Lodging an Expression of Interest (EOI)

An IELTS and a favorable skills assessment are the main requirement before you are able to lodge what they call an Expression of Interest (EOI) for a skilled migrant visa.

I feel it is right to give a brief background on this matter first before we proceed; prior to 1^st July 2012, a different process was in place for those who were interested in getting visa to live in Australia - it goes something like, get all your requirements in place, pay the visa fee and wait for the results. They changed the process as of 1^st July this year and introduced the EOI. The main difference here lies on the fact that you need to be invited first before you can be able to actually apply for the migrant visa.

Let me explain how the EOI system works. Once you have your IELTS and your skills assessment, you can log on to the DIAC website to create your profile and begin in the lodgment process. There will be a series of questions that will be asked in the website, your answers to these questions will enable you to gather points (take note: the minimum points requirement by DIAC in order to be invited is 60) which will determine later on whether you will be able to get an invitation or not. The below summarizes the selected data in our EOI and the corresponding points that we claimed.

• Age: 30 points
• English Language Ability: 10 points
• Skilled Employment: 15 points
• Education qualifications: 15 points

From the above, we can see that we claimed 70 points total in our EOI (I will leave it to you to read on this LINK for further explanation on how it goes in order to claim points - please refer to the document under the points tab). Once we submitted our EOI, this was placed in a pool together with the rest of the other EOIs. These are ranked accordingly as per points claimed and the date of submission. As mentioned in a previous posts, getting as much points as possible will greatly enhance your possibility of getting selected.

Prior to clicking the submit button, we did a thorough checking of the data that we have placed in the EOI. As the system does not have any way of verifying the points you have claimed, you can technically claim more than what you really have. It should be noted that erroneous claiming of extra points could be a strong ground for refusal of visa.

DIAC has a selection process scheduled twice a month; a certain number of invitations are given and the highest ranked EOI will receive those invitations.  During the month that we applied, there were a total of 950 invitations given out every 2 weeks for skilled migrant visa.

As our total points claimed was more than sufficient, we were fortunate enough to be invited to apply for skilled migrant visa a week after we submitted our EOI. Happy times! :)