It’s a Capital move

A scheme offering foreigners free holidays if they undertake a series of job interviews in Wellington has attracted almost 200,000 expressions of interest in a month.

Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency ( WREDA) has been stunned by the level of interest in its ratepayer-supported LookSee initiative — a bid to lure 100 techsavvy people to the capital.

Free return flights and accommodation are on offer for those who commit to four days of arranged job interviews and meetings — and WREDA’s general manager, Dave Jones, says the response has been staggering.

“It’s about 185,000 expressions of interest and applications,” Jones said.

“It’s well in excess of what we originally forecast.

“Obviously we only get 100 people here for that week, but we would have been happy getting in the order of 5000 applications.

“We’re going to get massively more than that.”

According to WREDA, a number of candidates hold senior roles at major tech brands including Facebook, Google and Amazon.

“About 35 per cent of [applications] are from the US, but below that you’ve got India, Brazil, Philippines, UK, Singapore, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada and Croatia — they’re the top ones.”

The programme is open to all New Zealand businesses with tech operations in the Wellington region and there is no cost to employers to take part until they make a hire as a result.

The cost associated with a successful hire is a flat fee that is “significantly lower” than market rates for conventional recruitment for mid to seniorlevel IT professionals.

More than 20 employers are signed-up including Xero, Trade Me and Weta Digital.