Paying for Assessment or not?
May 27th 2004, 8:02 am
#1
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Joined: May 2004
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 256
Paying for Assessment or not?
Some sites are offering free online assessments (I have completed numerous ones and get the same score ie 105-110 depending if i chuck them a bribe....whoops mean bond).
I saw the gomatilda site being recommended and noticed they charge a fee for an assessment.
My query is, what is the difference between them both? (apart from the bloomin obvious that is!)
All advice/comments received
I saw the gomatilda site being recommended and noticed they charge a fee for an assessment.
My query is, what is the difference between them both? (apart from the bloomin obvious that is!)
All advice/comments received
May 27th 2004, 8:19 am
#2
Just Joined
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 14
Your best bet would be to call up a few agents and talk to them. Some things are open to interpretation and need a human being to do the assessment. Any credible agent will give you some free advice over the phone. We had about 4 of them look at my husband's CV before we decided. What put us off taking things further with Go Matilda was the fact that they wanted money up front for a pre-skills assessment when other agents will do it for nothing.
Good luck.
Evie
Good luck.
Evie
May 27th 2004, 8:22 am
#3
Blue army down under!
Joined: May 2004
Location: Manchester now. Adelaide one day
Posts: 26
I filled out a quick form on the gomatilda site with a few questions and they phoned me back next day and explained my options. All this before asking me for a penny, I'd definatley try the form if I was you
May 27th 2004, 8:23 am
#4
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Originally posted by Evie
Your best bet would be to call up a few agents and talk to them. Some things are open to interpretation and need a human being to do the assessment. Any credible agent will give you some free advice over the phone. We had about 4 of them look at my husband's CV before we decided. What put us off taking things further with Go Matilda was the fact that they wanted money up front for a pre-skills assessment when other agents will do it for nothing.
Good luck.
Evie
Your best bet would be to call up a few agents and talk to them. Some things are open to interpretation and need a human being to do the assessment. Any credible agent will give you some free advice over the phone. We had about 4 of them look at my husband's CV before we decided. What put us off taking things further with Go Matilda was the fact that they wanted money up front for a pre-skills assessment when other agents will do it for nothing.
Good luck.
Evie
May 27th 2004, 8:52 am
#5
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Posts: 14
Funnily enough we haven't decided as yet. We've done our own skills assessment after talking to various agents. The way we saw it was that the agent would only ask us to provide all the information for the assessment and then get it in a nice format and sumit it. For that we would pay £500. Well we thought we could do all that ourselves and save some money. It's taken us around 6 weeks and we're still waiting to hear.
As far as the actual visa application goes we may well use an agent for that stage. We're looking at maybe Ian Harrop. His name crops up on here quite a bit. The northern office of Concept Australia also gets quite a few recommendations - can't say the same about the one down south though. From our personal viewpoint, a smaller agency may work that bit harder for you if it is their livelihood, rather than a 9 to 5 job.
Happy searching!
Evie
As far as the actual visa application goes we may well use an agent for that stage. We're looking at maybe Ian Harrop. His name crops up on here quite a bit. The northern office of Concept Australia also gets quite a few recommendations - can't say the same about the one down south though. From our personal viewpoint, a smaller agency may work that bit harder for you if it is their livelihood, rather than a 9 to 5 job.
Happy searching!
Evie
May 27th 2004, 8:56 am
#6
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Posts: 14
And another thing about Go Matilda, we sent my husband's CV and that wasn't enough for the agent to decide whether we stood a chance on getting in. She then said we should send money for this pre-skills assessment with another colleague, and then spoke about approaching the wrong skills assessing body! Just proved that she hadn't read the CV properly. This may just have been a bad experience had by us as others on here can't praise them enough.
Evie
Evie
May 28th 2004, 5:00 am
#7
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Originally posted by Evie
And another thing about Go Matilda, we sent my husband's CV and that wasn't enough for the agent to decide whether we stood a chance on getting in. She then said we should send money for this pre-skills assessment with another colleague, and then spoke about approaching the wrong skills assessing body! Just proved that she hadn't read the CV properly. This may just have been a bad experience had by us as others on here can't praise them enough.
Evie
And another thing about Go Matilda, we sent my husband's CV and that wasn't enough for the agent to decide whether we stood a chance on getting in. She then said we should send money for this pre-skills assessment with another colleague, and then spoke about approaching the wrong skills assessing body! Just proved that she hadn't read the CV properly. This may just have been a bad experience had by us as others on here can't praise them enough.
Evie
Will let you know the outcome when I get the results so could be a
or a 
depending on what they say.
May 28th 2004, 7:52 am
#8
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Posts: 14
Let me know how you get on and who you chose to use - got me wondering now! Hope it all goes smoothly.
Evie
Evie
May 29th 2004, 10:14 pm
#9
Migration Agent
Joined: May 2002
Location: Offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Geelong (Australia), and Southampton (UK)
Posts: 6,459
With respect Evie, I would say it is likely you misunderstood the nature of our initial skills assessment review - stage 1 with us is a thorough review of an intending applicant's circumstances (work experience, qualifications, etc) in the context of the skills assessment application to ascertain whether he or she has the attributes required to obtain a positive skills assessment classification before he or she spends the bigger money that involves the preparation and management of the skills assessment application.
It is also an intrinsic element of our stage 2, which is the preparation of the skills assessment application.
I would add here that stage 1 isn't always required, but where an intending skilled migrant's occupation isn't clear (and where we are looking at handling an application for a trade skills person, IT applicants, those who would be applying to the AIM and the IEA, and certain other occupations) we have a policy of progressing via stage 1 to give the applicant (and us) comfort.
If other agents were happy to give an assessment of your prospects for a positive skills assessment classification without going into the rigour of a full review - super. However, my understanding is that this isn't what other agents do: they are "simply" advising those who contact them as to possible visa strategies on the assumption that the enquirer will obtain a positive skills assessment classification (if a skilled visa strategy is the pathway) - and this is exactly the same as what we do in our initial free assessment.
Hope this makes sense, and I'll be happy to call you to discuss this further if we are still "in the frame."
Best regards.
It is also an intrinsic element of our stage 2, which is the preparation of the skills assessment application.
I would add here that stage 1 isn't always required, but where an intending skilled migrant's occupation isn't clear (and where we are looking at handling an application for a trade skills person, IT applicants, those who would be applying to the AIM and the IEA, and certain other occupations) we have a policy of progressing via stage 1 to give the applicant (and us) comfort.
If other agents were happy to give an assessment of your prospects for a positive skills assessment classification without going into the rigour of a full review - super. However, my understanding is that this isn't what other agents do: they are "simply" advising those who contact them as to possible visa strategies on the assumption that the enquirer will obtain a positive skills assessment classification (if a skilled visa strategy is the pathway) - and this is exactly the same as what we do in our initial free assessment.
Hope this makes sense, and I'll be happy to call you to discuss this further if we are still "in the frame."
Best regards.
Originally posted by Evie
Your best bet would be to call up a few agents and talk to them. Some things are open to interpretation and need a human being to do the assessment. Any credible agent will give you some free advice over the phone. We had about 4 of them look at my husband's CV before we decided. What put us off taking things further with Go Matilda was the fact that they wanted money up front for a pre-skills assessment when other agents will do it for nothing.
Good luck.
Evie
Your best bet would be to call up a few agents and talk to them. Some things are open to interpretation and need a human being to do the assessment. Any credible agent will give you some free advice over the phone. We had about 4 of them look at my husband's CV before we decided. What put us off taking things further with Go Matilda was the fact that they wanted money up front for a pre-skills assessment when other agents will do it for nothing.
Good luck.
Evie
Last edited by Alan Collett; May 29th 2004 at 10:21 pm.
May 30th 2004, 2:44 am
#10
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Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Brentwood, Essex but Adelaide bound
Posts: 397
Originally posted by Evie
Funnily enough we haven't decided as yet. We've done our own skills assessment after talking to various agents. The way we saw it was that the agent would only ask us to provide all the information for the assessment and then get it in a nice format and sumit it. For that we would pay £500. Well we thought we could do all that ourselves and save some money. It's taken us around 6 weeks and we're still waiting to hear.
Funnily enough we haven't decided as yet. We've done our own skills assessment after talking to various agents. The way we saw it was that the agent would only ask us to provide all the information for the assessment and then get it in a nice format and sumit it. For that we would pay £500. Well we thought we could do all that ourselves and save some money. It's taken us around 6 weeks and we're still waiting to hear.
We did it on our own in the end - it took lots of research, several practice runs at completing the forms etc - but fingers crossed everything has gone smoothly so far.
The £££ saved will just about pay for shipping our stuff out there....
Worth thinking about if you could do with saving some money.
May 30th 2004, 3:43 am
#11
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Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 14
How far into the process are you? Where are you hoping to settle?
May 30th 2004, 5:10 am
#12
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Joined: Aug 2003
Location: Brentwood, Essex but Adelaide bound
Posts: 397
Originally posted by Evie
How far into the process are you? Where are you hoping to settle?
How far into the process are you? Where are you hoping to settle?
austimeline
We have sent evry last bit of paper to Adealide Skilled Processing Centre and are (hopefully) now just waiting for the pre-grant letter.
Touch wood. Touch wood. Touch wood.
If all goes to plan (and what does?!) we are emigrating to Adelaide next April. Vaildation visit booked for end Nov/beginning Dec 2004.
If you think you can gather enough points to pass the passmark - then all the form and application is at its most basic level is an exercise in providing proof of points.
The forms aren't too difficult. If you are organised and methodical you coould save a lot of money. It's enough to pay the application fee alone without lining an agent's pockets as well.
However, if you do not think you currently meet the passmark you may well need to get an agent involved to see if there are clever ways to add those extra points...
Good luck!!
