Seasonal jobs website increasingly popular
A website connecting seasonal jobseekers and employers has seen a huge surge in activity as summer fruit and meat processing activity picks up after winter.
Last month, the Ministry of Social Development’s Work the Seasons online jobs platform saw a 169 per cent jump in the number of horticulture jobs posted by employers, from 271 in September to 728 in October.
At the same time, there was a 25 per cent increase in the number of new jobseeker registrations, from 875 to 1097.
There are 1064 job vacancies on the website, which was launched in March 2018, with 10,707 jobseekers registered along with 507 employers.
At Hope, Hoddy’s Fruit Company expects to hire about 100 seasonal staff for packing over its busy season, which runs from February to May. Compliance and logistics manager Mel Ewers said the coming season was looking ‘‘very positive’’, as fruit set was good.
About 40 per cent of Hoddy’s seasonal workers are local or New Zealand-based returnees, while 60 per cent are from overseas.
Hoddy’s has its Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) allocation for picking and packhouse duties, which Ewers said covered most of its needs, as well as a handful of seasonal contract workers who have worked for the company for several years.
It first used Work the Seasons last season, and found it received more hits than other websites like Trade Me Jobs.
Ewers said having sites like Work the Seasons was very helpful to cover all opportunities in advertising vacancies. It was also a great word-of-mouth site for travelling workers.
However, she said the biggest problem was people applying from oversees and not having all their paperwork together.
The free website is intended to make it easier for jobseekers over 15 and employers looking to fill positions in horticulture, viticulture, meat processing, seafood, tourism and hospitality.
Meat company Silver Fern Farms employs 1200 new processing staff throughout the year, with Work the Seasons being one of its key recruitment channels. This is the second season it has used the online resource.
National recruitment and retention manager Allan Poy said the chat function was especially useful for getting to know applicants and establishing their suitability for a job.
He said that of the 6500 staff employed at Silver Fern Farms’ 14 plants, about three-quarters returned each year. The company also got about 345 workers via Immigration New Zealand’s Approval In Principle (AIP) scheme, which allows an employer to recruit a number of staff from overseas, within limits.
Poy said the company expected to fill about 500 positions in the next few weeks.
‘‘Last season, we had real difficulties finding enough people for all the jobs we had, but Work the Seasons and changes to government policy mean we’re well ahead of where we were last year.’’
Almost 87 per cent of the new jobs listed last month were in the horticulture and meat processing industries across nine regions.