The Australian skills assessment is a skills test that is part of the application process for certain work visas and the Temporary Graduate visa.

It’s much more than just another box to tick on your to-do list though.

Your skills assessment result could determine whether or not you can live and work in Australia.

What is the Australian skills assessment?

The objective of a skills assessment for the purpose of immigration to Australia is determining if your qualifications and experience meet the standards for working in Australia in your occupation.

Who assess your skills?

Your skills will be assessed by your profession’s relevant Australian assessing authority. For instance, Engineers Australia assess engineers and the ACS is the official assessing authority for professionals who work in the ICT industry.

Each assessing authority has its own assessment procedures, timeframes and charges, so you’ll have to contact the relevant authority to get the correct information. If you’re working with an immigration agent, he or she should be able to give you more details.

How does skills assessment influence your immigration?

During the assessment both your qualifications and experience are assessed. You’ll need a positive outcome for both for a successful assessment and immigration. If you don’t get positive outcomes, you might not be able to immigrate to Australia.

Who needs to have skills assessed?

You may need to have your skills assessed by an assessing authority to be eligible to apply for one of these visas:

• Skilled independent visa (subclass 189)
• Skilled nominated visa (subclass 190)
• Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 491)
• Employer Nomination Scheme (subclass 186)
• Temporary Skill Shortage visa
• Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485)

You must speak to your advisor to find out if you should get a skills assessment done. In the case that you must get an assessment done, your advisor will be able to tell you at what stage of the application you’ll have to do the assessment.

Ten of the most prominent assessing authorities

Below we’ll share the assessing authorities our team works with the most. We’ll share what each authority is, straight from their website, and give links to more information about the particular skills test where it’s available.

1. Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA)

The AACA is the ‘national voice for architect registration boards around Australia. AACA owns the National Standard of Competency for Architects. The National Standard underpins all assessment processes including the accreditation of architecture programs leading to registration as an architect in Australia.’

Read more about the skills assessment here.

2. The Professional Association for Australia’s ICT sector (ACS)

The ACS is the ‘authorised assessing authority that undertakes skill assessments for the purposes of skilled migration.’ Their role is to ‘assess the skills and qualifications of ICT professionals who are considering migration to Australia to work in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.’

Read more about the skills assessment here.

3. Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors AIQS

The Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (AIQS) is the ‘peak professional standards body for built environment cost professionals’ and dedicated to ‘maintaining the highest standards of professional excellence and continuous development.’

The AIQS’s members are all built environment professionals, predominately with job titles such as Quantity Surveyor, Cost Estimator, Cost Planner, Cost Manger, Cost Engineer, Cost Consultant and Project Controller. Their members also include graduates and students.

When it comes to skilled migration, the AIQS is the assessing authority ‘nominated by the Australian Government to provide expert advice to the Department of Home Affairs about qualifications and skilled employment experience with respect to the skilled occupation ‘Quantity Surveyor’ (ANZSCO 233213).’

Read more about the skills assessment here.

4. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL)

The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership strives to ‘develop expertise and empower teachers and school leaders to create better education outcomes for Australian children’. When you want to immigrate to Australia, the AITSL will assess your suitability to work in the country as a school teacher.

Read more about the skills assessment here.

5. Australian Psychological (APS)

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) ‘advance psychology for members and their communities via advocacy, education, and evidence-based practice’. The APS has 24,000 members working in diverse settings and sectors across Australia and the rest of the world.

6. The Australasian Veterinary Boards Council Inc

The Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (ACVB) works to ‘ensure the quality (recognised nationally and internationally) of the Australian and New Zealand veterinary profession’. The AVBC serves its members in a number of ways:

• Providing a forum for communication and discussion of areas of mutual interest and policy development
• Providing the framework for public and industry confidence in veterinary standards
• Assuring and promoting education standards in the accreditation of veterinary schools, the Australasian Veterinary Examination and specialist registration.

Read more about the skills assessment here.

7. Engineers Australia

Engineers Australia (EA) is the ‘largest and most diverse body of engineers in Australia’. As Australia’s principal engineering association EA ‘serve and represent around 100,000 professionals at every level, across all fields of practice’.

Further to this, EA is a ‘trusted authority’ who uses its expertise to ‘create, accredit and assess engineering programs and practitioners’.

Read more about the skills assessment here.

8. Occupational Therapy Council of Australia

The Occupational Therapy Council of Australia is an independent NPO whose purpose it is to ‘ensure that standards of education, training and assessment of occupational therapists are maintained and developed so the Australian public is assured of safe and proper practice’.

Read more about the skills assessment here.

9. Trades Recognition Australia

Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) is a ‘skills assessment service provider specialising in assessments for people with trade skills gained overseas or in Australia, for the purpose of migration and skills recognition’.

Get more information about the skills assessment here.

10. VETASSESS

VETASSESS is Australia’s leading vocational education and training (VET) skills assessment provider for both migration and national skills recognition.

VETASSESS is recognised for their expertise and experience in ‘assessing the qualifications and work experience of prospective migrants, and supporting individuals’ applications for employment, course entry and industry membership’.

VETASSESS assess 29 trade occupations and more than 350 professional occupations from various industries. Furthermore, VETASSESS’s portfolio of services expands to include educational research and consultation on assessment standards, test design and curriculum development.

Read more about the skills assessment here.

Is it your dream to live and work in Australia?

You can take the first step right now by booking a free consultation with us. During this consultation, our team will discuss the immigration process with you. If everything points to the fact that you stand a chance of being eligible for a work visa, our team will discuss the best forward with you.

ANZSCO. You may think this is just another immigration acronym, but you’d be wrong. ANZSCO plays a major role in your immigration if you’re applying under the skilled migrant category.

In fact, you’re more than likely not going to be able to apply for a work visa if you can’t meet ANZSCO’s requirements.

For this reason, it’s important to understand all that ANZSCO entails. While there is a lot of information to know, you really only need to know the four facts below to put yourself in a much better position than most people.

1. ANZSCO is the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations

ANZSCO stands for Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations. It’s a system within the skilled migration program that sets the standards for the skills and work experience that visa applicants must meet to work in specific occupation in Australia or New Zealand.

ANZSCO is a joint venture between the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics New Zealand and The Department of Education and Training.

2. ANZSCO sets skills and work experience standards for the skilled migrant category

As explained above, ANZSCO sets skills and work experience standards for occupations that fall under the general skilled migration category. Further to this, ANZSCO sets out the tasks that visa applicants must be able to perform as part of their everyday duties.

In other words, ANZSCO determines the most important requirements you must meet in order to qualify to apply for a skilled migrant visa.

Let’s look at an example…

Let’s imagine you’re a chemical engineer. As a chemical engineer, ANZSCO expects you to be able to perform the tasks listed below. You’d thus have to ensure that your work experience is a substantial match to this list:

• Preparing designs for chemical process systems and planning control systems for processes
• Monitoring the operation and maintenance of equipment to achieve maximum efficiency under safe operating conditions
• Ensuring correct materials and equipment are used and that they conform to specifications
• Diagnosing malfunctions in chemical plants and instituting remedial action
• Studying product utilisation and pollution control problems
• Reviewing plans for new products and submitting material selection recommendations in accordance with design specifications and factors such as strength, weight and cost
• Planning and implementing laboratory operations to develop new materials and fabrication procedures for new materials to fulfil production cost and performance standards
• Conferring with producers of materials during the investigation and evaluation of materials suitable for specific product applications
• Reviewing product failure data and implementing laboratory tests to establish or reject possible causes, and advising on ways to overcome any problems

It’s important to note, however, that the tasks you carry out in your job might still overlap with that of other related or sometimes even unrelated occupations. You might even find that some tasks listed on ANZSCO are not relevant to your occupation. This is because some occupations share the same four digit ANZSCO code.

For instance, Chemical Engineer shares job tasks with the occupation of Materials Engineer. Both of these occupations are also under the same code – 2331.

Here’s how all of this affect your application:

When applying for a General Skilled Migration visa, you have to nominate an occupation from the ANZSCO list that’s also present on one of Australia’s skill shortage lists.

You must carefully select the occupation!  Your work experience and qualifications will be assessed against the task list and the lead statement of your chosen ANZSCO occupation.

An immigration officer usually performs this assessment. With certain occupations, an industry-specific assessing authority does the assessment instead.

• Immigration officer

The immigration officer assessing your visa application will also compare your skills, experience and job duties with those under your occupation on ANZSCO to help him or her to come to a decision on your visa application. In addition, the visa case officer will use your positive skills assessment outcome as a guideline to establish if you meet all the criteria.

The officer would want to see from your visa application documents that you have the relevant qualifications and/or experience to work in Australia in your nominated occupations. To satisfy the requirements of the Department of Home Affairs, you work experience would have to be a substantial match to the tasks outlined by ANZSCO. If you don’t meet all the criteria, your applicant might be declined.

• Assessing authority assessment

It is the responsibility of an assessing authority to issue an opinion on whether or not they think you’re eligible to work as skilled migrant in Australia and thus qualify to apply for a visa.

To reach their decision, the assessing authority will compare your skill set and often also your work experience to the Australian standard for your nominated occupation.

You’ll only get an outcome if the assessing authority is satisfied that you tick all the boxes. This includes additional criteria set out by the assessing authority.

Some examples of assessing authorities are:

• AACA: Architects Accreditation Council of Australia
• EA: Engineers Australia
• VETASSESS: Vocational Education and Training (VET) skills assessment provider

3. There are 5 skill levels within ANZSCO

In ANZSCO, skill level is used as an additional differentiator for occupations. Each occupation’s skill level is derived from the range and complexity of tasks associated with the occupation.

There are five skill levels of which Skill Level 1 is the highest. This means occupations on Skill Level 1 has the greatest range and complexity of tasks. Examples of occupations on Skill Level 1 are audiologists, social workers and surveyors.

Locksmiths, welders and motor mechanics, for instance, are on Skill Level 3. This means these occupations don’t have as many tasks that are as complex as the occupations on Skill Level 1.

Occupations on Skill Level 5 have the smallest range of tasks with the least complexity.

4. You cannot ‘mix and match’ occupations

When applying for a skilled migrant visa, your occupation and experience must be highly relevant as per the ANZSCO lead statement of the occupation you want to nominate.

Your occupation and experience must also match most of the duties listed. This does however not mean that you or your employer can simply ‘copy and paste’ the ANZSCO description to your application.

Here’s an example of what we mean:

Let’s assume Sarah is working as a tutor. Sarah might think that she can apply for a visa as a teacher. The job descriptions are similar, after all.

However, many of the tasks associated with teachers on ANZSCO is not performed by tutors. For instance, participating in staff meetings and performing extra-curricular activities such as assisting with sports at the school.

In the same way, a secondary school teacher cannot apply for a visa as a special education teacher. These are in the same profession but are not the same occupation with the same experience.

What if my occupation is not on the ANZSCO list?

There could be two reasons why you can’t find your occupation on ANZSCO:

• Your occupation is not in any skill shortage areas in Australia or your occupation does not meet the ANZSCO standards to qualify for a visa.
• Your occupation is on the list but your job title doesn’t match the occupation title as it appears on ANZSCO. For example, some people call themselves ‘speech-language pathologists’ while others give themselves the title of ‘speech and language therapist’. It’s the same job – speech therapy – but just with another title.

If your occupation not appearing on the ANZSCO list is due to either example under number 1, you’ll have to explore other visa options if you’d still like to immigrate to Australia.

However, if it’s because of reason number 2, then immigration to Australia on a work visa is still an option.

Do you feel you need help from an immigration agent?

You’re always welcome to contact us for assistance. Our immigration agents are registered and licensed with MARA (Migration Agents Registration Authority). This means you can rest assured that you’ll get advice that you can trust!