is a little shorter, which is due to luck and sweat, but more to the accumulation of strength in the past few years.

Foreign country to apply for

Language, if you have read my last work, you will know that I think 7 points. You may have an illusion that After coming here, English should not be a problem, it is not native, but at least the communication is barrier-free.

On the contrary, when you first arrive, it’s hard to understand what the other person is saying. There are two reasons:

  • First and foremost, English in New Zealand has a local accent. Although it is a Commonwealth country, New Zealand and even Australia have developed their own pronunciation system. A vivid example is the old foreigner who learned authentic Mandarin before coming to China, but then went to Shaanxi or Shandong. Facing the local mandarin with dialect, the foreigner’s heart is broken. The same is true of new immigrants to New Zealand. In addition, most of the English we have learned since childhood is American English, so it is very difficult to come to a country with a dialect of British English.

  • The second reason is that although I have been taking an oral English class in China for more than half a year, I later found that the foreign teacher in the oral English class deliberately slowed down his pace to talk to you, because he knew he was dealing with students who were learning English. However, when you change the environment and communicate with native westerners face to face in a foreign country, they will speak at the normal speed at the beginning of communication, of course, you will feel completely behind. The solution? It’s a problem that can’t be solved in a short period of time. Of course, this also led to the fact that when I got a job later, when I first started working, I had to be repeated at least two or three times when people spoke to me. Now that I think about it, those colleagues who communicated with me were so patient.

In the first half month of applying for a job, there was basically no response. Occasionally there were several phone interviews, but there was no follow-up. Half a month later, I got an occasional Linkedin connection with the manager of a large local staffing agency and was asked to go to an agency interview the next day. As a result, MY hope was dashed on the spot. During the interview, I was obsessed with my visa. He threw out a statement that could not be refuted: “I have many large enterprise clients and many excellent job opportunities, but I have applicants from Citizen, PR, Work Visa and even Silver Fern Visa. May I ask why I should consider you, who is at a disadvantage in visa?

Back in the apartment, my wife and I analyzed my strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: Strong technical skills and relevant large project experience, technical certificate. Disadvantages: Poor English communication, visa disadvantage.

I began to attack these weaknesses one by one.

English communication: because can’t solve in the short term, but at least to do when others give you a telephone interview to be able to answer smoothly, so I combined with common telephone interview questions, write a draft, and rotten heart. Do as long as there is a phone interview, basically grasp a few key words, the brain quickly search the answer and according to the answer prepared before the answer.

Disadvantages of visa: I have carefully analyzed the problem of working holiday, and many agencies or employers are deterred by the limitation that they can only work for the same employer for 3 months. They do not want to make trouble. Therefore, I also wrote a feasibility report and implementation method on transferring working holiday to Work Visa. Since the agent or employer doesn’t want to take the time to research immigration policy, we help them do their homework.

While dealing with my weaknesses, I also want to highlight my strengths. You know what they say, when you want something, the world comes to help you. I met and made friends with many senior Chinese engineers during the job hunt. With their help, I revised my resume and cover letter so that it fully suited local people’s taste and highlighted my work experience and technical background.

Change from quantity to quality

After the above rectification, I returned to the job market and continued to apply for positions.

And start the first month, phone interview more slowly up, the interview process communication is smooth, fully let the interviewer know in my case, it seems that everything went well, the problem is that an interview has been still stay on the phone interview, and the mediation of a phone interview, also did not have an employer interview chance.

As the price of New Zealand is relatively high, we are looking at the savings in our account becoming less and less as we spend each day. At this rate, we will run out of money in less than 2 months, but we have no clue about our work. Back when we burned our Bridges, gave up everything at home, came to a strange country with boundless hope for the future, but gradually lost hope. I began to get impatient.

I want to give special thanks to my wife, who encouraged me when I was about to give up and believed that I could do it. Even if I didn’t succeed, we could go back to China and start again. There is no shame in being young and not afraid of failure. I’m sure I couldn’t have gone on without her constant encouragement.

With my wife’s encouragement, I continued to send out resumes and conduct phone interviews. In order to strengthen our English skills, we also participated in the free English training of the English Department of the University of Auckland. In order to solve the financial problem of our life, my wife began to do daigou. Slowly, things began to improve, and the opportunity for interviews shifted from phone interviews to face-to-face interviews with agencies.

One of the agencies saw my skills and started recommending me to employers. That’s how I landed my first real interview with an employer. Funnily enough, I was personally excited to be interviewing for my first employer, but getting too excited is not a good thing.

Throughout the interview, I turned my interview with the employer into a personal talk show. A week later, the agency got feedback from the employer that the candidate was more suitable for sales. After having many interview experiences, I also performed better and better. Like quantity to quality change, gradually employers began to interview more.

Hard work pays off. With excellent skills and experience, I got two offers from New Zealand operators in the face of extremely unfavorable visa conditions, and successfully applied for Work Visa one month later. Two months later, I submitted EOI with high scores on the condition of high skill shortage and was selected without any doubt. And received a New Zealand resident visa on Christmas Eve. It took eight months from landing and looking for a job to getting a resident visa.

Afterword.

Time flies, time flies. During these years in New Zealand, I changed from a newcomer to a core technical backbone admired by my colleagues, and won the annual Technical Expert award of the whole company. Life is also from a young teenager to become a father. Again, there are sweat and tears, as well as happiness and happiness.

The original reference: http://gingerbeer.blog.51cto.com/625855/1962179

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