Meet Albert, an IGFH member who became inspired to take his career across the world.
At International Greenkeepers For Hire, one of our main aims is to inspire our members to travel the world and experience their job role from a new location.
Having worked overseas myself, I can say firsthand that using your skills in a different region, with a climate that you’re not used to and environmental factors that you’ve never before had to consider, is invaluable to both personal and professional growth.
But don’t just take it from me. One of our very first members, Albert Oberholzer, became inspired to travel from his hometown in South Africa to pursue a greenkeeping job in New Zealand after joining our Facebook group.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Albert, who shared his experience of traveling more than 8000 miles across the world to pursue an exciting new career opportunity at the age of 41.
Albert told us that he found IGFH on Facebook, back when the group had just 11 members, when he was looking for jobs online.
He contacted Daryl, the founding member of IGFH, who put him in touch with a golf course in Australia. This ended up not being the right fit for Albert, but he continued to search for opportunities to work abroad, deciding on New Zealand as his location of choice.
The process of applying for jobs was not a quick or easy one, but eventually, less than a year after deciding he wanted to live and work in New Zealand, Albert received a formal employment contract for a lawn care company based in Nelson Tasman, a picturesque region on the north-west of New Zealand’s South Island.
If you’ve been considering applying for an overseas job, you might be wondering what tips Albert can offer on his experience.
Albert said that he was “very driven”, sharing that he “jumped online almost immediately” to get his CV out there, spending a lot of time on social media and following pages like the IGFH Facebook group to search for lawn-related companies in New Zealand.
Even when two job offers fell through – which Albert admitted was “disheartening” – he continued to pursue his options, emailing his future employer on two separate occasions to enquire about available job roles. A few weeks after his second email, Albert received a phone call, which turned out to be an impromptu interview for the lawn care job he’d enquired about – and the rest, as they say, is history.
So, resilience clearly plays a role in applying for careers overseas. Good organisation skills are also essential when making a big move across the world.
Albert didn’t only have to juggle selling his house and applying for visas – he also had to navigate life in a new country during the Coronavirus pandemic, which threw New Zealand into lockdown just two weeks into starting at his new job. This meant that Albert’s wife and daughter, who had planned to meet him in New Zealand two months after his arrival, were unable to arrive in the country until eight months later.
Thankfully, Covid-19 eventually became a thing of the past, and after two years on the job, Albert’s employer made an offer he couldn’t exist: to become the owner of the company. Albert and his wife now proudly own Lawn Rescue 22 – the most fantastic end to an inspiring story.
Of working abroad, Albert said: “Working in New Zealand is just amazing. I come across friendly and kind people every day, and my customers are just as passionate about great lawns! Being located in Nelson also means that most jobs come with a great view.”
Of course, there are some challenges to working in a different climate, especially as New Zealand experienced a period of extreme weather during Albert’s employment. This, according to Albert, made things “a bit hectic”, and the rain made his job more challenging, since “there’s not much you can do on a waterlogged lawn”.
Does he plan to stay in New Zealand forever? As the owner of a company based in the country, Albert is unlikely to move any time soon. But he says if the opportunity ever arises in the future, he’ll begin by looking at jobs in Australia. He’d also love to work at a golf course in Florida, USA, as he did years earlier after completing his studies. IGFH will be his first port of call.
Let’s finish with one last nugget of inspiration from Albert, as he tells us about the best thing he learned from his career and what advice he would pass on to aspiring greenkeepers:
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help and never stop learning. Keep learning, be humble, and never give up on your dreams! If your dreams don’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough.”
Big thanks to Albert Oberholzer for his involvement in this article. If you’re an IGFH member who has secured a greenkeeping career abroad, we’d love to hear from you! Contact us – internationalgreenkeepers@gmail.com
