As the subject says, it’s time to sort things out in London. This post is going to be a bit of a vent in some ways so if you’re interested in how things are going, read on …

We arrived in London on the 21st of February and after a week or so of mucking about, during which I should’ve been trying harder to find work, the task of actually finding work had to begin for real. I had already emailed about 40 recruiters in London and been knocked down a peg or two pretty quickly. My personal situation can be summed up pretty quick as far as working in the UK goes.

Firstly, I reckon my CV is pretty good (that link is to the short version, prepared for UK recruiters) and the responses from recruiters seemed to echo that feeling. They invariably asked the question I should’ve answered in the emails I sent out, i.e. do you currently have the right to work in the UK? "I like your CV Chris, what’s your work permit situation like?" This is where things get tricky so I’ll make a few points.

- I’m a New Zealand citizen and both my parents are New Zealand citizens too (because neither of my parents have dual-nationality, I don’t either). This kills my eligibility to live and work in the UK under an ancestry visa.
- I have completed a Diploma in Business Computing but don’t have a bachelor’s degree - this rules out the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.
- I’m over 30 so no working holiday for me.
- My partner and I haven’t lived at the same address for 2 years running so, even though she has been granted the HSMP, I can’t work and live in the UK on a dependancy visa (which, like the HSMP, gives the greatest amount of flexibility for where you’re allowed to work, what type of work and what sort of changes can be made to your permit etc).

So, as you can see the most common options have been crossed off for me which means I only have 1 option left - the work permit scheme. The problem with this scheme is that a company in the UK must be willing to offer employment AND be willing to sponsor a work permit, something that’s not at all common unfortunately. The process is difficult, costs money and even if they were willing to go through it all, the application still be declined by the UK home office the initial application stage or, even worse, at the point where a work permit has been granted but the application for entry clearance is declined. Let’s be honest here - the UK government makes it tough to work in the UK if you’re in a situation similar to mine. Everyone I know here in London has either a UK passport or ancestry visa or arrived initially on a working holiday - I don’t think some people realise how easy things are with that little booklet.

So the next step, after finding all this out, was to get on the ‘net and hunt down websites for some of the biggest companies around. HP, IBM, Symantec, ESRI, WH Smith etc, I’ve contacted them all. The response from a lot of them has been the same as the recruiters - if you don’t already have the right work in the UK then we can’t help. Stumped at every turn it seems.

It sucks and yet it’s a bit of a wake-up call - I know more now about working in the UK than I had ever planned to learn before so it’s all been a very interesting experience so far. At the moment I have to keep contacting people and hope that someone will have a client that sponsors work permits or that I get a reply from a company who sponsors work permits. The fact is that if I don’t manage to get some good news within the next month or so I’ll be leaving the UK and that’d be a shame to say the least.

I’m not complaining though because I guess everything does happen for a reason. Living in London, even temporarily, is something that we’ve had to adapt to pretty quickly though so I’m thankful for that! I’ll throw something else up on this site when I get news.

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General, Non Technical, Non-Technical - Travel