Highlanders first five-eighth Berquist, a draft player from Hawkes Bay, has had a stop-start season for the southern franchise, with a nagging hamstring injury hurting his efforts to get on the field.
But he is about to turn his back on New Zealand rugby, saying the time is right to head off-shore to ply his trade on overseas fields.
"I've got nothing to go to yet, so who knows what is going to happen. I'm pretty much looking for employment anywhere," Berquist said.
"Things have dried up overseas somewhat and I suppose it hasn't helped that I haven't had the same amount of game time this year than last.
"But now is the right time to go."
Berquist is off contract with Hawke's Bay, which has signed young Blues first five-eighth Dan Kirkpatrick to replace him.
With two games left in the Highlanders season, Berquist, who turns 27 next week, wants to go out with some winning performances, and said playing behind such a dominant pack made his job easy last Friday night.
The Highlanders put on their best performance of the season in beating the Waratahs 26-10 in Invercargill.
"Just from the first five minutes the guys were really positive. We made a break and the forwards were really dominant. Attitude was the real key thing. The attitude was right there the whole game.
"I didn't really play any different. But is is a lot easier when you've got a forward pack playing like that in front of you."
Berquist took over the goal kicking from Israel Dagg midway through the match and managed to knock over three tricky penalties.
Nerquist, who had a 87% success kicking rate with Hawke's Bay last year, said the job of goal-kicker was second nature.
He said the team was now focusing on the final two games, against the Brumbies and Reds, and trying to continue the recipe which worked so well in Invercargill.
"If we can finish well then I think we can answer some of the critics and put the game in the weekend into perspective.
"I think we've come back from the bye week pretty positive and just want to enjoy things."
Berquist, who attended the University of Otago, completing a surveying degree, picked up the hamstring injury in his left leg in the first game of the season against the Crusaders and thought it had come right, only to re-aggravate it when doing some training during the bye week.
It was now right, although he said it may be related to muscles in his lower back.
