Fighting the Job Market

I am 4 days into my new town of Nelson, New Zealand. The past few days have been filled with job hunting and people networking in this town of around 160,000 people.

Being in the IT industry and having a decent sized network in Sydney, I have rarely had to actually apply for jobs - it's simply been a matter of ringing the right person or setting up the interview for a role off the cuff. Rarely if ever have I applied for roles advertised in the paper or on-line.

Things are certainly different now. In this smallish town of just over 150,000 people - the amount of IT roles are certainly limited. There seems to be a big demand for blue collar or labour based jobs, but IT and Web based roles are few and far between.

So on top of applying for jobs, I have been trying to save money where possible! As I might need the lump sum of savings to last a little while until the right job comes along.

The first step was getting a car, and fortunately the import laws here in New Zealand are fairly favourable. So importing a decent Japanese car is much cheaper than say in Australia or the USA - as their is little or no protection of local car manufacturing here.

I was able to pickup this 1994 Bluebird SSS, with Climate Air, Power Steer, Auto, Alloys, Tow Bar and Remote Start Button all for $2700 AU - which was a bargain. See Pics Top Left:

Apologies my posting rate has dropped; I am living with the in-laws at present and access to their broadband is limited. So hopefully in the next week or so I will be into my new rental house and setup properly! (I will also have a tonne of posts to catch up on from the likes of; John Chow, Bob Buskirk, ProBlogger, Jay Geiger, John Cow and Zac Johnson.. I am dreading loading up my Bloglines reader!)

Talk soon.

Adam