Jobs seekers look to find work, change careers at Great South Job Search event in Invercargill

Thursday, 1 July 2021

Pete Little perusing the more than 870 advertisements on the first day of the Great South Job Search in Invercargill.

More than 870 available jobs have drawn high interest from Southlanders on the first day of this year's Great South Job Search.

Event organiser and Youth Futures team manager Renata Gill said that she had been pleased with the turnout during the first hour of the event on Thursday morning.

Despite a seminar on CVs being in progress upstairs, the ground floor section of the Invercargill Public Library was bustling with eager job seekers.

Murray Burn, of Invercargill, was at the Great South run event looking for “safer work with a less aggressive mentality” following a workplace injury late in May.

* Record vacancies as Great South Job Search kicks off in Southland

* Southland girls get a crack a tradie jobs

He had previously been working as a concrete labourer before two abrasions in his eye had pushed him to consider “stepping up” his career.

Burn said that assistance at the event had been ‘’really helpful”, and that he was considering looking into apprenticeships as an option after speaking to trades representatives.

Crispin Espiritu, also of Invercargill, was looking for full-time work and considering getting involved in the electrical trade after discussion with vendors.

Espiritu has been a New Zealand permanent resident for five years. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, he worked on a ship that travelled around the world, and has prior electrical experience.

The birth of his first child a year ago had encouraged Espiritu to start looking for more work, but prioritising caring for an infant had been a barrier in finding employment.

Espiritu said that staff had been exceptionally helpful in providing advice, and described the event as a positive experience with a large amount of positions available.

The high number of available positions is consistent with recent comments from ANZ tipping the economy to reach “full employment” by 2023.

ANZ said it was expecting unemployment to drop to a 16-year-low of below 4 per cent by 2023. Job vacancies were “well above record highs” in all regions tracked by the bank.

“The border closure is a real constraint on labour supply that doesn’t appear likely to be resolved any time soon,” it said.

Unemployment in the Southland region was at 3.5 per cent at the close of the last quarter, but had dropped as low as 3.3 per cent in the December 2020 quarter.

The Great South Job Search, which kicked off in Gore earlier this week, will be held between 10.00am to 4.00pm on Friday and 10.00am to 2.00pm on Saturday in Invercargill.