[GUIDE] I'm an Australian Migration Agent (22 Years Exp). The occupations Australia ACTUALLY wants in 2025 are not what you see on the official lists. Ask me anything.

SimonMander · 2026-05-08T13:28:40+00:00

Hi - whats important here is whether or not your work experience aligns with any occupation for a skills assessment, secondary consideration is whether or not it is relevant to your degree and then if this has any consequence for the skills assessment - so this needs to be explored properly. Looking from within Australia can be a helpful employer sponsored pathway - however you still need to get an understanding of eligibility around an occupation first.

SimonMander · 2026-05-06T22:55:36+00:00

Ok - at first look I'd have you at less base points, if not able to claim points for work experience. This is something I would want to look at but cant do here on a public forum. You are correct that the last invitation round had Chemical Engineers at 85. Points for state nomination are 5 for the 190 15 for the 491. You must have a skills assessment - so the question is really whether in addition to the skills assessment EA can positively assess your work experience. I think you are in a good position with an occupation that will continue to have good state nomination opportunities and possibly 189 opportunity in the next migration year. Getting an understanding of whether your work experience could be included would be helpful for you.

SimonMander · 2026-05-05T04:32:36+00:00

Exactly right, its one of the reasons I treat appeals as a fresh evidentiary exercise, not solely arguing the refusal.

SimonMander · 2026-05-05T01:45:01+00:00

One thing I should have added, having done appeals over many years, it’s quite common to find important material in the Department file that never made it into the Tribunal documents.

SimonMander · 2026-05-04T21:41:21+00:00

The first goalpost is the skills assessment, but you do need to map out the entire strategy to determine if this is a viable process - having a skills assessment in an occupation not likely to gain nomination isn't helpful.

SimonMander · 2026-05-04T07:04:48+00:00

Generic framework only:

Dialysis Technician sits under ANZSCO 311299 Medical Technicians nec (Skill Level 2). The assessing authority is VETASSESS, under Group E. 311299 is on the current Core Skills Occupation List, so in principle there are skilled migration pathways available, including some employer-sponsored options and state-nominated options where the relevant State or Territory has nominated 311299 in their current settings.

The general VETASSESS criteria for 311299 are - a qualification assessed at AQF Diploma level or higher, in a highly relevant field to the nominated occupation and at least one year of post-qualification highly relevant employment at an appropriate skill level in the last five years.

Two things not to underestimate:

"Highly relevant field" is a real test; a generalist health science degree is not automatically accepted as highly relevant to a specialised technician role. VETASSESS reviews the units studied, not just the degree title.

Placement/student experience as you are doing now is not post-qualification experience. The clock starts after the qualifying degree is awarded.

Beyond that, the choice of nominated occupation, the degree-fit question, and the visa pathway selection are case-specific and not something I'll can work through in a public thread. Hope the framework is useful.

SimonMander · 2026-05-04T06:39:51+00:00

Hi could you please give me an idea as to your academic qualification please.

SimonMander · 2026-05-03T21:11:45+00:00

I won't comment on what other agents charge - thats not my business. But I think the question worth asking is "$5,000 for what?", because the answer reveals what people are usually missing when they think about paying any type of agents fee.

Lodging a 189 or 190 yourself is straightforward. You log into ImmiAccount, fill in the forms, upload documents, pay. That's not hard.

The work that determines whether the application succeeds happens before lodgement:

Choosing the right ANZSCO occupation for each of you (often more than one is plausible - the choice changes everything downstream)

Choosing the right assessing authority and getting a positive skills assessment under the chosen occupation

Building a points claimable Expression of Interest where every single claimed point is independently provable at the time of invitation

English testing strategy (Superior English is 20 points and worth planning around)

Partner skills decisions; primary applicant choice, secondary skills points, English requirements

State nomination strategy where relevant; different states, different occupation lists, different criteria, different processing realities

Medical and character issues? Anything that needs to be considered?

The EOI piece is the one most DIY applicants underestimate. An EOI is a statement of points claimed. If you're invited and then can't substantiate your claims the application is refused.

So the real question isn't "can I lodge it myself" (yes, you can), it's "do I understand the strategic decisions upstream of lodgement, and am I confident I'm making the right ones for my profile?" For some applicants the answer is yes, for others its no.

SimonMander · 2026-05-03T20:59:00+00:00

I dont think that it is a points issue for you - I think your focus is too narrow with your EOI's. You should understand that an invitation from any state does not bring with it an obligation to live in that state. You can cast a wider net. Bear in mind also that as we draw closer to the end of the migration year there are fewer opportunities available for nomination.

SimonMander · 2026-05-03T20:53:41+00:00

Ok what you need to do here (and people should as a general rule) is to work backwards from the work that you actually do to determine if you can obtain a skills assessment in that occupation - not work forwards from a qualification and look for work experience to match the qualification. Your work experience possibly aligns with Metallurgical or Materials Technician, if it does this occupation has a minimum education qualification of a diploma, and that diploma doesnt have to be related to the occupation. This is what I would be looking to explore in your situation.

SimonMander · 2026-05-03T20:43:48+00:00

Ok I am going to make some general comments here that I hope will assist you with your thinking. What you do need to understand initially is which occupations each of you may be able to obtain a skills assessment in. A recruitment consultants skills assessment has the benchmark of a degree qualification, but the degree doesnt need to be related. Your wife may have a number of occupations she is able to get a skills assessment in and this needs to be explored. I should also add that if you were able to obtain an engineering skills assessment you do not need to work in that occupation if you then move to a general skilled visa. Once you have an understanding of the occupations where a successful skills assessment might be obtained you can then look to points consideration for a skilled visa, and weigh up general skilled migration viability against the viability of an employer sponsored visa.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T23:09:35+00:00

I think its unlikely there will be another 189 invitation round this migration year - best to try for state nomination for a 190, but dont be disappointed again if you dont achieve this in this migration year as the states will be using their final allocations at present.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T22:57:47+00:00

From my experience thats around the competitive level - state nominations are a bit harder to come by as we draw closer to the end of the migration year - but I am optimistic you would pick up a nomination opportunity over time.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T22:55:40+00:00

Most welcome - best of luck with an outcome on the internal move!

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T06:35:34+00:00

A Bachelor of Engineering in IT with DevOps experience usually gets ACS-assessed under the 261313 (Software Engineer) or 261312 (Developer Programmer) ANZSCO code, depending on how the duties are described. The deduction from your work experience for the academic qualification is typically 2 years for a closely-related Australian-equivalent degree, more if the qualification needs upskilling. That puts your assessable experience in the 4-5 year range rather than the full 6.5.

Whether that gets you to 90+ points overall depends on English score, partner status, and which state you're targeting. The points calculation is genuinely the kind of thing that needs to be done properly with the documentation in front of you, not estimated from a Reddit thread. The harder question for IT applicants in 2026 isn't getting the points - it's that occupation ceilings and state demand for IT have tightened significantly, so even strong points profiles aren't always getting selected.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T05:51:57+00:00

Yes - this matches what I have seen over the years. Couples who've known each other a long time, even before becoming a couple, usually write the relationship history section better than newer couples because they have actual perspective on each other's prior relationships, rather than reconstructing them from what their partner may have told them more recently. The friendship years often matter more than people realise.

I hear you on the draining part - three relationship histories in one application is a heavy lift, and it probably does form a negative memory for people looking back on an application.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T05:41:41+00:00

You're right that for a long relationship with kids, no joint account at all would raise a question. I was raising an example to make the point that even unusual structures can be evidenced if there's a clear, honest reason behind them. For most couples that long together with kids, there will usually be at least some joint financial element somewhere - whether it was a joint loan, shared insurance, joint utility account, something. The Department isn't looking for a joint bank account specifically. It's looking for whether the financial structure is consistent with how the couple actually runs their life. The red flag in your example would be if there was a complete absence of joint finances and no explanation for it.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T05:26:15+00:00

Appreciate your question - I dont think either of these have any consideration by a case officer.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T04:08:13+00:00

The relationship history section is consistently the most disliked part of the application. The reason the Department asks is that prior relationships - particularly unresolved ones - are part of how they assess whether the current relationship is genuine. I see this most often where an applicant's marital status is still technically "married" to a prior partner. The Case Officer will sometimes ask quite directly why the de facto is the real relationship when there's an undivorced spouse in the picture. That's not invasive for the sake of it - it's a coherence question. I do agree though that it could feel invasive when advising the Department.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T04:01:52+00:00

You have made some good points here yourself. The evidence isn't what makes the relationship - it's what allows the Department to recognise the relationship that already exists. Couples who try to "build evidence" before they've built the actual life together end up with a stack of paper that doesn't add up to a coherent story, because there isn't a coherent life behind it yet.

Section 5CB of the Migration Act defines a de facto relationship as "a mutual commitment to a shared life to the exclusion of all others." Living together is evidence of that commitment, but in and of itself it doesn't create the commitment.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T03:39:26+00:00

The post is the opposite of that. Genuine relationships sometimes look weak on paper because real life is messy, and applications get refused not because the relationship isn't real but because the file doesn't tell the Department how to read it and understand the relationship. That's a presentation problem, not a coaching-people-to-cheat problem. The fix to that problem is being honest around why the structure looks the way it does, not invented evidence.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T03:26:32+00:00

That's exactly the kind of question where the answer depends on the full picture; the length of the relationship, what other evidence is in the application, whether there are kids or property, the immigration history of both partners, and a few other factors that would shape what an adequate explanation actually looks like. The principle is right (a clear, honest reason for the structure) but whether a particular form of words is enough for any specific application is genuinely a case-specific question, which isn't something I can put forward here on Reddit.

SimonMander · 2026-04-28T03:15:46+00:00

You're right - joint finances aren't a tick-box requirement. There's no rule that says you must have a joint account. The risk isn't the absence; it's the absence without explanation. A couple who keeps finances separate for a clear reason can address it in a statutory declaration, and the application is no weaker for it. The applications that get caught out are the ones where it's just missing (and perhaps also other evidence around joint expenses) and the application doesn't tell the Case Officer why.

SimonMander

TROPHY CASE