Skilled migrant and self employment

I'm a self employed quantity surveyor and put in my covering letter with the PR application that I wanted to do that there, I showed that I had researched the market for business opportunities but recognized it may be hard with no network and would therefore consider work through agencies or take employment to get established.

What a can of worms that opened. 'Serious concerns' and 'SM7 - The aim of providing points for skilled employment is not met by a person undertaking employment in their own business rather than for a third party. ' :icon_eek: icon_exclaim.gif

I did a two page response to that; quoted from the guidelines that were quoted to me to demonstrate a professional service does fulfil the SM criteria better than the business category, that it is how the labour market is going, that Dept of Labour recognise growth in contract work particularly in construction yada yada yada.

From the discussion in the interview went I was expecting not to get PR, but to get WTR instead to force me into employment initially. Thankfully it didn't and we got PR. I do actually believe it would be a good move to take full time employment initially anyway to kick start a network and give work experience in NZ, but at least i've retained control of that decision.

So skilled migrant applications + talk of self employment = potential hassle with NZIS. Think carefully about how to word the covering letter!


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