EOI

EOI stands for Expression of Interest. It is also the next step upon receiving a successful skills assessment from your relevant assessment authority, in my case AITSL.

You can find all the pertinent information from this website.

It is important to note that an EOI is exactly just that, an expression of interest. It does not quantify as an application for a visa. It basically lets the Australian immigration department know that you are interested in migrating to Australia.

You'll go through a 13 step process where you'll key in pieces of information that you've gathered thus far - your employment records, your educational certificates, the IELTS results and any skills assessment by relevant Australian agencies.

At the end of it all, they'll compute your points and let you know if your EOI can be completed. You can always return to update your EOI as circumstances in your life change.

At the moment I have 65 points of which 25 of them come from being in the age group 33 - 39.
That will all change in April 2015 when I move into the next category of 40 - 44, which would only qualify for 15 points.
If that's the case then I would fall below the threshold of 60 points by only accumulating 55 points, so time is definitely of the essence.

Now that the EOI has been submitted, the dice has been cast. Of particular importance to me is the description on the website which states "You can receive up to 30 points based on the age you were on the day you were invite to apply (for the visa)".

Fingers crossed that I'll receive an invitation to apply for the visa before my birthday in 2015. On a side note, the processing time for visa subclass 189 is 3 months.

Lesson here? Don't leave off making a decision so late that the timings become too tight.


Browsing around on the website, under 'Invitation Rounds', several pieces of information stood out.
1) Invitations are issued twice a month.
2) Next invitation round is on 9 Jan 2015. (I wonder if there's a backlog that'll fill up the invitations or if mine would fall under this round)
3) You can find out the number of visas they are offering for each round - for subclass 189, there will be 1400 places on offer for 9 Jan.

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4) Invitation process and cut-offs:

• The highest ranked by points score are invited to apply first. 
• Equal points cases will be separated by the time at which they reached their points score for the subclass.
• EOIs with earlier dates of effect are invited before later dates.

Have attached a screenshot of the results for 14 Nov 2014 for reference with regards to the points just mentioned above.

Under 'Occupational Ceilings' you can find out how many spots they have allocated for your occupation for the year. Apparently, Australia needed 7002 Secondary School Teachers this year (the 2nd highest ceiling of all occupations) and only 229 spots have been allocated. Whilst I am happy that there is room to spare, I cannot help but wonder at the dearth of teachers in Australia.