COVID-19

COVID-19 has put many peoples lives on hold, it is probably the most talked about 'word' around at the moment.

The impact of this outbreak has even affected me and my blog. I have not had time to get to my next post about the Interview process. Due to lockdown and shifting to work from home, the massive amount of clients calling and emailing around the wage support, etc that the Government has brought out, I just have not had time for anything else.

It is great working from home but difficult juggling a toddler around and getting all your hours worked.😁

Be safe out there, let's get this virus under control.

Hopefully I will get the following post out soon.

The job search experience

Ahhh, one of the most important pieces of the puzzle to emigrating, made a bit more difficult because of the visa criteria of New Zealand. As I mentioned in another post, no job no visa, but no visa and you are going to battle to find a job. A real catch 22. Well the only way then is to find an employer that is willing to employ you, offer you a good salary and be willing to wait for your Visa to be approved. Perfectly easy 🤣

So where does one start?🤔 You need to get yourself assessed by an immigration agent, know if you qualify and if you have a pathway to residency. Get yourself document ready, in other words, get all documents sorted that, when you get that illusive job offer, you can apply for a work visa immediately. Then get ready for late night and early morning phone calls, discussions with recruiters and job interviews. It is a long process until you actually get the interview. Here is what I did, it eventually worked but I will also mention where I went wrong and what was a total waste of time and money. 

Everybody was saying you need to change your CV to a New Zealand format.📝 Get a professional to do it, get your LinkedIn profile sorted to attract the right people, build your connections. This costs quite a bit when you use a professional for that. Does it help? I say NO, a total waste of money. Maybe it is just the case with my process but my recruiter totally re-wrote my entire CV anyway and it was better than the one I paid for.

But I had my CV done and my LinkedIn updated. I then job searched and searched and reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn. I applied directly for probably around 80 jobs with no success at all, not even an interview from anybody I applied to directly. Finally one recruiter reached out to me with an interview, and then a second interview. I also reached out to another recruiter that I had heard a lot of positive feedback of and almost begged her to help me. 

This is where things started getting exciting and more positive. She called and chatted away to find out who I am, what I want and to get to know me personally. She then targeted employers that she thought I would fit in with personality wise. I had four interviews lined up through her plus the other two. Stress levels started to peak, I made notes about the employer's and more notes for answers to the usual questions so that I did not stumble on my words. These were stuck all around my PC screen as the interviews were all via Skype and ZOOM. 

(Okay maybe not that bad)

The recruiter mentored me, told me what I need to say and what not, how to answer the questions, how to dress and all I needed to do to have a positive interview.

Some of these interviews were late night interviews, others very early in the morning. One has to do what needs to be done to look great, feel awake and impress the socks off your new employer haha.... I prepared myself before the time, put my clothes out beforehand, had a cup of coffee so that the caffeine could do its thing, checked my internet connection 30 mins before the interview, talked to myself to get my voice warm and ready and then waited. Remember to check the lighting on your side, how you look on the monitor, shades on your face, etc. I had to put a lamp on the one side so that I had enough light on my face. And check your background, you don't want your laundry or something like that in the video🤣 

The normal Skype ringing tone starts and your heart beats faster, you take one deep breath, put on that gorgeous smile and click the button....ACTION 🎬

To be continued with "The Interview"

Have a read here as well, great post

How to Get that Dream Accounting Job

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get-dream-accounting-job-blake-mather

Hyperemesis Gravidarum

Whatttttt, HG and emigrating 

Well I did say my blog would also be about life. And this is part of our lives, a part that we are going through at the moment. It is a pregnancy condition that sadly is not understood by many, including a lot of health professionals.

My wife has had her 3rd HG pregnancy. We unfortunately lost our 1st baby because her body just could not cope with the illness. YES, it is an illness that is understood by only a few. The healthcare service here in New Zealand look at you as if you just cannot cope with morning sickness. But frankly, I don't give a flying f@&# what they think, I know what my wife is going through, I know what a strong lady she is. I know that she is a survivor as we have one beautiful child.😚 We need to get more people informed, especially Dr's and nurses in small towns. They have no real idea how such a person feels and thus not enough empathy. This in turn lets the patient feel as if she is worthless and not strong enough. NOT FAIR !!! 

Have a read here and maybe you will understand it better. Maybe you are a health professional and can help a woman going through this. Maybe you can just support a friend or colleague better that might be suffering from this illness.

"Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) is a debilitating and potentially life-threatening pregnancy disease that may cause weight loss, malnutrition, and dehydration due to severe nausea and/or vomiting with potential adverse consequences for the mom-to-be and the newborn(s)."

From HER Foundation

https://www.helpher.org/blog/her-foundation-online-hg-support-group/

https://www.noted.co.nz/health/health-health/hyperemesis-kate-middletons-rare-pregnancy-condition

https://thespinoff.co.nz/parenting/18-07-2017/when-pregnancy-is-hell-what-hyperemesis-is-really-like/?amp&__twitter_impression=true

https://kidspot.co.nz/pregnancy/what-hyperemesis-gravidarum-feels-like/

Not only does it effect the mother, it effects the entire family mentally and emotionally as well. Our toddler battled tremendously to cope with mommy being soo sick😢. She just was too small to understand, she tried helping mommy and was very sweet, but it shattered me to see her suffer. Then she became difficult and was seeking negative attention, anything for attention from sick mommy, which mommy just did not have the strength to give to her. I was trying to juggle my job with taking care of my wife and family. Late nights, early mornings, nights up with a toddler, something somewhere was going to give in. Well a mothers body can only take so much and we have made peace that we will only have one beautiful child.💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

Thanks for reading my post on HG. An illness that is a big part of our lives, just another part of the journey we are on.

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Selling your assets to emigrate

In my previous post I discussed our process of making the decision to emigrate and our choice of New Zealand.

https://jacquesramblings.blogspot.com/2020/02/decisions-decisions-decisions.html?m=1

The next steps were selling our business', our cars and our home. O yes and many years of extra stuff we had gathered. A good cleanup does no harm and a container can only take so much. That brings me to another decision we had to make. What do we take, what do we leave, will we buy everything new when we arrive, or not? If we decide to ship all our appliances etc, what will we do until our container comes? Will the decision making ever end 😥.

Well in the end we decided to take our newer appliances and everything of personal value with us. The rest we sold and then we can buy or lend what we need till our container arrives. It worked well for us.

Back to selling our assets. This was not easy and unfortunately not very successful. Well selling the car went well, the house not too bad, (although taking advantage of a seller in a small town is the norm) but the business...o well. Living in a small town had its advantages, but when you want to sell your assets you have a big disadvantage. The quantity of buyers are small and those that are available know you are desperate, so they take advantage of you. I ended up selling my business for a third of what it was valued just to get it sold so that we can take the next step.  I don't want to make this post too long, so let's continue with the job search in a future post.

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