General Skills Assessment Pathway

Due to the extensive and complex nature of the ACs Migration Skills Assessment, it is not possible to offer pre-assessment advice. A formal assessment needs to be completed before any advice is provided.

ACS is unable to provide career or employment advice to applicants. Qualifications regarding specific education and career outcomes are at the discretion of the student.

Accreditation has no impact on the outcome of your ACS Migration Skills Assessment application or the assessment of a qualification.

Although ACS does provide accreditation for certain ICT Courses, it does not guarantee a suitable migration skills assessment outcome. The qualification is only one aspect of the overall assessment criteria required for a suitable assessment.

ACS can only assess completed qualifications. The completion date of the qualification is an assessment requirement. 

Vendor Certifications should only be submitted by Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) applicants.

If you have a master's degree, please provide all documentation for the underpinning qualifications, such as a bachelor's degree, including non-ICT qualifications.

Your qualification level, ICT course content and relevance of your qualification to the nominated occupation will determine how many years work experience you will require.

This can only be determined at the time of formal assessment.

If you are unable to obtain an employment reference on a company letterhead from your employer, a third party official Statutory Declaration or Affidavit written by a work colleague may be considered along with one of the following as supporting evidence:

• Employment certificate/statement of service
• Leaving certificate if no longer working at the same company

A Statutory Declaration or Affidavit written by a work colleague must describe the working relationship with you and details of your duties performed with relevant dates of employment. It must clearly state that the document was 'Sworn Before' or 'Signed Before' or 'Witnessed Before' the authorised witness by the referee and signed by the authorised witness, along with the date and place in which the declaration was witnessed.

 For further details, please refer to Statutory Declarations.

Yes. ACS requires sufficient evidence of paid employment to verify your employment and that your pay is commensurate with the skill level for your position. 

Please refer to the Experience Evidence for more detailed information.

Full-time work is considered to be 20 hours or more per week and must be stated in the employment reference letter. Any experience less than 20 hours per week will be assessed as unsuitable.

If your work experience was a requirement of your qualification, this will not be counted towards your assessment.

Yes. If two or more relevant work episodes overlapped or occurred within the same period, then both experiences will be considered toward your assessment outcome. However, when calculating your total experience, any overlapping periods will only be counted once. 

So, for example, if you have two relevant work episodes that ran for one year but overlapped by three months, then both episodes will be listed as wholly accepted and suitable on the assessment result. However, the total experience counted towards your Requirement Met Date will only be 1 year and 9 months. 

Seoul Accord is a multilateral agreement between countries that allows certain University level Bachelor and Master degrees to be recognized by the  Seoul Accord signatories. ACS has been a signatory of the Seoul Accord since its conception in 2008.

Qualifications that are ACS accredited or recognised through mutual recognition under the Seoul Accord will be considered to have met the ICT major criteria for migration skills assessment purposes. However, for qualifications to be accepted as ICT major, they will still be expected to meet or be comparable to the ACS accreditation standards. The assessor will have discretion to determine this at the time of assessment. 

Assessment suitability is however still subject to assessment against the nominated ANZSCO occupation.

Should you wish to have your qualification assessed under the Seoul Accord, the onus of proof falls solely on the applicant to notify the ACS of this and to provide the ACS with sufficient evidence that your qualification is mutually recognized under the Seoul Accord. Evidence would include screenshots taken directly from the Seoul Accord website  Accredited Programs  clearly showing that their qualification is recognised. ACS assessors will have discretion to accept or reject the evidence provided.

The ACS Migration Skills Assessment is a critical step in applying for your visa. It is a process for assessing and validating your IT or Data Science qualifications and work experience to determine your eligibility for skilled migration to Australia.

Before you can apply for a visa to migrate to Australia, you will probably need to undertake the ACS Migration Skills Assessment.

When lodging your application for the ACS Migration Skills Assessment, you will be required to submit a range of documents, depending on your Assessment Pathway. 

Temporary Graduate 485 - documents required:

• Proof of identity
• Evidence of qualifications

Post Australian Studies - documents required:

• Proof of identity
• Evidence of qualifications
• Evidence of work experience or completed ACS Professional Year

General Skills  - documents required:

• Proof of identity
• Evidence of qualifications 
• Evidence of work experience 

Recognition of Prior Learning  - documents required: 

• Proof of identity 
• Evidence of qualifications 
• Evidence of work experience 
• Completed ACS Recognition of Prior Learning form 

No – it is important that you make sure to provide all the documentation that you want to be considered in the application at the time of submission. Once your application has been submitted and is in process, additional documentation cannot be included.

No, you do not have to be an ACS member to apply for, or submit, an application for the ACS Migration Skills Assessment. When you start your application online, you will be offered a complimentary 12-month ACS membership. ACS members enjoy a wide range of membership benefits including exclusive events, offers, training and career development opportunities.

After submitting your skills application, you will receive email confirmation with an ACS reference number.

The progress of your application can be tracked via your applicant portal using your email address and password.

You can update your address or contact details via your applicant portal.

For applications that do not require any requests for additional documentation or information, please allow between 4 - 6 weeks for the skills assessment to be completed. 

You can change your migration agent or remove them at any point in time via your applicant portal and select to either authorise or de-authorise.

An internal (level 1) appeal is available if you disagree with the outcome result of their Migration Skills Assessment and are seeking an internal review of the assessment by a senior assessor who was not involved in processing the original application. The senior assessor ensures there were no errors made in the assessment or in the administration of the application. You can also, if you wish, provide additional evidence that was not included in your original application that might affect the outcome.

An external (level 2) then becomes available if you disagree with the outcome of your Migration Skills Assessment Appeal. In this case, you can request a review of your application by an external expert or independent assessor to validate the results of the Appeal assessment.

For more information, refer to the ACS MSA Appeals Policy.

You can launch a level 1 appeal of your Migration Skills Assessment outcome within 60 days of receipt of the outcome – i.e. from the date on your skills assessment result letter. After the 60-day period, a new application is required. 

You must initiate the level 1 appeal via the applicant portal and provide additional records and documentation via the portal (if required). 

You may launch an external level 2 Appeal within 30 days of the receipt of the level 1 appeal outcome – i.e. from the date on your level 1 appeal result letter. After the 30-day period, a new application is required. 

The applicant must initiate the level 2 appeal via email to level2appeal@acs.org.au. The applicant is not permitted to provide additional records and documentation to support the level 2 appeal.

Please allow approximately 2-4 weeks for processing.

If the appeal concludes that the application was incorrectly assessed, ACS will fully refund your appeal fees.

If the additional evidence submitted via appeal changes the assessment outcome, ACS reserves the right to not refund your appeal fees.

If the appeal outcome agrees with the original assessment, ACS will not refund your appeal fees.