Speculative applications in NZ: how to approach an employer that isn't hiring

When a speculative approach works, and when it does not

Many roles are filled without being advertised, especially in smaller organisations: in MBIE's 2025 Employment Monitor, 51% of workers in micro businesses said they got their job through friends or family. Owners and managers there often would rather hire someone who got in touch than run a recruitment process. A well-aimed approach can land at exactly the moment they are thinking about hiring. Our article on the hidden job market covers how much of the market works this way.

It works best when you can answer three questions: why this organisation, why now, and what specifically you would do for them. It works poorly when you cannot. A generic email to many companies at once, or to a large organisation's general inbox, rarely gets read, and large employers often route every enquiry to their careers page.

It also helps to have a person to write to. The hiring manager, the head of the team or, in a small business, the owner, is far more likely to reply than an info@ address.

Researching the company first

Spend twenty minutes finding out who they are and what might be changing:

• Their own website and social media: what they do, who leads the team you want to join, and any news, projects or growth.
• The Companies Register and the NZBN register: for a company, who the directors are, when it was formed and its registered office. Useful for knowing who you are writing to and how established the business is.
• Hiring signals: recent ads for other roles, new contracts, a new office, funding, or a leader who has just started. Growth often means more roles to come.
• People you know: anyone in your network who works there, or knows someone who does. An introduction beats a cold email every time.

The 120-word email

Keep it short enough to read in thirty seconds. Name the person, say why them, say what you offer, and ask for one small thing.

Attach a CV tailored to them, not your general one. Keep your email signature plain. Our guide to writing a cover letter in New Zealand covers how to show fit in few words.

New Zealand's spam law covers commercial messages that promote goods or services, and it takes its meaning of services from the Consumer Guarantees Act, which excludes work under an employment contract. On our reading, a genuine one-to-one email asking about a job is very unlikely to count as spam. The Department of Internal Affairs says a link to a business website in your signature would make an email commercial, so keep your signature plain, and if you are pitching as a contractor or freelancer, follow the spam rules.

Following up once, then stopping

If there is no reply after a week or ten days, send one short follow-up: a line to say you are still interested, perhaps with a small piece of news or something relevant you have noticed about their work. Then stop. Two unanswered emails is a clear answer for now.

A polite no, or "not at the moment", is worth keeping. Thank them, ask whether you can check back in a few months, and note the date. Circumstances change quickly in small organisations, and the person who said no in March may be hiring in June.

Logging it like any other application

Treat each approach like an application: record who you wrote to, when, what you sent and when to follow up. Without that, it is easy to email the same person twice or forget to follow up at all.

In jobtracker.co.nz, you can add a job with no ad, set it to Applied when you send the email, and add the person as a contact. Once it has been quiet for ten days, it appears on your Do this next list with "Chase it up"; after your one follow-up, close it if nothing comes back. Each employer's page also links to the Companies Office search and the NZBN register for your research. You can see how applications and contacts sit together in the demo, which needs no account.

Treat every approach like an application