Assessing Skill Levels
The backbone of our residence program is the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) for short. which is actually several different visa categories all under one umbrella. As the name suggests, the SMC is all about bringing skilled, employable applicants in to New Zealand and giving them the chance to reside here permanently. However, the key component of this category - your level of skill, is not quite as straightforward as it might sound.
INZ has a fairly complex set of requirements for determining who is and isn’t skilled, and the process they use to assess skill is quite intricate. For the most part, skills are assessed based on a set of statistics that tries to define each job and rank it against a skill scale, however other roles can be considered skilled based on how much you earn in New Zealand. There are even occupations that aren’t considered skilled through either of these method, but still occupy a place on our Green List and therefore have a pathway to residence.
For some applicants, their level of skill is fairly obvious, e.g. a Doctor or a Teacher, however for other applicants, determining whether they are skilled or not and therefore meet the requirements can be a complex exercise. This weeks article is all about understanding how the “skilled” in Skilled Migrant Category works, giving prospective migrants a head start when it comes to planning their NZ job search.
What Is Skilled Employment?
The first and most important question is the obvious one - what is skilled employment? The answer however is pretty complicated, because there are various ways INZ measures and assesses skill. For the most part, INZ relies on the Australian New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO for a shorter mouthful). However INZ can also assess skill based on what you earn here, and if you earn the right amount per hour, your job will automatically be considered skilled. There are even a very small number of jobs that aren’t considered skilled generally, but do have a pathway to residence under the SMC program.
How Skill Is Measured
Skilled employment is primarily measured through the use of ANZSCO or the salary you earn in New Zealand.
ANZSCO - Let’s start with the common denominator, which is ANZSCO, used in the vast majority of assessments, particularly under the points based system of the SMC.
If you have never heard of it, ANZSCO is essentially a joint statistical database, used in NZ and Australia that attempts to define every job you can think of, giving it a level of skill (between one and five), a set of general tasks that a person in this job would do and then some pre-requisites you might need to do that job, e.g. the level of qualification required to do that work. ANZSCO wasn’t built for the visa process, but instead was created to assist with labour market analysis and census data. Having this database allowed both countries to work out who was doing what and where. It did however create a convenient tool for INZ (and the Australian equivalent) to measure whether a potential migrant might have the right skills needed to qualify for a visa.
Essentially in NZ we take all those jobs in ANZSCO which are ranked by skill from one to five and then we accept those at level one, two and three, but not four and five (there are exceptions to this). The different skill levels also tend to correspond to different areas of the labour market, for example trades are usually in the level three bracket, where as professionals would be in level one.
INZ looks at your job and the duties you do and tries to establish if there is a match to a code in ANZSCO or rather whether the code you have selected from ANZSCO is the right match.
Income - The second measure is income, because if you are earning the right amount, and applying under our points based system, then any job can be considered skilled. The magical number you need to earn to use this assessment is 1.5 times the median wage (currently $33.56 per hour). So if you earn $50.34 per hour, and you sweep the streets then technically you qualify as skilled. Of course the chances of a street sweeper being paid that amount are pretty limited, but this assessment tool does work for some occupations that might be lower skilled but can often be higher paid. I once assisted a credit controller (skill level 4) earning 1.5 times the median wage to secure residence on that basis.
The logic behind the use of income as a measure of skill, is that if you are being paid that amount, we don’t really need to worry too much about what you are doing and it is likely to either be skilled in some way or have some value to the employer and/or economy.
Green List - Finally, we do have a few rare exemptions that tend to find their way in to the SMC process, because of either a really good industry lobby group or a chronic shortage of that particular skill. One such example is corrections officers who occupy skill level four in ANZSCO, are never paid 1.5 times the median (not unless they are in management roles) but we do desperately need. Applicants in this occupation can still apply under the Green List, work to residence scheme, even though they are in fact not “skilled” as INZ would usually define them. These exceptions are pretty rare, so for the rest of this article we are focussing on the other two options, namely ANZSCO and income.
The Role Of ANZSCO
So now that we know what the mechanics are, it would be good to dive under the hood a little further, particularly when it comes to ANZSCO, which remains INZ’s main tool to determine if what you do is skilled and therefore worth of a visa. While ANZSCO is fairly comprehensive, it is also a bit limited in terms of being able to adequately describe every skilled job that exists. It also provides for pretty basic and generic descriptions of what each job might actually involve - and yet it is this information that INZ uses to assess your NZ job offer.
There are of course some jobs that are easy to identify, for example an Engineer, or Software Developer - INZ wouldn’t have to dig too deep to determine if this role was skilled or not. However there are plenty of jobs where the line between skilled and unskilled as determined by ANZSCO is easy to trip over.
The Trouble With Stats
ANZSCO is the primary source for INZ to determine skill levels, however it has struggled to keep up with the changing nature of work and how skills are used.
When you file your application for residence under the points system, you need to identify which ANZSCO code your role most closely aligns to and it is that code, that INZ will assess you against.
This is the first step where issues can arise, because many applicants wouldn’t have a clue as to how to work out which ANZSCO code is the best match. Ill give you a good example - Accountant’s are a nice, clean, easy pick for ANZSCO, they have their own code and even separate codes for specialty areas like tax or management. Now try and fit the role of Assistant Accountant in to the same list. Does the word Assistant make a difference? Does this mean you aren’t an Accountant or that you are one, but not at the right skill level. It can get confusing very quickly.
The key thing to realise here is that what you are called is far less important than what you do. So you might be called an Assistant Accountant, but if your duties are the same or very similar to that of an Accountant and you are only called an Assistant because you work alongside the CFO, then odds are you are skilled.
INZ’s job in this process, which admittedly is one they don’t do all that well, is to actually look at your job description, putting aside the title, and to try and establish if your role is a “substantial match” to the code you have nominated. That doesn’t mean an exact match. You might not do everything that ANZSCO prescribes, but you need to be doing most of it, and more importantly to the same level.
The problem that ANZSCO presents for those roles that aren’t an easy fit, is that INZ tends to treat this more like a tick-box exercise - so if your tasks don’t line up, then they will try to argue that you are in fact not skilled. INZ should, but often doesn’t consider the context of your employment, the size of the business and how that might influence your duties, and whether additional tasks that you do, but aren’t in ANZSCO might influence whether you are skilled or not.
Over the years, the use of income levels and the Green List have attempted to minimise how much ANZSCO is used, because it has had a tendency to create a lot of arguments over skill levels, but for some applicants it can and still does create a lot of headaches. There are also certain occupations that INZ tends to scrutinize more, because that line between skilled and not is so blurry its almost invisible - these tend to be in retail management, hospitality, and some tech support roles. My guess is that we will see these dealt to in a different way, over time.
The main problem that ANZSCO brings to the table however is that it struggles to be relevant, particularly in a world where new jobs are being created almost every day. For example, try and find anything to do with AI in ANZSCO and you will see what I mean - yet AI related roles are becoming more and more prominent. As the nature of work changes, ANZSCO remains the same and there as increasing list of skilled roles that simply aren’t included. ANZSCO is also a fairly blunt and limited resource, shared between two countries with quite different labour markets.
Introducing the NOL (National Occupations List)
Whilst ANZSCO is still our main resource for determining skill levels, its days are numbered, and the Government (in fact a previous one) has already committed to moving to a new tool, called the National Occupations List (or the NOL).
The NOL actually already exists and the first version was released in November 2024, however moving your visa process to an entirely new assessment tool, is no small task and so INZ have not yet managed to make that transition. Bear in mind that introducing the NOL would actually mean having two separate systems in place to account for those applications already lodged and needing to still rely on ANZSCO. It also involves updating a plethora of online systems that all rely on the current ANZSCO definitions. So it is coming, but may take a bit longer to arrive.
The NOL Is Coming
The National Occupations List, will replace ANZSCO at some point in the near future, providing more flexibility and a better framework for assessing skill.
The NOL however will create a very different assessment environment because it was designed more specifically for New Zealand and is far more flexible. The promise is that the NOL will also be updated more regularly meaning that the new jobs we are creating, particularly in the tech sector, will be assessable through this tool.
While the general process for assessing skilled employment will remain the same, the NOL will give INZ officers a more relevant, updated and relevant source of reference to work with and that has to be good news for migrants, particularly those working in more niche roles in the tech sector.
Of course the NOL won’t remove all the issues, because no matter what sort of list you use, you are still relying on both the applicant and then the INZ officer getting the nomination and assessment process right. Having worked in this industry for more than two decades there are some pretty common mistakes that both parties make in terms of how this assessment works. For the hopeful migrant, we have outlined some of these key thoughts and tips in the next section.
Check Before You Apply
If you are heading this way, with job offer in hand and are aiming to secure residence through our points-based SMC program, then understanding where your occupation fits in to the ranking of skill is pretty important. For some that will be a pretty easy assessment to make, but for others, that blurry line, might be getting in the way. To help navigate through this, here are a few key points:
Descriptions over titles - people tend to place a lot of emphasis on a job title, particularly when the word “manager” appears. INZ however will look at the duties and that is where the assessment starts and ends. So even if your title sounds skilled, its the tasks you perform that will determine whether you pass or fail.
Reporting lines - INZ will also consider who you report to. If you are one of several “managers” reporting to another “manager” then suddenly sound a lot less “managerial”. How your role sits within the organisation and who you report to are important considerations.
Size of the business - if you claim to be the manager, in a business with two people (the other one being the owner), that might not work. The size and structure of the business you work in is something to consider.
Balance of tasks - some job descriptions contain a lot of tasks and duties and so INZ will want to try and narrow down which ones you do most of the time. If you “manage” things for an hour a day and sell things for the other seven, odds are that you may not meet the skilled criteria.
The tricky in all of this, if you aren’t 100% sure as to whether your role is skilled or not, is to have someone else take a look and someone who can give you an objective opinion. It is tempting to see more skill than there actually is, when its your application and future in New Zealand on the line. In many cases we have have been able to prevent people from applying, knowing that their application will fail, but also giving them a chance to seek out a new job or to negotiate a more skilled offer to then move ahead.
If you need some help figuring it out if what you do is skilled and going to make the cut, then get in touch with us today.
Until next week.
