How Career Services works with Māori

: Gaining qualifications and skills is important for our rangatahi Māori

Career Services is committed to working with Māori to ensure Māori have the information and skills to make good learning and career decisions. Read more about the many different ways we can help you.

Strategies for working with Māori

Our overall aims are to:

extend our services to more Māori
work more effectively with Māori communities and agencies
build stronger evidence of and analyse the effectiveness of our services for Māori.

Career Services – in its strategic framework for Māori and as part of the Government’s priorities in education, training and employment – is focusing work on two areas:

rangatahi Māori (Māori youth)
Māori adults in semi to low-skilled jobs and in ‘at risk’ industries, that is those industries that are most affected by a recession.

Read more about rangatahi Māori workshops

"I get a lot of joy and satisfaction from working with all kinds of people, particularly with rangatahi Māori. It’s incredibly humbling to think that the information, advice and guidance we share with them, may have a positive long-lasting influence on their direction in life."

Peter Tahere, Kaitohutohu

Our success indicators

We measure the success of our work in several ways. That is because when we work with you, your whānau or your iwi in career planning and career-related initiatives, it can have a big impact on education, skill development, and employment opportunities.

We work towards and measure the following success indicators for Māori:

engaging and achieving in education and the workplace
gaining formal qualifications
adding to skills in the workplace
getting high-quality information about at-risk jobs and industries
using technology to make career decisions, including use of My Career Space on this website.

Careers practice for working with Māori

Careers practice and training

We have Māori consultants (kaitohutohu) who regularly run hui designed to provide customised career planning assistance to Māori.
We work on career skill development with influencer groups such as the youth transition service (YTS), schools, iwi and community groups.
We faciliate career information sessions with parents, whānau and kura.
We work in partnership with Māori organisations and government agencies to better serve Māori communities.
Māori consultants are part of clusters and advisory groups to inform Māori strategy and projects at a national level.
We research new ways of working to better suit the needs of Māori. For example, we are currently working on a whānau decision-making research project.
Our staff get training in tikanga and te reo Māori. Māori capability standards are set for each role.

Find out more about the whānau decision-making project

The role of kaitohutohu is diverse and I work with a very wide range of people, including rangatahi in schools. I work alongside tangata whenua and Pacific Island people, which I enjoy very much. I like the challenges and flexibility and being involved in government initiatives.

Ngawai Johnson, Kaitohutohu

Governance and policy

We provide policy advice to government on career planning matters that affect Māori, including employment, education and training issues
We have a general manager, Māori, who is a part of Career Services' senior management team.
We have an appointed Māori representative on the Career Services board.