UK Companies Sponsoring International Students (2022) Get our Free Ebook here
Table of Contents - Companies Sponsoring International Students.
- The Problem with the Tier 2 Sponsor List
- Companies Hiring Now (in 2022 in the UK) – A big list
- What companies will give me a visa?
- How do I find companies to give me a visa to the UK?
- How long will it take me to process a visa for these companies?
- Extra Information
- 2 Best Job Search Sites
- List of Tier 2 Companies that sponsor international students in the UK
As an international student using the UK government’s Tier 2 sponsor list to find companies offering Tier 2 sponsorship in the UK is a pain in the a$%.
Up until now the best help you will have gotten from the internet and your University career services is to use the Government Tier 2 Sponsor List. Read on for more about Companies sponsoring international students.
Which looks like this
Example of the 2022 Register of Worker and Temporary Worker licensed sponsors
A 2,450 page PDF which is enough to make anyone want to throw their laptop out the window and then jump after it.
Our Founder, Mike has been dealing with the Tier 2 Sponsor List for 8 years.
Poor guy, but thankfully for us, he has picked up some great information for you to navigate the tier 2 sponsor list and easily find companies offering Tier 2 sponsorship in UK.
Get your free eBook here for all of Mike’s tips and advice for the whole process of finding a job in the UK
The Problem with the Tier 2 Sponsor List ... IT’S USELESS!
The Tier 2 sponsor list is a record the UK government keeps because it has to.
They never intended it to be used as a database or something to help international students find a job in the UK.
Importantly you can’t differentiate between which companies will actually give you a Visa to work in the UK.
You could sit there for the next 3 years trying to contact every company on the list.
OR,
You could use our list which states all the companies which actively sponsor.
Plus we tried to make it as easy as possible for you with a big list, and we even rated the companies on their likelihood of actually giving you a Tier 2 Visa.
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Companies Hiring Now (in 2022 in the UK) – A big list
Here’s a big list of companies we have dealt with this and last year, and we know hire international students and have given out Tier 2 Visas before.
This list is purely subjective based on our personal experience of working with international students and professionals from 2013.
Based on the following questions
Have we had personal experience of helping someone apply to this company?
Have they progressed past application, and not been asked if they have “right to work in the UK?”
Is the company big enough to provide a significant number of vacancies? We classify this as 20+ vacancies and a Times Top 100 Company
This is a list of 85 of the biggest companies operating in the UK, who are currently or have previously been in the Times Top 100 Company List.
We calculated the chances of getting sponsored based on 3 factors:
Our experience
The ease of the process
The number of vacancies
No science was hurt in the making of this table.
| Times Top 100 2021 Rank | Name | Industry | 2021 Graduate Job Vacancies | Click to Apply | Chances of getting sponsored (5 = High , 1 = Hell No!) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | PwC | Accounting & professional services | 1,100 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 3 | Deloitte | Accounting & professional services | 1000 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 4 | NHS | Various | 500 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 5 | Aldi | Retail | 100 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 6 | Technology | No fixed quota | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| 7 | KPMG | Accounting & professional services | 700 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 10 | J.P. Morgan | Investment banking | Unknown | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 11 | GSK | Chemicals & pharmaceuticals | 50 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 12 | EY | Accounting & professional services | 750 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 13 | Unilever | Consumer goods | 40 | Apply | ⭐⭐ |
| 14 | HSBC | Banking & finance | 600 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 15 | Barclays | Banking & finance | 500+ | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 16 | Goldman Sachs | Investment banking | 400 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 17 | Amazon | Consumer Goods | 300 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 18 | Lidl | Retail | 60 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 19 | Rolls-Royce | Engineering & industrial | No fixed quota | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 20 | McKinsey & Company | Consulting | Unknown | Apply | ⭐⭐ |
| 20 | Accenture | Technology/Consulting | Unknown | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 23 | Newton | Consulting | 110 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 24 | Clifford Chance | Law | 100 | Apply | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
What companies will give me a visa?
Let’s refer back to the boring long list that the UKs Government has made.
There are roughly 5,200 companies that can give you a Visa, a working Visa.
The first step to find out if a company will give you a visa, is to see if they are on the list, otherwise they cannot legally sponsor you to work in the UK
Next, there are two things to bear in mind when using the Tier 2 Sponsor list
The type of visa they can give
The size of the company
We cautiously estimate 90% of the companies on the Tier 2 sponsor list, won’t be hiring international students in a graduate scheme.
Simply because they don’t have the resources required.
The vast majority are called SME’s (Small and medium sized enterprises) these are smallish businesses with generally less than 50 staff.
A good example is a Chinese restaurant, that uses a license to sponsor a few staff, but has no intention of hiring a student.
TOP TIP: Just because a company is on the Tier 2 sponsor list, it does not mean that they will or are actively sponsoring right now.
To find a company that will give you a Visa they should be:
- On the Tier 2 sponsor list
- Big enough to regularly hire and sponsor Tier 2 Visas
- Be actively sponsoring right now (this is a lesson best learnt from experience)
How do I find companies to give me a visa to the UK?
There are a couple of ways to do this:
Use the government Tier 2 sponsor list
Use the Sponsor Tier 2 website
Use job’s boards and then cross reference companies with the Tier 2 Sponsor List
Use specialised Job’s Boards which filter jobs that provide Tier 2 sponsorship
Let’s give you a more detailed explanation of how you would use each method and when it would be useful.
1) Use the Government Tier 2 sponsor list
You could go here download the PDF, and sit and CTRL + F for companies, or start going through the list A to Z.
You can use the government Tier 2 sponsor list. It’s just not easy.
There are already much better searchable databases our there like Uk Tier Sponsors : https://uktiersponsors.co.uk/ and our own Sponsor Tier 2 web app https://sponsortier2.com
Both these sites are updated daily, and directly from the Home Office feed and will give you direct links to the companies websites
The downfall to the government list is that you only have the names of the companies which sponsor in a PDF.
You can search, sort and slice into the data set like you can in a database.
TOP TIP: Use the Sponsor Tier 2 list to quickly check for a single company, or double check information you already have.
2) Use the Sponsor Tier 2 Website
We first built this free web app in 2020, because we found the process of using the Tier 2 Sponsor List so frustrating.
We did try to reach out to Rohit at UK Tier Sponsors, but we felt like we would get more done and faster if we did it ourselves.
The Sponsor Tier 2 is just the government’s Tier 2 sponsor list as a database.
Plus you get a free email twice a week about companies that have been added (new potential employers) and can check which companies have been removed.
You can also:
Search by Town
Search by Industry
Get a link to most companies websites
See recently added companies
See companies that have been recently removed
TOP TIP: Use our web app to get a free email twice a week about companies that have been added (new potential employers) and can check which companies have been removed.
When to use the Sponsor Tier 2 App?
Our app is great to use when doing a job search. You can keep it open in a separate tab and use it quickly and easily to check if a company sponsors before you apply.
TOP TIP: if you search by industry or a large city like London, Manchester or Birmingham you may still receive hundreds if not thousands of results. So make sure you also search by the industry so you have a more custom search.
Our Sponsor Tier 2 Web App is completely free and you can find it at
www.sponsortier2.com learn how
3) Use job’s boards and then cross reference companies with the Tier 2 Sponsor List
Following on from Option 2, you can use Job’s Boards like LinkedIn and Indeed and then cross reference the companies using the Government Tier 2 sponsor list or the Sponsor Tier 2 website.
Job’s Boards like LinkedIn and Indeed are a great way to search for current vacancies.
However they do not provide information for if the company will sponsor so it’s important to cross reference the companies using the Government Tier 2 sponsor list or the Sponsor Tier 2 website.
LinkedIn and Indeed are great… but…
When you do a search you will be sifting and sorting through hundreds of vacancies to only find a handful of jobs which are suitable.
For example if you go onto indeed and search “Graduate roles” there are over 15,000 roles available.
TOP TIP: Use the advanced search feature to narrow down your search.
There is no point endlessly scrolling through pages and pages of irrelevant jobs.
We recommend including the word “Graduate” and making sure the salary is above £20,000.
But you can refine the job search as much as you want to.
For example, if you wanted to be an auditor in London, you could use the search terms: “auditor, graduate, London.”
That’s going to cut down the number of jobs you have to look for and make them more relevant.
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4) Use specialised Job’s Boards which filter jobs that provide Tier 2 sponsorship
We basically recommend 2 cool sites:
You can find out more about the job’s boards we recommend here.
The 2 Best Job Search Sites
Student Circus
Student Circus was set up in 2016 by a pair of international students because they knew there wasn’t enough information available for international students.
They created a website full of information to help with your needs when it comes to a job search site.
Student Circus does the research, so you don’t have to.
On the site they state that each employer has:
Are licensed by the Home Office to sponsor a Tier 2 job
Verified that they meet the salary criteria laid out for that job
Confirmed they are actively sponsoring international students
Student Circus provides 30 days of access for free to students with a University email and they collaborate with 30+ Universities to work directly with their international students, providing weekly updates on new companies which have been added.
You can search for:
Jobs
Internships
Placements
Start-up internships
Target Jobs
Target Jobs is a government sponsored website aimed at providing information for students in the UK.
It is a fantastic resource for students who want to find information on almost any company or role.
- Search by work permit and degree result
- Lovely User Interface, so easy to navigate
- Massive resources to learn about companies and roles
- Shows the expiry date for the vacancy
- No need to register
- Shows number of vacancies
How long will it take me to process a visa for these companies?
As stated on the UK Government websites for skilled worker visas (Tier 2’s) it can take anywhere from 3-8 weeks
The process of getting a Visa is reasonably quick and goes like this :
Get a formal job offer
Receive a written contract
Provide documents to process your Visa (large company) or fill out form on the Home office website (LINK) to process your own Visa
Book an appointment at a Visa Application Centre to get your documents checked
Wait for a decision
In our experience allow for 8 weeks, though some companies like PwC like to batch apply for student well in advance of 8 weeks.
For example, to start on their graduate programmes in September, your deadline to apply would be 5 months earlier on the last day of April.
If you are unsure if you even need a work Visa you can check on the UK government website here: https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa
Job Ready English is not an OISC registered immigration adviser, nor do we intend to portray ourselves as immigration experts.
All information provided here is for education purposes only.
We always recommend that you seek immigration advice from an OISC registered immigration adviser, a list of which you can find here: https://www.gov.uk/find-an-immigration-adviser
All immigration advisers must be registered with the OISC or be a member of an approved professional body, for example The Law Society.
Call 0203 4886472, email mike@jobreadyenglish.com or send us a message to arrange a convenient discovery call that will help you understand what’s stopping you from achieving your goals.
We’ll tell you exactly how our bespoke coaching service will get you where you want to go.
Finding companies that are sponsoring international students can be incredibly frustrating.
Using the Governments Tier 2 and Tier 5 List isn’t helpful.
You can use a free tool like Sponsor Tier 2, but Our Facebook Group asked for a list of Tier 2 Companies that sponsor international students in the UK.
Which is up to date and has been verified that they are hiring international students right now.
These are companies that we have helped international students and professionals apply to, and are currently targeting with our clients.
This list is updated regularly and you can click on any logo to be taken straight to that companies graduate recruitment page.