Consultancy sponsorship for >£40/hr contracts that meet the criteria.

As a recruiter, one of the common things you may hear from clients is ‘We don’t want to be bothered with visas.  Please just bring us the resources we need, and you / they sort the visa, if needed’. That is all very well, but with the domestic labour market about to fall from the UK’s 70m population, rather than 500m of the EU28, and as there were shortages of ‘in demand skills’ even before that, it really does make sense to close your doors to the other 7 billion people in the world?  To tap into the expertise of Silicon Valley, of New York Financiers, of the Indian Tech sector, or just to keep the Australian (Tier 5) visa holder that has proved themselves during their ‘working holiday’ in the UK, they need to be open to expat talent.

For junior staff, and those in Ongoing Routine roles (ie most BAU roles), there is no alternative to direct sponsorship by the client:

But for a consulting role on £40+/hr, it is worth considering ‘Can this requirement be outsourced?’. The key criteria are:

  • A project with defined deliverable outcomes (eg an improved process, a new report, added functionality etc)
  • The individual will not be quasi-staff or subject to day to day direction & control by the client (very similar to the criteria required to be ‘Outside IR35’, although sponsored staff are paid under PAYE by their sponsor anyway)
  • The client will have to sign off on the project spec and deliverables.  They can not delegate this signing off to their recruitment agent!
  • The client must be able to work with a lead time of 1-3 months.  If there are shortage skills or other rare criteria, turnaround within a week is theoretically possible, but mostly you will need at least 5 weeks (if the expat is already in the UK and is allowed to stay here while getting a new visa) and up to 3 months (for an expat that is out of the country and needs a Restricted Certificate of Sponsorship)

If you have a project that meets these criteria, please get in touch