(She Said, For the Hundredth Time)
There’s a particular kind of experience that New Zealand recruiters know well. A company with an Australian head office needs to hire in New Zealand – a real role, based here, for people who live here – and somewhere north of the Tasman, a decision gets made to run the process themselves, or through their existing Australian agencies.
New Zealand recruiters need not apply.
Look, I understand the logic. Consolidated supplier lists are tidy. Established agency relationships feel comfortable. And from a distance, specifically, from about 2,700 kilometres away, New Zealand and Australia probably look like a reasonable bet for a one-size-fits-all approach.
We do share a lot, to be fair. A love of rugby. An appreciation for a good flat white. The occasional argument about who invented the pavlova (it was us, by the way, and we will not be taking questions).
But when it comes to hiring? We’re genuinely different, and that matters more than people realise.
The employment law, for starters, is not the same. New Zealand operates under the Employment Relations Act 2000, not Australia’s Fair Work Act. Our frameworks around good faith obligations, trial periods, redundancy, and what constitutes a fair dismissal have their own distinct shape. When an Australian recruiter is briefing candidates on a New Zealand role, are they across those nuances? Are they setting the right expectations from day one? These aren’t small details — they’re the kind of thing that can quietly create problems long after the hire is made.
Then there’s the market itself. New Zealand’s talent market is small, relationship-driven, and frankly a little bit wonderful in its own specific way. The salary benchmarks are different. The candidate’s motivations are different. The networks that matter have been built here, over years, through actual conversations with actual humans in actual New Zealand. An Auckland recruiter knows who’s quietly open to a move, which roles have been unsuccessfully running for six months, and how the company’s reputation actually lands on the ground – not just what the careers page says.
That knowledge doesn’t transfer across the Tasman. It’s not an insult to Australian recruiters to say that – I’d be equally lost trying to map the Sydney market, and I’d be the first to admit it.
And the candidate experience matters too. Someone exploring a role in New Zealand deserves to speak with someone who can genuinely speak to the local context – the team, the culture, the commute, what it’s actually like to work there. “I’ll need to check with our New Zealand contact on that” is a real answer I’ve heard candidates receive. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
None of this is about drawing battle lines across the Tasman. It’s just a gentle – okay, moderately direct – reminder that geography matters in recruitment. The efficiency you’re trying to create at the supplier level can quietly become inefficiency in the actual hiring process, and risk you didn’t see coming.
So if you’re an Australian-headquartered business hiring in New Zealand: partner with someone who knows this market. Brief a local agency. Let us do what we’re genuinely good at.
We promise we won’t bring up the pavlova thing again.
(We might bring it up again.)
First published in Sarah’s LinkedIn newsletter, Recruitment Rambles. Read the original edition on LinkedIn.
