Defending a job check salary as within market rate

[EMPLOYER] is an accredited employer that needed Immigration New Zealand to approve a job check before a software engineer could apply for a work visa. The pay and conditions had to match the job advertisement and meet the New Zealand market rate for the role. Soon after the job check was lodged, Immigration New Zealand wrote with two concerns that could lead to a decline, and gave only a short time to reply.

On the mismatch, we filed a letter from the employer explaining it was an honest mistake when filling in the form, attached a corrected job check, and asked the officer to assess it on the corrected basis. On the pay, we argued that the market rate means the whole pay range for the job, not an average from one report. We pointed to the officer’s duty to look at many salary sources, noted that Immigration New Zealand had not shared the specific Seek and Glassdoor figures it mentioned so they should be set aside, and provided four more sources, including a government careers website, that showed 65,000 dollars sits within the range for the role.

We lodged the full response within the deadline. Immigration New Zealand was satisfied and the work visa was granted.

When a job advertisement and the application form do not match, an honest-mistake explanation with a corrected form is the right fix, and it should be filed quickly because the reply window is short. On pay, the key point is that the market rate is the full range for the role, so a salary in the lower part of a genuine range can still be acceptable. And because the officer must consider a range of salary sources and cannot rely on information that was never shared for comment, a low figure from a single report can be answered with several reliable sources of your own.