Employment options

People in paid employment agree to work for an employer under a contract of service for some form of payment. People in paid employment or employees, are paid by way of wages, salary, commission or piece rates. The employee enters an employment relationship with an employer and this relationship is shown in the form of a written employment contact.

Both parties are bound by the Employment Relations Act. There are different types of paid employment such as full-time, part-time, casual, fixed term and seasonal. The employer pays income tax and ACC levies on behalf of the employee, determines the hours and place of work and supplies the equipment required to carry out the work.

Find information on Job vacancies and employers.

You may also like to consider Internships and voluntary work.

A self-employed person is someone whose income is directly dependent on the profits of their business. There are several different categories of self-employment such as self-employed with no employees, self-employed with employees and unpaid family workers.

Self-employed people are responsible for paying their own income tax and ACC levies on behalf of themselves or any employee. Self-employed people make up 22% of the New Zealand workforce. New developments in technology have opened up new opportunities for self-employment with the development of niche markets suited to small and medium enterprises.

Find further ideas and options for Self-employment.

Contract work can be defined as an agreement to perform a task for a certain rate of pay. An independent contractor's point of difference between paid employment lies in the way in which the contractor has full control over his time and equipment and his remuneration is not linked in any way to the profits of the business he is carrying out work for.

The contractor is usually either acting independently or is working through an agent. They are responsible for paying their own income tax and ACC levies. In the case of IT professionals, a contract could be established to build a database or install some software. There is a great variety of possible projects and the contracts could last for a few hours to a few years.

Typically contract work means the contractor can choose their own hours of work, the volume of work, and their own rate of pay.

A portfolio career is defined as a situation where instead of working one full-time job a worker maintains a variety of positions for multiple employers and can also be engaged in self-employment simultaneously.

They could for example be involved in part-time employment, temporary jobs, freelancing or contract work, and self-employment culminating in full-time hours. A portfolio career requires a high degree of organisational skill to juggle a number of different commitments at once; however, this type of work arrangement offers variety and flexibility.

Government organisations are described as any asset, industry or corporation at national, regional or local level which is owner by the government. These are also known as public sector or state owned enterprises (SOE). They may or may not be required to make a profit or to operate in a commercial manner.

Some SOE's in New Zealand include organisations and agencies such as Tertiary Institutions, District Health Boards, The Reserve Bank, Ministries such as Defense services, Crown Research Institutes and orchestras. Working for a government organisation offers a wide range of occupational opportunities at a variety of levels. Some government organisations are large and employ hundreds of employees while others like local agencies employ fewer people.

Find further ideas and options for working in the public sector at Finding and approaching employers.

Working in the private sector consists of working for those entities which are not controlled by the state, such as private firms and companies, corporations, private banks, and non-governmental organizations. Once again like government organisations they offer a wide range of occupational opportunities at a variety of levels.

Some private organisations are large and employ hundreds of employees while others are described as small enterprises (under 19 employees) or medium enterprises (under 100 employees). However, businesses in the private sector are required to make a profit in order to sustain them and to engage in commercial competition. Many of these are also multi-national companies.

A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that is not part of a government. Although the definition can technically include for-profit corporations, the term is generally restricted to non-commercial advocacy groups.

NGOs are usually non-profit organizations that gain at least a portion of their funding from private sources. They are generally associated with the United Nations and authentic NGOs are those that are so designated by the UN. Because the label "NGO" is broad as it might cover anything that is non-governmental, many NGOs now prefer the term private voluntary organization (PVO).

The voluntary sector consists of those entities which are not for profit and yet, at the same time, are not agencies of the state i.e. charities, volunteer community centres and religious organisations. A charity is a type of non-profit organization, and some non-governmental organizations may also be non-profit organizations.

Many charities employ marketing and communications personnel. Marketing skills are particularly useful to fundraising departments (direct marketing is used by many organisations as a key way of recruiting new donors), and in the promotion of publications and information tools.

Further ideas and options for voluntary work are available on Internships and voluntary work.