Swedish Electrician looking to acquire a Skilled Worker Visa.

Kapane · Dec 14, 2021

Hi!

I am a soon to be qualified, but not authorised, electrician in Sweden.

I'm not quite sure how comparable it is, but certification is done by our equivalent of ECS/JIB and authorisation is done by the electrical safety council. The latter is primarily useful for project managers and business owners.

To my knowledge, a majority of electricians over here go through their professional life without ever getting fully authorised. You technically only need one per branch office, who signs off on all projects they're running.

Certification is achieved after 3 years of schooling and 1600 apprenticeship hours. Which I have just finished all of and another 500-600 in Industry (certification is in domestic and commercial only).

That's just for some quick background.
The actual question I have is that I'm interested (and highly motivated, if there is a path) to emigrating to the UK.

The issue I seem to have run into, is that I just cannot get a straight answer on what qualifications I need for a Skilled Worker Visa.

UKIV gives me non-answers and defers me to get legal advice. Any law firm I've managed to get a hold of either limit themselves to in-country residents or other areas of expertise. ECS and JIB also gives me non-answers to details outside of my questions. Colleges have said that for an NVQ 3 course, I need a pre-existing employment. And I'm likely to get a level 2 or 3 diploma from getting my certification translated and compared anyway, so those courses are likely superfluous.

My initial assumption was that I would need an NVQ 3. But from researching it a bit, this will be quite literally impossible to achieve as an overseas electrician.
They all require an in-country portfolio, which would make it a catch 22.
Can't get certified without work experience in the UK, can't get work experience without a visa, can't get a visa without certification.

I guess this could just be it and I'm hard stuck. Or I'll have to go to Ireland for a while to work there, do my C&G courses to eventually try and make my way over to the UK.

It does seem kind of unreasonable though, so I'm coming here to ask for advice if anybody knows what the actual requirements are? Is it the employer deciding on the matter if I'm qualified and UKIV only cares about the salary and the title?
Is there any kind of schooling that could get me an NVQ 3 without a pre-existing employment?
As far as I know, on a student visa, I would be eligible to do work related to my field of education. But it would need to come after enrollment and not before.
Would an Electrician's mate be eligible for a visa?

LastManOnline · Dec 14, 2021

Kapane said:
Hi!

I am a soon to be qualified, but not authorised, electrician in Sweden.

I'm not quite sure how comparable it is, but certification is done by our equivalent of ECS/JIB and authorisation is done by the electrical safety council. The latter is primarily useful for project managers and business owners.

To my knowledge, a majority of electricians over here go through their professional life without ever getting fully authorised. You technically only need one per branch office, who signs off on all projects they're running.

Certification is achieved after 3 years of schooling and 1600 apprenticeship hours. Which I have just finished all of and another 500-600 in Industry (certification is in domestic and commercial only).

That's just for some quick background.
The actual question I have is that I'm interested (and highly motivated, if there is a path) to emigrating to the UK.

The issue I seem to have run into, is that I just cannot get a straight answer on what qualifications I need for a Skilled Worker Visa.

UKIV gives me non-answers and defers me to get legal advice. Any law firm I've managed to get a hold of either limit themselves to in-country residents or other areas of expertise. ECS and JIB also gives me non-answers to details outside of my questions. Colleges have said that for an NVQ 3 course, I need a pre-existing employment. And I'm likely to get a level 2 or 3 diploma from getting my certification translated and compared anyway, so those courses are likely superfluous.

My initial assumption was that I would need an NVQ 3. But from researching it a bit, this will be quite literally impossible to achieve as an overseas electrician.
They all require an in-country portfolio, which would make it a catch 22.
Can't get certified without work experience in the UK, can't get work experience without a visa, can't get a visa without certification.

I guess this could just be it and I'm hard stuck. Or I'll have to go to Ireland for a while to work there, do my C&G courses to eventually try and make my way over to the UK.

It does seem kind of unreasonable though, so I'm coming here to ask for advice if anybody knows what the actual requirements are? Is it the employer deciding on the matter if I'm qualified and UKIV only cares about the salary and the title?
Is there any kind of schooling that could get me an NVQ 3 without a pre-existing employment?
As far as I know, on a student visa, I would be eligible to do work related to my field of education. But it would need to come after enrollment and not before.
Would an Electrician's mate be eligible for a visa?

I, m based in Ireland myself and have found moving abroad to work in Europe relatively easy. But then I ensured I had all the necessary qualifications first. So your first step needs to be to complete your training in Sweden. Moving to Ireland may make practical sense as it's an EU country and you will likely find it not difficult to get your qualifications evaluated. Secondly the economy is buoyant and you should not have too much difficulty obtaining employment.
Moving from ROI to UK and vice versa is traditionally frictionless.

Lou · Dec 16, 2021

Hi Welcome!

I am not sure that we have had a member from Sweden before!

How are things doing over there?

Kapane · Dec 21, 2021

LastManOnline said:
I, m based in Ireland myself and have found moving abroad to work in Europe relatively easy. But then I ensured I had all the necessary qualifications first. So your first step needs to be to complete your training in Sweden. Moving to Ireland may make practical sense as it's an EU country and you will likely find it not difficult to get your qualifications evaluated. Secondly the economy is buoyant and you should not have too much difficulty obtaining employment.
Moving from ROI to UK and vice versa is traditionally frictionless.

Thank you for the response.
It remains the last ditch option, but at least it seems like the most guaranteed one.

I'm curious though, are there a lot of demand for electricians?
We've got quite afew Irish workers coming up here working for facebook and their salary is actually quite bad from what I hear, ~100 SEK an hour. Although I'm not sure if that's accurate.

Only reasonable explanation I've been told is that there's a lack of jobs for them back home.
Admittedly this is all second or third hand information.

Kapane · Dec 21, 2021

Lou said:
Hi Welcome!

I am not sure that we have had a member from Sweden before!

How are things doing over there?

I live in the industrial province and work per diem even further up north where the world's largest underground iron mine is located. The iron ore vein extends underneath the town, so they're building an entirely new town / city centre. A lot of work and good money. I think I increase my salary by something like 70%.
Even if living up here is fairly miserable. Not going to see a sunrise in at least another two weeks.

It's also the region with the highest infection rate of covid last spring. Demand exceeds the supply of workers so there's a lot of workers coming in from other provinces and countries. But I've luckily managed to avoid it.

LastManOnline · Dec 22, 2021

Kapane said:
We've got quite afew Irish workers coming up here working for facebook and their salary is actually quite bad from what I hear, ~100 SEK an hour. Although I'm not sure if that's accurate.

I would be inclined to be a little skeptical about that information.
100 SEK is below the legal minimum wage an Irish company can pay. I looked at one of the more recent adverts from Irish companies supplying skilled labour to the Scandinavian market.
(Apologies for cracked phone screen)

nicebutdim · Dec 22, 2021

Kapane said:
Thank you for the response.
It remains the last ditch option, but at least it seems like the most guaranteed one.

I'm curious though, are there a lot of demand for electricians?
We've got quite afew Irish workers coming up here working for facebook and their salary is actually quite bad from what I hear, ~100 SEK an hour. Although I'm not sure if that's accurate.

Only reasonable explanation I've been told is that there's a lack of jobs for them back home.
Admittedly this is all second or third hand information.

That rate seems highly unlikely - can't be certain about ROI, but I'd expect wages to be higher than Northern Ireland and labourers would earn more than that up here.