Common Mistakes to Avoid When Applying for UK Visa Sponsorship

The most fundamental mistake is applying for roles at companies that do not hold a sponsor licence. A company cannot sponsor your Skilled Worker visa unless they are registered on the Home Office's register of licensed sponsors. Many employers — particularly smaller businesses and start-ups — have not applied for a licence, either because they have never needed to sponsor overseas workers or because they are unaware of the process.

The Home Office publishes a list of licensed sponsors, and VisaAtlas indexes this data. Before investing time in a job application, you can check whether the company appears on the register using the VisaAtlas sponsor search. If they are not on the list, you can still approach them — but be prepared for the possibility that they will need to apply for a licence first, which adds significant time to the process.

Some companies are willing to apply for a licence for the right candidate, and an employer licence application currently takes around eight weeks to process if the company meets the eligibility requirements. This is worth discussing early in the recruitment process rather than discovering the problem after an offer has been made.

Every sponsored role must be assigned an occupation code (SOC code), and the code must accurately reflect the job you are being hired to do. A common mistake is for either the applicant or the employer to use a convenient code rather than the correct one — for example, using a lower-salary code to make the salary appear more compliant, or using a broad code without checking whether the specific job duties actually match.

Using an incorrect SOC code is a compliance breach for the employer and can result in visa refusal or curtailment. It can also affect your eligibility — if the going rate for the correct code is higher than what you are being offered, the offer may not actually meet the threshold.

Use the VisaAtlas SOC Code Intelligence tool to research which code most accurately matches your job title and responsibilities before your employer assigns your Certificate of Sponsorship. This gives you a chance to raise any discrepancies before they become a problem.

Many applicants receive a job offer and assume that if the company is willing to sponsor them, the salary must be sufficient. This is not always the case. Employers are responsible for meeting the salary threshold, but some employers — particularly those less experienced with sponsorship — may not fully understand the rules and offer a salary that falls short.

The salary must meet the higher of £38,700 or the going rate for the specific SOC code. For new entrant applicants, the threshold drops to 70% of the going rate with a minimum of £30,960 — but new entrant status has specific eligibility conditions and does not apply to everyone.

Before accepting any offer, use the VisaAtlas Sponsorship Fit tool to check whether the offered salary meets the threshold for your occupation code. Do this before you resign from your current role or make any relocation plans.

It is illegal for an employer to charge a worker for the cost of their visa sponsorship. This includes the sponsor licence fee, the Immigration Skills Charge, or any other costs associated with the sponsorship process. Employers are required to bear these costs — they cannot pass them on to workers directly or deduct them from wages.

Some unscrupulous 'employers' — particularly in the care sector — advertise sponsorship but require workers to pay upfront fees, sign agreements to repay sponsorship costs if they leave within a set period, or deduct visa costs from their wages. These arrangements are unlawful under UK law and should be reported to the Home Office.

Legitimate sponsors do not charge workers for sponsorship. If a company asks you to pay any kind of sponsorship or visa fee, treat this as a serious red flag. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) and the Home Office both investigate these practices.

Holding a sponsor licence does not mean a company is actively hiring internationally. Many companies applied for a licence years ago for a specific hire, and have not used it since. Applying to these companies is not necessarily wasted effort, but you should go in with realistic expectations — they may not have an active international recruitment pipeline, and key staff may not be familiar with the sponsorship process.

CoS activity — the number of Certificates of Sponsorship a company has issued over a given period — is one of the best indicators of whether a company regularly sponsors workers. On VisaAtlas, you can filter sponsors by CoS activity to prioritise employers that have consistently issued sponsorship in recent months or years.

A company that has issued zero CoS in the past 12 months is a weaker target than one that has issued 20 or more. This does not mean you should never apply to low-activity sponsors — but it should factor into how you prioritise your time.

Licensed sponsors are rated either A (Standard) or B (Probationary) by the Home Office. A B-rating means the company has had compliance issues — they are on an action plan and are subject to closer monitoring. While it is still technically possible for a B-rated sponsor to issue a CoS, their licence is at risk, and if it is revoked, any workers they have sponsored may have their leave curtailed.

Accepting a sponsored role with a B-rated employer is a risk you should consider carefully. The VisaAtlas sponsor database shows sponsor ratings prominently, so you can filter for A-rated sponsors and avoid unknowingly applying to companies with compliance problems.

There is no guarantee that a B-rated employer will have their licence revoked — some resolve their issues and return to A-rating — but it introduces uncertainty that most sponsored workers would prefer to avoid.