Andrew came to New Zealand from China and couldn’t find a job, but after joining Industry Connect, he’s just received two job offers. Now all he has to do is pick one!
But before he does, we sat down with him to ask about his time with us and how we helped him land his first job in New Zealand.
Firstly Andrew, huge congratulations! Tell us about your experience both in the New Zealand job market and overseas before you came to Industry Connect.
I came to New Zealand last year, and before coming here I had about 8 years experience in developing software for the petrochemical industry in China. But when I came here, I sent a lot of CVs to companies, but didn’t get any feedback.
Then last August I heard about Industry Connect, and the many success stories you guys had. I applied to become an intern here and now I’ve had two job offers!
Two job offers! That’s awesome! When you were here at Industry Connect, do you want to tell us a little bit about the technical skills that you picked up that helped you secure those job offers?
Before I came to Industry Connect, I was mainly a developer for C++, but when I started here, I started to learn C#, .Net, MSSQL Server, HTML, CSS and JQuery. These things were all very useful for web development, and so I’m more confident with these technologies and being a web developer.
So I suppose the technical skills are one side of it, but definitely helping with it is the soft skills side to doing it. Do you want to tell us about some soft skills that you picked up and also how those helped you in securing your two job offers?
At Industry Connect and in class I improved my soft skills. I learned how to work under a Kiwi company – it’s very different from working for a Chinese company. I improved my English and my skills of teamwork. Every day we have stand-up meetings where we talk to each other and help each other with the project. So it was these soft skills that helped me find a job in New Zealand.
So for anyone who is in the same position as you, they just moved over to New Zealand from overseas and for whatever reason they were struggling to find companies that would take them on, what would your advice to them be if they were considering Industry Connect?
My advice is to try Industry Connect. Here you will learn all the useful skills for searching for a job in New Zealand. You can improve your soft skills and you will find a good job here in New Zealand, absolutely, so trust me.
Well huge congratulations Andrew on securing not one but two job offers, it’s so exciting and we wish you all the best for the future.
If you would like to follow in Andrew’s footsteps and find your first job in New Zealand through us, please contact us today for more information.
What is Industry Connect?
We have been helping career changers, recent IT graduates and people with career gap to start their IT/software careers.
Over the years, we have helped hundreds kick-start an IT/software career. (Verifiable evidences are available on this website)
OUR CORE
We are an innovative software training school backed by global/local software companies. Our ecosystem is an incubation process that supports our participants until they launch a tech career.
OUR PROGRAMMES
Our Job-Ready training programmes focus on,
- Software Development
- Business Intelligence (or Data Analyst)
- Test Analyst
PROGRAMME STRUCTURE
- Six Weeks Training Classes (Practical Tech Skills)
- Three Months (or more) Structured Internship on Large Commercial-Scale Projects (Learning enhanced, flexible Hours)
- Employer Network (job analysis and internal referral if goals are met)
You can join us via Zoom (live face-to-face meeting) remotely from anywhere and "download" the valuable knowledge & experiences from our tech experts across different tech centres.
Watch 300+ Stories of Career Starters in IT/Software
Click the image to watch those who changed their careers to IT, had gap years and recent IT graduates.
