Tātaki Auckland Unlimited is moving into the second year of its three-year Tech Tāmaki Makaurau strategy, aimed at turning the city into an internationally recognised tech hub. (file image) Photo: Unsplash / Sigmond
Some tech companies in Auckland are feeling desperate as homegrown talent moves across the Tasman.
The city's economic development agency, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, hopes to attract more migrants as part of its ongoing plan to grow Auckland's tech sector.
Almost half of the country's tech businesses are based in Tāmaki Makaurau but brain drain has left some struggling to fill gaps in their rosters.
Nicola Young is in charge of recruitment for Ponsonby-based software company Sandfield.
She said it had been hard to find homegrown talent in Auckland.
"We struggle to get good candidates," she said.
"We started looking again just recently and we've been advertising now for about five or six weeks and we haven't had any quality candidates."
The best graduates were quickly snatched up by Australian competitors.
"We had one intern working for us, we couldn't hold onto him because he was offered probably two or three times as much to work in Australia."
The shallow talent pool caused her to look elsewhere. Sandfield is one of many Auckland-based tech companies working to attract overseas talent.
"Last year, we brought in 10 people from overseas," she said.
"We will probably look again overseas, we can get junior candidates alright but we struggle with senior developers."
Metrics from NZTech released in August indicated that 2,735 people came to New Zealand last year to work in the tech industry.
The association's chief executive, Graeme Muller, said there was enough talent coming into the country to make up for the drain.
"I'm not so concerned with the brain drain," Muller said.
"I think we're doing a great job of attracting high level talent back in as well."
The tech industry operated on more of a global scale compared to other sectors, he said.
"The nice thing about digital as a career path is it's quite flexible, you can work for an overseas company from New Zealand, or you can work for a New Zealand company from overseas."
Council agency's recruitment drive continues
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited has raced to bring skilled migrants into the city's technology sector.
The agency's head of tech and innovation, Marissa Brindley, said the goal was to make Auckland a more attractive place to work.
"We're working hard to ensure we have the right conditions here in Auckland so we attract and retain more industry," Brindley said.
The agency was moving into the second year of its three-year Tech Tāmaki Makaurau strategy, aimed at turning the city into an internationally recognised tech hub.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited highlighted its 'Auckland is Calling' recruitment drive as a key achievement, a month-long ad campaign that the agency said had generated 400 tech-sector job applications.
Investment and industry director Pam Ford said migrants were a vital part of the strategy to boost Auckland's tech industry.
"It's super important to attract talent here, because for our companies to grow they need good people," she said.
"We're really pushing that Auckland is a great place to live and you can have a wonderful career, that whole 'urban oasis' idea."
Attracting talent was just one part of the equation, keeping them here was another challenge.
"We're trying to retain the talent by ensuring people can get a good welcome into Auckland," Ford said.
"There's an initiative called 'Migrants in Tech' and that's built up a community of about 500 migrants, and they're really finding it valuable to be able to connect with each other, but we also see it as a chance for them to tell others to come too."
Pathways for Māori and Pasifika
On the home front, another ongoing goal was to make it easier for Māori and Pasifika people to enter the industry.
"Around 5 percent of our tech workforce is Māori and 7 percent of our tech workforce is Pasifika," Marissa Brindley said.
"We're really looking into how we can ease those pathways and look at alternative education routes and earn-while-you-learn opportunities outside of the standard university pathways."
Te Matarau Māori Tech Association founder Lee Timutimu said diversity was important to build a healthy industry.
"We can't always rely on a homogenous perspective," he said.
"We need to ensure we have a diverse range of perspectives and voices, [Auckland is] a burgeoning multi-cultural society so it makes sense to include as many perspectives as possible."
Brindley said Tātaki Auckland Unlimited's work had been positively received by local tech companies.
"We work with our industry advisory group and anecdotally they're seeing a positive transformation across the tech industry with regards to attracting people and securing investment."
Ford said a priority for Tech Tāmaki Makaurau in its second year was to showcase Auckland companies internationally to attract overseas investment and staff.
The agency plans to start another recruitment campaign in the new year.