When it comes to IT migration, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) skills assessment is unavoidable. ACS has four specific assessment pathways, as follows:

1.Temporary Graduate (TG) – only applicable for Australian Bachelor degreeholders or higher

2. Post Australian Study (PAS) – only applicable for Australian Bachelor degreeholders or higher

3. General Skills Assessment (Skills)

4. Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

Rather than translating the definition of each pathway one by one, I want to share some things you simply cannot find on the ACS website.

TG (preliminary assessment) and PAS (full assessment) — according to ACS, both are intended for students who have graduated in Australia. TG is used for the Subclass 485 visa,while PAS is the formal skills assessment used for migration applications. However, the TG assessment is not actually required on the Subclass 485 application checklist. Many students ask — what is TG actually for? In practice, it is a preliminary assessment designed for students whose degrees are interdisciplinary. Some students may have studied web design, programming, business, data science, and so on, and after graduation may not know which direction to specialise in. This is where a risk arises!

PAS is the formal assessment and requires 1 year of work experience or a Professional Year (PY).For example, if Student A graduates and spends a year in web design, then discovers at PAS that they can only be assessed as a software engineer rather than in the web design category, that year of experience may not have been used to its full potential — though I am not saying it is entirely wasted; see pathway three for details. For students with broad, interdisciplinary degrees, completing a TG right after graduation can help you avoid taking a costly wrong turn.

Pathway 2 — PAS is the formal skills assessment used for migration,and the requirement is 1 year of relevant work experience or a Professional Year (PY). This is the most common pathway we assist clients with.Here I will channel the CCTV News bulletin style — the fewer the words, the bigger the story!!

Pathway 3 — Skills (brief summary): primarily for applicants whose qualifications are somewhat aligned with the nominated occupation, or whose qualifications are entirely unrelated.With sufficient work experience, recognition is still possible!!!Generally 5–6 years of work experience is required, unless your undergraduate qualification (or above) is related to the nominated occupation — in that case, 2 years may be sufficient.This pathway is well suited to applicants with overseas qualifications, or those whose degree overlaps partially with IT but who have accumulated many years of work experience.

Pathway 4 is for those with little or no formal qualifications, requiring 6 or 8 years of experience — suited to people without a degree but with many years of relevant work experience.

That covers skills assessments. To summarise,students who graduated in Australia need 1 year of work experience or a Professional Year (PY) to obtain their assessment;the IT skills assessment places little weight on whether your institution is ACS-accredited,but places considerable emphasis on course content and curriculum.

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Figure 2:

The biggest change in NSW this year is thatthe vast majority of IT occupations under the 190 nomination require 3 years of work experience, as shown:

Only Multimedia Specialists and Web Developers are exempt from the three-year requirement,all other occupations must satisfy the three-year work experience requirement. This policy created a significant challenge for graduates. After graduation, undergraduates generally receive a 2-year post-study work (PSW) visa, while postgraduates receive 3 years.

As a result, for those committed to staying in NSW,undergraduate studentswill find it very difficult to accumulate 3 years of work experience within their visa to apply for the 190, leaving the 491 as the only realistic option.Postgraduate students,on the other hand, have at least 3 years — we will discuss this further below.

There are 3 Streams in total:

1. Living and working in a NSW regional area for one year or more;

2. Having graduated from a NSW regional school within the past two years;

3. Otherwise residing in Australia with an occupation on the NSW 491 list and a valid skills assessment.

Figure 3 uses the Riverina regional government as an example — there is generally no work experience requirement, except for Systems Administrator, which requires three years.

Figure 3

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More to come — stay tuned for the next instalment!

At the end of the day,NSW state nomination has always been the most competitive in Australia, and even its largest quota is nowhere near sufficient for the volume of applicants. They are never short of candidates,cherry-picking whichever applicants they want,invitation rounds are highly unpredictable, information is not publicly transparent, and policies change frequently.

For students committed to staying in NSW,especially those targeting the 190 — be prepared for a long haul,give it your best effort and hope for good news.

That said, if you can find an IT job in another state,some states do in fact invite applicants who did not graduate locally,and we will cover this when we discuss other state nomination policies in our next issue— stay tuned.

Stay tuned for the next instalment!

Migration Information & Q&A Group