Hi, this is Nick Yock, a registered education and migration agent from Pathway to Aus. Today, I’m going to talk to you about skills assessments. I will cover some of the most common questions were asked about these such as what is the skills assessment? Do I even need a skills assessment? What are the requirements for a skills assessment? And what’s the process for a skills assessment?
So, a skills assessment is often the first step to applying for most Australian permanent work visas including most general skilled migration visas and permanent employers sponsor visas. Without a skills assessment, you can’t apply for all general skilled migration visas, including skilled, independent, the state nominated or skilled nominated or the regional nominated. Therefore, if you can’t meet the requirements for a skills assessment, you can’t apply for these visas. So a skills assessment is quite often the first thing you really need to consider.
A skills assessment sort of measures your education, work, experience, English level, etc, to ensure that you meet the skill level or standards to work in Australia. A skills assessment is done through an assessing body, which is an organisation that has been nominated by the government to assess your skills in the job. As you can imagine, not each country has the same standards required to work in an occupation as Australia. So it is the skill assessor’s job to ensure that you have the required skill level and educational ability to meet the Australian standards. If you are deemed to meet the Australian standard, you will then be provided with a full skills assessment, which can be used for all the different visas.
Who do I do my skills assessment with? So each occupation generally speaking will have a different skill assessor. For example, most trade occupations will have their skills assessed through Trades Recognition Australia and most engineering occupations will have their skills assessed through Engineers Australia. To check who the skill assessor is for your occupation. You can look at the medium to long-term list, MLTSSL, or STSOL list. And to the left of it, you’ll see that all the jobs have an assessing authority next to it. You’ll see the link down below for that list. Now, immigration is obviously not an expert in every single occupation. That’s why they have the different skill assessing authorities who are experts and sanctioned by the government to determine if you meet the Australian standards.
Do I need a skills assessment? So generally speaking, a skills assessment is only relevant for migration purposes, a separate application is usually done for licensing or registration. So unless you are needing one for migration purposes, don’t waste your time applying for it. Now, you will a hundred percent need a skills assessment for all general skill migration visas. The skilled independent subclass 189, the skilled nominated subclass 190 or the regional nominated subclass 489. You will also need a skills assessment for Direct Employer Sponsored visas, such as the Direct Employer Nomination Scheme 186 or the direct RSMs or Regional Employers Sponsored visa at 187. Some temporary employer based applicants such as the TSS visa may also require to be go through a skills assessment.
So what are the requirements? Different skills assessing authorities in different occupations have different requirements. However, the common requirement is that you need to be skilled in the education level required for that job. For example, most professional engineering occupations need you to have a minimum of a bachelor’s of qualification. For engineering occupations, you quite often don’t need to show work experience. However, it often helps if you do, whereas most trade occupations require you to have a certificate three in that particular trade. And usually a minimum of at least three years, post qualification or post apprenticeship work experience. You can actually check below for a link to some of the main trade occupations and some of the different requirements for each ones.
A lot of skills assessments only require sort of paper based evidence, evidence of your previous, you know, work, experience and education. However, some also may require you to do some sort of practical or technical interview as well, where you’ll get a chance to show your skills. Some of the most common documents required for a skills assessment for your work experience, you can expect to provide like a resume, work references, pay slips, tax assessments, employment contracts, and things like that. For your education, diplomas and certificates, transcripts of what you’ve studied, training and apprenticeship contracts and in any evidence of continual professional development.
How much does a skills assessment costs? Well, once again, each skills assessment is different, but generally speaking, you can expect to pay around a thousand dollars. If you do have to do a practical, a technical interview, you can expect that to go up. How long does a skills assessment take to obtain? Once again, it varies on the skillset and the authority, but in my experience, usually a minimum of about 12 weeks.
What happens after you receive your skills assessment? So if your skills assessment is approved, you will actually receive a positive outcome letter through your email. You would use this as part of your application for many different sort of permanent visas. Please note passing the skills assessment is only the first step to the different sort of permanent visas. You still need to pass all the other requirements, such as the points test and any other eligibility requirements – be invited to apply for the visa and so on and so forth.
I hope you found this video very useful, and now you have a bit better understanding about what a skills assessment is and you understand the importance that it’s the first thing you should look at when you are thinking about going for different permanent work visas to Australia. Please note this video is general in nature, and if you want a migration agent to sort of review your specific circumstances, I’d recommend you contact Pathway to Aus. Feel free to contact us with any questions on our website, Facebook, comment below by email or over the phone. Thank you.
