A lot of the times we are given titles for jobs that don’t really make sense, either to us or to our employers. If you’ve ever had a hard time explaining what you do at work can you imagine how the Australian government tries to? They’ve developed occupation categories in order to keep track of everything. These are called ANZSCO codes and they use these each year to determine a myriad of things such as what occupations to include or exclude from the Skilled Migration program.

But when it comes to determining what YOUR occupation is under these codes, it gets a little tricky. The general rule of thumb of what is the nominated occupation is to match it up as closely as you can but a real expert will be able to determine a more suitable occupation for you.

With extensive experience in processing occupations and dealing with the Government, we’ve become experts in deciphering the ANZSCO code and what occupations fit where. Sometimes it could even be more advantageous to choose a different ANZSCO code for your occupation – it all comes down to a matter of strategy.

Strategic choices for nominated occupations

Why would you choose one occupation over another?

The question arises, wouldn't you just choose Web Administrator if that’s what it says on your contract?

Of course you call a horse a horse but if it looks like a pig, smells like a pig, sounds like pig then it most likely is a pig and no matter how many people you tell that it’s a horse, they won’t believe you. This can be said about the occupation lists. The Department has seen this before and that is the reason why Project Administrator – once a catch all for all occupations – now requires a skills assessment to actually prove the skills and experience match the ANZSCO job code.

But there are also strategic reasons why you would rather specify that that horse is a particular breed. For instances, maybe your title is Computer Administrator but the things you do on a day to day basis could also be called a Systems and Network administrator. Which one would you choose?

Let's take the Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189) as an example. Each occupation is subject to a quota, or as they say, ‘occupation ceiling’. There are also occupations that are scrutinised a lot more (due to the above issues about horses being called pigs). So which one do you choose?

Whilst we don’t claim to know which occupations are scrutinised more or that quotas are exclusive information to us (they’re not, you can find the reports here) we do know from our experience of processing these applications, which pathway works best.

If you have a tricky hard-to-place occupation and wondering which one you should select on your application (or to see if you’re even eligible) then you need to talk to a migration agent.

One final tip

Use the ANZSCO codes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics site and NOT the Department site that contains information for your occupation because they have proven to be often inconsistent.