Career Prospects at WSP New Zealand

There is a clear career matrix available to all employees that shows the stages of career progression and can help break down your capabilities and work experience so that you understand what you might be missing to make it to the next level. I find this very helpful. We are also encouraged to talk to our managers through thrive to help set goals and ask for help/guidance where required.

There are two promotion windows in a year, where managers have the opportunity to put forward promotion recommendations for people in their team. Throughout the year, you are encouraged to have 'thrive' conversations with your manager to set goals, assess how you are tracking with them and gain insight to how you are performing. There is also a career progression level matrix outlining what skills and behaviours you are expected to be achieving at, for each progression level.

Lots of opportunity for promotion as long as you drive the motion yourself and get your manager involved

Don't have confidence that , my work performance is noticed at all.

Upskilling and increasing responsibility appears to be what it takes

I have no experience moving up ranks but I have heard it is super complicated

Promotion oppotunities are there but wsp seems to have weird rules around how much you have to be paid before you can be promoted. You do feel like just a number in a massive corp rather than someone who is valued for their contributions. Overall a very corporate process

There is a good tier system which is reviewed each year

Hard work and dedication to the job

Going from graduate to standard engineer is pretty straightforward, after that its more up to the individual, how good they are at delivering and making connections and being proactive and moving forward with their careers and work. But in the long term with more experience and taking opportunities to have more responsibilities on projects is what will progress your career and moving up the ranks, as you can use examples of where you have delivered well on work to get more roles and responsibilities.

As a graduate you go through the graduate program for 2 years and are then usually promoted at the end of the program (though this depends on performance). Further promotions are based on a standardised level system, e.g. to go beyond the intermediate level professional accreditation is required.

Generally the promotion pipeline is reasonably clear but for my role it's not because there's not really a team dedicated to it, just a few people spread across different teams who do the coding for that team. It's being improved and there would be places for me to go but it's not as clear as it is for civil engineers for example. There's an infographic that often gets pulled out in wsp promotional information evenings for grads/interns that shows how you can progress as an engineer

I have only been at the company a few months so haven't received any promotions however I have been put forward to work on major projects like city rail link. Looking at my colleagues I can see that there are definitely great promotion and career progression opportunities

Restricted to staying in the grad programme for two years regardless of competency, promotion process can be quite slow and not up to date with current progression level

The promotion and career progression is very regulated to begin with. it was a bit disappointing when restructuring occurred that as a 6-month graduate, I felt I had to fight for my job. The company stated that making graduates redundant was a last resort but people within the sector got let go. For me if I was made redundant with my level of experience, I would not have been able to ?nd another job within New Zealand. I would have been forced to move overseas. I feel the companies, industry, and country are having a huge problem with being able to retain talent in New Zealand. I think it should be reiterated to the companies that this issue will only worsen if they force talent overseas when their pro?tability drops for a very short period. It felt a short-sighted decision to let graduates go in particular as workload was expected to pick up in 2025. The redundancy costs of staff plus the hiring and onboarding costs in 2025 would likely be similar to have retaining the staff.

Wsp new zealand has a clear career progression path with career progression levels where you can map out where you'll expect to be in 'n' number of years. Graduate programmes at wsp last for 2 years.

There is a career matrix that is available for everyone highlighting the key competency requirements for each level. This is usually discussed with your line manager during the grad program so you are able to acquire the right work experience to move up within a reasonable timeframe.

Graduates get a salary review every 6 months. Plenty of room for growth and career opportunities

There seems to be a clear career progression levels and criteria.

Haven't been here long enough to comment