Notes on the Australian Skills Assessment

These notes record the problems I ran into while applying for the Australian Technical Writer skills assessment, and how I solved them. A skills assessment is a required step for applying for Australia's skilled migration visas (189), or state-nominated skilled visas (190 and 491). If you're not yet familiar with Australia's migration pathways, see the Australian Migration Planning Overview.

⚠️ Every application can be completed online, so if you have your materials ready, you're mostly set. I recommend the Immersive Translate browser extension to help with submitting the forms.

#Choosing the occupation to assess

Before starting a skills assessment, first work out which occupation on the skilled occupation list published by the Australian Department of Home Affairs matches your past work experience. Each occupation has an assessing body. These bodies are private organizations that advise and review on behalf of the Australian federal government.

My past experience fit the Technical Writer occupation best, so I had to complete all my applications on the official website of Vetassess (hereafter the "VET Association"). Different assessing bodies have different application processes, but generally they all follow the same sequence: submit the application, wait for review, then receive the result.

#Getting started with the application

#1. Getting your education verified

If your higher education degree was issued by a Chinese institution, you need to complete this verification before submitting the skills assessment. If your degree is from an overseas institution, you can skip this step. Any English documents you submit must be stamped by a Natti-certified translator, which you can arrange through Taobao.

For the complete information, refer to the VET Association website. The materials required for the Chinese Qualifications Verification Service (CQV) are:

• Personal information

  • Medical birth certificate
  • Passport photo (white background)
  • Scan of your passport
  • Scan of your Chinese ID card

• Education information

  • Degree certificate (scan and Natti-certified English translation)
  • Graduation certificate (scan and Natti-certified English translation)
  • Complete Chinese academic transcript (scan and Natti-certified English translation)
  • CHSI online verification report (valid for 6 months)
  • Editable PDF transcript: a PDF template provided by the VET Association, which you fill in yourself based on your transcript. Choose one of the Chinese transcript templates depending on whether semesters appear on your original transcript. (1. If semesters appear on the transcript, download this file; 2. If semesters do not appear, download this file)

• Fees

Once the education assessment is done, VET will send you a PDF certificate confirming the verification.

#2. Submitting the skills assessment application

This section uses the Technical Writer occupation as an example to show how to submit a skills assessment application.

#2.1 Submitting the application on the VET website

Go to the VET application site, select the first row, "Skills assessment for professional and general occupations," and then click the orange button on the right.

Register an account, then click "Create a New Application."

For the application type, choose the first row, "Skills Assessment (GSM, ENS, SESR, 485, TSS)."

#2.2 Filling in personal information

On the "Personal details" page, fill in your personal information, passport number and so on, following the prompts on the page.

#2.3 Specifying the occupation to be assessed

On the "Occupation" page, it's recommended to make your selection by referring to the image below. If you have a different migration purpose or occupation, change the visa type and occupation as needed.

#2.4 Education declaration

"General education" and "Tertiary education" mean "general education" and "higher education."

My guess is that under "General education" you enter the years of primary school through junior high and senior high school. Either way, the total adds up to 12 years.

"Tertiary education" covers higher education. The information here is similar to what you used for the CQV, so you can reuse it directly. It's just your degree verification and qualification details.

You can refer to the following fields:

"Additional Course Requirements" asks you to fill in the title of the thesis you submitted earlier and a rough description of how you wrote it.

#2.5 Submitting the CQV verification

Next, paste in the CQV certificate number you received earlier, which is the string of digits in the upper-left corner of the PDF certificate.