If you are planning to work in the U.K., there are many ways to find a company that will sponsor your visa. Whether you’re looking for a temporary worker or an employee with long-term potential, this guide will help you search for the right option based on your situation and industry.
Using the UK government’s Tier 2 sponsor list to discover firms offering Tier 2 sponsorship in the UK is a pain in the a$$ as an overseas student.
Until now, the best assistance you have received from the internet and your university career services has been to use the Government Tier 2 Sponsor List.
There are over 5,200 firms that can provide you with a working visa. The first step in determining if a firm will provide you with a visa is to check to see whether they are on the list; otherwise, they cannot lawfully sponsor you to work in the UK.
There are two things to remember while utilizing the Tier 2 sponsor list.
- The types of visas that they can issue
- The organization’s size
We anticipate that 90% of the organizations on the Tier 2 sponsor list will not hire overseas students for graduate programs, simply because they lack the necessary resources.
The great majority are classified as SMEs (small and medium-sized companies), which are modest organizations with less than 50 employees.
A Chinese restaurant, for example, may utilize a license to sponsor a few employees but have no intention of recruiting a student.
To identify a firm that will issue you a visa, look for:
- The company on the list of Tier 2 sponsors
- They are Large enough to recruit and sponsor Tier 2 Visas on a regular basis
There are several approaches to this:
- Make use of the government’s Tier 2 sponsor list.
- Make use of the Sponsor Tier 2 website.
- Use job boards and then compare firms to the Tier 2 Sponsor List.
- Utilize specialized employment boards that screen opportunities that provide Tier 2 sponsorship.
Let us go through how you would utilize each strategy and when it would be beneficial in greater detail.
Use the Tier 2 government sponsor list.
You could click here to download the PDF, then sit and search for firms by pressing CTRL + F, or you could go through the list from A to Z.
You can utilize the Tier 2 government sponsor list. It’s simply not easy.
There are already far superior searchable databases available, such as Uk Tier Sponsors and our own favorite Sponsor Tier 2 online app.
Both of these sites are updated daily, are fed directly by the Home Office, and also provide direct connections to the firms’ websites.
The disadvantage of the government list is that it only contains the names of the corporations that sponsor it in a PDF format. Like a database, you can search, sort, and slice the data set.
Make use of the Sponsor Tier 2 Website.
We created this free web app in 2020 after becoming frustrated with the Tier 2 Sponsor List procedure.
We attempted to contact Rohit at UK Tier Sponsors, but we decided that doing it ourselves would be more efficient and speedier.
The Sponsor Tier 2 database is just the government’s Tier 2 sponsor list.
In addition, you will receive a complimentary email twice a week with information on new firms that have been added (possible employers) and will be able to see which organizations have been deleted.
You might also:
- Search by Town
- Search by Industry
- Get a link to most companies’ websites
- See recently added companies
- See companies that have been recently removed
Use job boards and then compare firms to the Tier 2 Sponsor List.
You can utilize job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed to find organizations, and then cross-reference them with the Government Tier 2 sponsor list or the Sponsor Tier 2 website.
Job boards such as LinkedIn and Indeed are excellent places to look for current openings.
They do not, however, indicate if the firm will sponsor, so it is necessary to cross-reference the companies using the government Tier 2 sponsor list or the Sponsor Tier 2 website.
LinkedIn and Indeed are fantastic… but…
When you do a search, you will be screening and sorting through hundreds of openings to locate only a few that are appropriate.
For example, if you go to Indeed and search “graduate roles,” you will find over 15,000 suitable positions.
It’s pointless to wade through pages and pages of unrelated employment.
We propose incorporating the phrase “graduate” and ensuring that the income is greater than £20,000.
However, you may narrow down your employment search as much as you wish.
If you wanted to be an auditor in London, for example, you might enter the search phrases “auditor, graduate, London.”
This will reduce the number of jobs you have to seek while also making them more relevant.
Utilize specialized employment boards that screen opportunities that provide Tier 2 sponsorship.
We essentially propose two great websites:
How long will it take me to obtain a visa for these businesses?
According to the UK Government’s web pages, skilled worker visas (Tier 2) can take anything from 3 to 8 weeks.
The procedure for obtaining a visa is rather simple and proceeds as follows:
- Obtain a formal employment offer.
- Obtain a written contract
- Provide documentation to process your visa (large firm) or fill out the form on the Home Office website (LINK) to process your own visa.
- Make an appointment to have your papers verified at a Visa Application Center.
- Await a decision: Allow for 8 weeks in our experience, while some organizations, such as, prefer to batch apply for students well ahead of the 8-week deadline.
For example, if you want to start their graduate programs in September, the deadline to apply is 5 months earlier, on April 30th.
If you are unclear if you require a work visa, visit the UK government website.
Job Ready English is neither an OISC-registered immigration counsel nor do we claim to be immigration authorities. All of the material presented here is only for educational reasons.
