If you're an ICT professional who wishes to immigrate to Australia, you must apply for the ACS migration skills assessment. The ACS (Australian Computer Society) performs these assessments to determine if you meet the requirements in your education and work experience to immigrate as a skilled worker. How you present your ICT career is the most important part of this process.

How to best present your ICT career in the ACS migration skills assessment

1. Identify ICT-related experience

When you are undertaking the ACS migration skills assessment you need to provide all ICT-related job positions that apply to your chosen nominated occupation. Each employment reference must contain the following:

●     Job title and company name

●     Period of employment

●     Clear and concise description of the tasks and responsibilities you performed

●     Technologies, tools and methodologies you use

This proves to the ACS that your experience is real and relevant to your nominated occupation.

2. Professional format of employment references

The ACS requires that the job references provided are written in a clear, professional format. Instead of writing a general job description, be specific about the tasks you did. One example of a good job reference and a bad one:

●     Bad job reference: Software Developer: "Worked on developing software"

●     Good job reference: Software Developer: "Designed and deployed 3 enterprise applications using J2EE, SQL, and Web Services to improve the overall systems efficiency by 20%."

This level of detail is important to provide for the ACS skills assessment application.

3. Show career progression

You must showcase how you have advanced through your ICT career. Highlighting promotions, an increase in job responsibility and leadership positions will give your ACS migration skills assessment application more weight.

4. Be relevant to ANZSCO codes

Every ICT-related profession has an ANZSCO classification code and the tasks associated with the position must match those given under the nominated code. For example, if you are applying for a Software Engineer job, your work references should outline the design, coding, testing and maintenance of software. This is critical to pass the ACS skills assessment.

5. Recognition of prior learning (RPL) if applicable

If you do not have an ICT academic qualification, you can apply through the RPL stream. When applying through the RPL stream, you will have to prepare several detailed project reports that explain your knowledge of IT through on-the-job experience.