Getting your first job in NZ after study

Where entry-level and graduate jobs are listed

Entry-level roles are advertised in the same places as everything else: Seek, LinkedIn, Indeed, Student Job Search, ZEIL and company careers pages. Search for "graduate", "junior", "trainee" and "entry level" as well as job titles, because first roles often have titles you have not come across yet.

For government work, Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission lists public service graduate programmes and internships, and most public service agencies can advertise on jobs.govt.nz, where a RealMe login lets you set up job alerts. The graduate programmes on that list run from one to three years and several internships are marked as paused, so check each agency's page for dates. The public-sector guide explains how those applications work.

A CV with no work experience

Employers hiring for a first job know you have not had one yet. They are not looking for a work history. They are looking for signs that you turn up when you say you will, learn quickly, can be trusted with people and money, and finish what you start. The evidence for that is usually already in your life. Your CV's job is to find it and write it down plainly.

What goes where the jobs would go

Replace the "Work experience" heading with "Experience", and count everything that showed responsibility, paid or not:

• School, study and projects: a group project with a deadline, a science fair or business studies venture, a portfolio, a code repository, a student council or prefect role, a production you helped run.
• Sport, clubs and groups: captaining a team, coaching juniors, refereeing, running a club's social media, kapa haka, a band, a youth group or church group where you had a job to do.
• Volunteering: a charity shop, a food bank, a beach clean-up, a marae working bee, a school or community event.
• Whānau and caring responsibilities: looking after younger brothers and sisters after school, caring for a grandparent, helping in a family business or on the farm. These show reliability as clearly as any job.
• Side work: babysitting, lawn mowing, dog walking, tutoring, a paper run, selling things you made or no longer need online. Earning your own money, keeping customers and turning up on time is work experience.
• NCEA or qualification results, only where they help: an endorsement, a subject that matches the job (maths for a bank or accounts role, food technology for a café), or a course you finished. Leave grades off if they do not help your case.

Put the strongest group first. For a school leaver that is often education; for someone who has volunteered or worked informally for a year or two, it is that.

Turn each one into an evidence line

A line that names an activity tells the reader nothing. A line that says what you did and what came of it is evidence. Use the same shape every time: a verb, what you did, and the result or the scale.

Start each line with an action word: ran, organised, looked after, served, built, taught, sold, fixed, trained. Keep each one to a line or two, and two or three lines under each heading is plenty.

Skills: evidence, not adjectives

"Hard-working, reliable team player with excellent communication skills" is on nearly every first CV, so it tells an employer nothing. Instead, list a few skills you can prove, each with where you used it:

• Customer service: served customers on the counter at the charity shop.
• Cash handling: ran the till at the school gala.
• Computer skills, named: Excel, Google Docs, Canva, rather than "good with computers".
• Licences and certificates: your learner, restricted or full driver licence, a first aid certificate, a barista or food safety course.
• Languages: te reo Māori, Samoan, Mandarin or any other language you speak, and how well.

An example first CV

Here is a short CV for an invented school leaver looking for part-time retail or café work. It fits on one page.

Notice what is not there: no photo, no date of birth, no full street address and no long list of adjectives. Every line is something Mia did.

How long, and what to leave off

• One page is usually enough for a first CV, and two at most. A strong single page beats two padded ones.
• No photo, date of birth or age. New Zealand employers do not expect them, and the CV guide linked below explains why they are better left off.
• No IRD number or bank account number. An employer needs those only once you are hired, on your tax code form and for your pay.
• Your suburb or town is enough for your address, with a mobile number and an email address that sounds grown up.
• Right to work: if you are a New Zealand citizen or resident, you do not need to say so. If you are on a visa, add one plain line with its type and expiry date.

The CV guide has the other New Zealand conventions, and the free CV Builder saves a PDF with no account needed.

Referees

You do not need a past boss. A teacher, a coach, a volunteer coordinator, a youth group leader or the family you babysit for can all be referees, as long as they are not your own relatives. Ask them first, tell them what kind of job you are applying for, and remind them of something specific you did. A manager from a part-time job or a lecturer works too once you have one. The references guide has a short script for briefing them.

Internships, work trials and unpaid work

Employment New Zealand is clear about the difference. A paid internship should pay at least the relevant minimum wage, with all the usual employment rights. On an unpaid internship you are a volunteer, and employment law does not apply apart from health and safety law. That only holds if it is genuinely voluntary: the employer should confirm in writing that it is a volunteer position, should not gain an economic benefit from your work or have you doing tasks integral to the business, and should limit how long it lasts and how many hours you do. The longer you volunteer and the more hours you put in, the more likely it is that you are legally an employee.

A work trial during an interview follows the same logic. Employment New Zealand's example is that asking a barista to make two or three coffees is acceptable, but a whole shift, or even a few hours, would likely be employment, and employment has to be paid.

The minimum wage when you are starting out

From 1 April 2026 the adult minimum wage is $23.95 an hour, and the starting-out and training minimum wages are both $19.16 an hour. The starting-out rate can only be paid if you are:

• 16 or 17, and have not yet worked for your current employer for 6 continuous months
• 18 or 19, have been paid a specified benefit continuously for 6 months or more, and have not worked for one employer for 6 continuous months since the benefit started
• 16 to 19, and doing industry training worth at least 40 credits a year

The training rate is for people 20 or over doing at least 60 credits a year of formal industry training, such as an apprenticeship. Otherwise, from 20 the adult rate applies from your first hour. There is no minimum wage for employees under 16, and under-16s must work outside school hours and not between 10 at night and 6 in the morning.

Tax codes and your student loan

Fill in your tax code declaration (IR330) on day one. Without it, your employer must deduct tax at the non-notified rate of 45%. For your main job the code is usually:

• M, the standard code for your main income, or
• ME, if you are a New Zealand tax resident with annual net income between $24,000 and $70,000, and neither you nor your partner receives Working for Families (and you do not receive a main benefit or NZ Super). It gives you the independent earner tax credit through your pay.

Add SL (M SL or ME SL) if you have a New Zealand student loan. A second job uses a secondary code (SB, S, SH, ST or SA, depending on your annual income), again with SL if you have a loan. The IR330's flowcharts help, and Inland Revenue says choosing the right code helps you avoid a bill at the end of the tax year.

Student loan repayments start once you earn over Inland Revenue's repayment threshold of $24,128 a year (about $464 a week or $928 a fortnight), where it has stayed since April 2024. In your main job, 12% of every dollar over the threshold goes to your loan; in a secondary job, 12% of every dollar does. If you are studying full-time and expect your income from all sources to stay under the annual threshold, you may qualify for a repayment deduction exemption.

KiwiSaver on your first job

If you are aged 18 to 65, eligible and not already a member, your employer must automatically enrol you in KiwiSaver when you start a new job. From 1 April 2026 the default is 3.5% of your pay from you, matched by 3.5% from your employer, rising to 4% each from 1 April 2028. You can choose 3.5%, 4%, 6%, 8% or 10%.

• Opting out: if you were automatically enrolled, you can opt out from day 14 to day 56 of starting work, and you have to do it again at every new job.
• Aged 16 or 17: if you are a member, you qualify for employer contributions of 3.5% of your pay from 1 April 2026.
• The government contribution: from age 16, the government adds 25 cents for each dollar you contribute between 1 July and 30 June, up to $260.72, which takes $1,042.86 of your own money. You do not qualify if your taxable income is over $180,000.

Your first week: the paperwork

• A written employment agreement. Every employee must have one. Your employer should give you a copy and time to read it and get advice before you start work. A 90-day trial period is not valid unless you sign the agreement before you start.
• An IRD number. If you do not have one, apply free through myIR, then take your original ID to an AA Driver Licensing Agent within 20 days. Online applications get the number within 10 working days, and you keep it for life.
• A bank account in your own name. An employer needs your account number, never your banking password. The job scams guide covers the other warning signs.
• A check of your first pay against your agreement: the hourly rate, hours paid, tax code, and KiwiSaver and student loan deductions.

Looking for more than one kind of job

Your first job out of study does not have to be the one your degree is named after, and many graduates apply for two or three kinds of role at once, sometimes in different cities. That is sensible, as long as each application is written for its own path rather than one CV sent everywhere.

In jobtracker.co.nz each path can be its own job hunt, with its own board, stages and deadlines: choose + New hunt from the job hunt list, or Start another job hunt in Settings, and name it for the path, like "Marketing, Wellington". Switching between them is one tap, and nothing from one path clutters the other.