Changing careers in New Zealand

Start with what transfers

Tahatū Career Navigator, the careers service run by the Tertiary Education Commission, names seven employability skills employers look for: a positive attitude, communication, teamwork, self-management, willingness to learn, resilience, and thinking skills such as problem solving and decision making. You build them through work, study, hobbies and community involvement, and they come with you into a new field. To find what else transfers:

1. List what you actually did in your last two or three roles, unpaid ones included, as tasks: "rostered a crew of twelve", "handled complaints", "built the monthly budget".
2. Collect ten real job ads in the new field from Seek, LinkedIn, ZEIL and company careers pages, and highlight every requirement.
3. Sort the requirements into three piles: ones you can already prove, ones a small project or short course would let you prove, and ones that need a qualification, licence or registration.
4. The third pile is your retraining list. If it's short, you may be able to apply now with a well-aimed CV.

Test the field before you commit

Find out whether you like the work before you pay to train for it. Tahatū's advice is that short courses, micro-credentials, projects and volunteer work are low-risk ways to explore options and grow skills.

• Informational interviews. Ask three or four people who do the job for twenty minutes, and say up front that you want information rather than a job.
• Job shadowing and volunteering. Tahatū lists shadowing a mentor as they do their job, and volunteering with organisations such as school committees, youth organisations and environmental and cultural groups, as ways to get work experience.
• A short course before a long one. If you're on a benefit, Course Participation Assistance may help with the cost (see the table below).
• Part-time or seasonal work in the new field, which Tahatū notes can lead to full-time work.

Questions worth asking in an informational interview:

Use the government careers tools

careers.govt.nz now redirects to Tahatū Career Navigator (tahatu.govt.nz). The most useful parts for a change:

• Interest quiz: 48 questions based on John Holland's theory of career choice, giving an interest profile across six types linked to career ideas.
• Explore career ideas, with more than 800 careers, and Path Finder, which starts from a job you're interested in and sets out the education options and steps to get there.
• Explore study and training: more than 4,000 qualifications and courses.
• Career advice by phone on 0800 601 301, Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 5pm, and from 9.30am on Wednesdays.

Jobtracker's Career Compass, in the Tools tab of the app, asks 60 questions about what you enjoy rather than what you're qualified for, matches the shape of your interests to New Zealand occupations, and lets you start a job search from any match. It's modelled on the structure of the public-domain O*NET Interest Profiler. Treat any interest profile as one input alongside pay, hours, training and what's hiring near you.

What retraining costs, and what helps

Fees vary by provider and programme, so get the real figure from the provider first, then check what you can get towards fees and living costs. The main government schemes as at September 2026:

On Jobseeker Support? Talk to Work and Income before you enrol. You can't get Jobseeker Support while studying full-time, but part-time study can work if you stay available for, and keep looking for, full-time work of at least 30 hours a week. See Job hunting on Jobseeker Support.

Apprenticeships at any age

In an apprenticeship you work for an employer and earn while you learn a trade. Tahatū says you must be 16 or older and there's no upper age limit. A tertiary education provider arranges the training and works with you and your employer on a plan for learning on and off the job.

• Pay. The adult minimum wage is $23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026. An employer can pay the training minimum wage, $19.16, instead only if you're 20 or over and your employment agreement requires you to do at least 60 credits a year of an industry training programme to become qualified in the area you work in. Ask what your rate becomes at each stage, and get it in your employment agreement.
• Apprenticeship Boost pays eligible employers $500 a month, excluding GST, for up to 12 months while an apprentice is in their first year, if the qualification is covered. It's worth raising with an employer who is unsure.
• Fees Free for the final two years of work-based learning closes with the rest of the scheme.

A CV for a career change

Tahatū describes a work-focused CV, for people with experience or changing jobs, and a skills-focused CV, for people with little experience or gaps in their work history. A career change usually needs a blend:

1. A profile that names the move: "Secondary maths teacher moving into data analysis, completing a data analytics certificate in June 2027."
2. Relevant skills next, under the headings the target ads use, each with one line of evidence from any role, paid or unpaid.
3. A brief work history, rewritten in the new field's language, so a teacher's "wrote reports" becomes "reported progress to 150 families each term".
4. Study, courses and projects for the new field, with completion dates, moved near the top if they're your strongest evidence.

Keep it to two pages if you can, which is Tahatū's advice and within the two to three pages our CV guide calls normal, and let the cover letter explain the change. How to write a CV in New Zealand covers local conventions, the free CV Builder saves a PDF, and Writing a cover letter in New Zealand has an opening for a career changer.

Taking a pay step back

Moving fields can mean starting near the bottom of a new pay scale. Work out whether you can live on it using take-home pay, not the salary on the offer.

• Compare after tax. PAYE, the ACC earners' levy, KiwiSaver and any student loan repayments come out first. Because PAYE rates rise with income, a salary cut takes less off your take-home pay than the headline drop suggests. The free Offer Comparer puts two salaries side by side with 2026/27 IRD rates, with no sign-up.
• Check whether KiwiSaver is on top or included. The default employer contribution is 3.5% from April 2026.
• Work out your runway. If take-home pay won't cover your outgoings at first, your savings divided by the weekly shortfall is how many weeks the change can run.
• Negotiate the path as well as the start: when the rate is reviewed, what moves it, and what a fully qualified person earns. Salary negotiation in New Zealand has the words.