Work Visa Services — New Zealand

Building your life in New Zealand starts with the right work visa.

Work in New Zealand under employer-supported or open work visa categories.

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The job you’ve been offered, the career you’re building, the move you’re making with your family — whatever is pulling you towards working in New Zealand, the visa is the part that has to line up before any of it can start. Work visas in New Zealand are not a single product. Several different pathways exist, each with its own requirements, conditions, and fit for different situations.

MyLaw helps people across the full category — from a clear job offer with an accredited employer through to partnership-based work rights, post-study pathways, and situations where more than one option might apply.

Work Visa services we provide

The Accredited Employer Work Visa is the most common work visa pathway and the default for people with a job offer from a New Zealand employer. Other products in the category serve specific situations — partnership, recent study, or a defined short-term purpose.

Each linked product above has its own dedicated service page with detailed guidance on eligibility, evidence, and how we assist.

How to choose the right visa

Work Visas are not interchangeable. The right product depends on your situation:

  • You have a job offer from a New Zealand employer → The Accredited Employer Work Visa is likely the relevant pathway, provided the employer holds current accreditation and the role meets requirements.
  • Your partner is a New Zealand citizen, resident, or eligible visa holder → A Partnership Work Visa may apply, based on a genuine and stable relationship.
  • You are the partner of someone on a work visa → A partner-of-a-worker work visa may be relevant, depending on the primary visa holder’s circumstances.
  • You recently completed study in New Zealand → A Post Study Work Visa pathway may apply.
  • You are coming for a short, defined purpose or event → A Specific Purpose Work Visa may fit.
  • You are thinking longer-term and want a pathway towards residence → Some Work Visa pathways may lead to residence over time. This depends on the visa type, your occupation, and current settings.
  • You are unsure → Contact us to discuss which pathway suits your situation.

What does Immigration New Zealand consider (key requirements)

When assessing Work Visa applications, Immigration New Zealand generally considers:

  • Whether the criteria for the specific visa type are met
  • Relevant skills, qualifications, or experience
  • The genuineness of the role, relationship, or purpose for visiting
  • Wage and employment conditions, for employer-supported visas
  • Health and character requirements
  • Immigration history and the completeness of supporting documentation

Exact criteria vary by visa type and individual circumstances, and requirements may change over time.

What can affect a Work Visa application

Several factors can influence the outcome of a Work Visa application:

  • Roles, wages, or employment terms that do not clearly meet current requirements
  • Gaps, inconsistencies, or missing evidence in supporting documents
  • Unclear demonstration of qualifications, experience, or relationship
  • Previous visa refusals, overstays, or compliance issues
  • Health or character matters that require disclosure
  • Changes to immigration policy between lodgement and decision

Because requirements vary across the category, each application should be prepared with the specific visa type in mind.

When to seek professional help

Many Work Visa applications are straightforward, but some involve complexity where professional support can make a practical difference:

  • Choosing between visa types can itself be complex, particularly where more than one pathway may apply.
  • Employer-supported applications involve coordination between the applicant and an accredited employer, with conditions on both sides.
  • Partnership-based applications depend on evidence of a genuine and stable relationship, which can be subjective.
  • Prior visa history, including previous refusals or compliance issues, can affect new applications.
  • Thinking about residence often requires planning the right work visa pathway from the outset.

How we help

When you engage MyLaw across a work visa matter, the starting point shifts from “which form do I fill out and what am I missing” to a clear view of which pathway fits your situation, what the evidence needs to show, and where the decision points sit. The category is wide enough that choosing well at the start often matters more than anything that happens later in the application.

What that looks like in practice:

  • You’ll know which pathway actually fits before committing to one. We work through your situation against the different work visa products — employer-supported, partnership-based, post-study, purpose-specific — so the choice is made on the facts rather than on whichever option came up first in a search.
  • Your evidence holds together before it reaches Immigration New Zealand. We review supporting documents — employment terms, relationship evidence, qualifications, immigration history — against the specific grounds the relevant visa type is assessed on, so gaps are addressed before lodgement rather than after a request for further information.
  • The employer side of the application lines up with the applicant side. For accredited-employer pathways, we coordinate with the employer so the role, wage, and accreditation position are consistent with what the applicant is presenting. Both halves of the application need to tell the same story.
  • Requests for further information don’t catch you off guard. If Immigration New Zealand comes back with questions, we manage the response, so the reply is considered rather than rushed.
  • Longer-term thinking is built in from the start. Where residence is the eventual goal, the work visa pathway chosen now can matter more than people expect. We flag that connection early rather than at the point it becomes a problem.

For detailed descriptions of what we do on each specific pathway, see the individual service pages linked above.

Not sure which Work Visa applies to you?

  • A short self-check guide that walks you through the key questions — your situation, your relationships, your study or work history, and what you’re trying to achieve — and points you toward the pathways most likely to be relevant.

  • You can use our quick assessment tool or contact us to discuss your options.

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Frequently asked questions

Not always. The Accredited Employer Work Visa requires a job offer from an employer who currently holds accreditation with Immigration New Zealand, and this is the most common pathway. Other work visas — including partnership-based visas and post-study work visas — are not tied to a specific job offer and can give you work rights that aren’t locked to a single employer. The right pathway depends on what your situation is built around: a role, a relationship, recent study, or a defined purpose.

Duration varies significantly across the category, and exact periods can change as immigration settings are updated. As a general guide, employer-supported pathways like the Accredited Employer Work Visa tend to be granted for longer periods tied to the role and the employer’s accreditation, while specific-purpose work visas are usually shorter and tied to the purpose for which they were granted. Partnership and post-study pathways sit in between and depend on the underlying basis for the visa. We can give you a clearer sense of likely duration once we know which pathway applies to your situation.

Extensions and renewals are possible for many work visa types, but they aren’t a formality. The factors that most often complicate an extension are: whether the role, employer, and wage are still in the same position they were at the time of the original grant; whether the underlying relationship (for partnership-based visas) still meets the genuine and stable test; whether your immigration history during the current visa raises any compliance questions; and whether immigration settings have shifted between the original grant and the extension application. An extension assessed under updated rules is effectively a fresh application against a moving target. Where any of these factors are in play, it’s worth getting advice before lodging rather than after a request for further information.

Some work visa pathways may lead to residence over time, depending on the visa type, your occupation, and the current residence settings. The important thing — and the reason this question matters more than people expect — is that the work visa you choose now shapes the residence options available to you later. Choosing the wrong pathway at the start can mean reaching the end of a multi-year visa and finding that the residence door you were aiming for has either changed or was never the right one for your situation. Where residence is a long-term goal, planning the sequence at the start of the work visa stage is usually more useful than trying to course-correct closer to the residence application.

In many cases, partners and dependent children may be eligible for related visas — typically a partner-of-a-worker work visa for the partner and a dependent child visa for children. Eligibility depends on your visa type and conditions: not every work visa supports family inclusion on the same terms, and some categories have specific requirements around income, role, or occupation before partners and children can apply. This is one of the reasons the choice of primary work visa matters beyond your own situation — it shapes what’s available for the people coming with you.

Work visas are usually granted on the basis of a specific situation — a particular role with a particular employer, a particular relationship, or a particular purpose. Changes to your employment, relationship, or personal circumstances during the visa can affect the conditions you’re held to, and in some cases may require a variation or a new application rather than simply continuing on the existing visa. Common triggers include changing employer, leaving a role, a relationship ending, or a significant change in the duties or wage of your job. We recommend seeking advice before making significant changes rather than after, because the timing of a change can affect what options are available to fix it.

Choosing between work visa pathways is often the hardest part of the whole process, and it’s the question this hub page is built around. The right answer depends on a handful of factors: whether you have a job offer and from whom, whether your situation involves a partner who is a New Zealand citizen or resident, whether you’ve recently studied here, and whether you’re thinking about residence in the longer term. Our Work Visa Pathway Finder is a short self-check guide that walks you through these questions and points you toward the pathways most likely to be relevant. If your situation is at all unusual, an initial discussion is usually the faster way to get clarity than trying to work it out from policy pages alone.

We work with both straightforward and complex work visa situations. Complexity can come from several places — prior visa refusals, character or health matters that need disclosure, employer accreditation issues, relationships that are genuine but harder to evidence, or situations where more than one pathway might apply and the choice between them isn’t obvious. None of those situations are unusual, and none of them are reasons to assume an application can’t proceed. They are reasons to plan the application carefully rather than treating it as a form-filling exercise. If you’re not sure where your situation sits on that spectrum, get in touch and we can talk it through.

Credentials

MyLaw is a New Zealand law firm with a focus on immigration law. Our team is led by Michael Yoon, a New Zealand lawyer and member of the New Zealand Law Society. We hold current practising certificates and work across a range of immigration matters, from visitor visa applications to complex cases involving prior refusals, character issues, and multi-visa strategies.

Get in touch

If you are considering a Work Visa and are unsure which pathway applies to your situation, get in touch for an initial discussion. We assist with all Work Visa products in this category and can help you identify the right pathway before committing to an application.

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