Many Pacific workers shared that they felt exhausted from spending months trying to secure a job despite being highly skilled and having qualifications. One Pacific public servant worker said it was “difficult to get a job even if I’m highly skilled” (S739). The demoralisation people experienced from searching and applying for roles with no luck led many Pacific peoples seeking employment to take the first role offered. This was often in spite of these roles being entry level or not matching their qualifications, skill set or experience. Pacific workers were often just grateful to finally secure employment. One Pacific worker shared a story related to this experience: I sat her down yesterday and said, “How much are they paying you, because you have to remember you are a qualified engineer with experience. You spent six years working down the Bay of Plenty in electronics.” She was quiet. She said, “Oh, I was just grateful after so long.” We all feel that. She said, “After so long … so I’m thinking I’ll just grab it.” (T003) Low expectations for Pacific workers’ capabilities can be explicitly encouraged by recruitment agents. We heard from Pacific workers who were offered low-level roles and pay rates and were steered by agencies towards factory roles. One Pacific health worker shared that “I wanted to try something like admin and ended up getting a job at a factory by agencies” (S140). Another Pacific worker with extensive experience in the government, education and NGO sectors both overseas and in Aotearoa New Zealand described 42 seeking work with Work and Income (WINZ) only to be offered factory roles. In comparison to many Pacific job seekers who would accept these roles, this Pacific woman refused, instead opting to go “through the hard way of just looking at the paper and applying”. She said to WINZ: Why are you giving me these jobs? There is nothing in here that is good for me. I said, “I can’t do what you are asking me to do, because one is to go and lead a group of cleaners in this factory … I haven’t been trained to do that. I’ve been trained to do something different. I don’t want to do that, I want to do what I want to do. But they looked and said, “Sorry, we haven’t got a job for you then.” Twice we went there and they said, “There’s a job available here, in a factory here, would you like to go? It would be best for you to get on it and get a job and get your foot in the door,” they used to say. I said, “Well this foot doesn’t want to be in that door.” (T002) For other Pacific workers, their lack of qualifications was an issue. The emphasis on qualifications over experience left several Pacific workers feeling as though their considerable experience was not valued. This issue was highlighted numerous times during our engagements. Pacific workers saw it as the reason for their being underpaid and undervalued. This, in turn, led to a lack of confidence when applying for jobs, with one Pacific construction worker telling us he “lacked confidence in applying as I don’t have qualifications” (S196). A lack of confidence meant people often accepted the first offer that was made to them and did not negotiate their pay further.