Found the Right Candidate But Need to Sponsor Them? The Sponsor Licence Process Explained

Finding the right person can take time. If your preferred candidate needs visa sponsorship, it is worth exploring how to make their appointment work. For an eligible role, sponsorship can give your business access to the skills it needs and support future recruitment too.

The first step is to understand the candidate’s position. Someone already working in the UK may still need your sponsorship to change employers, while another candidate may be able to join without it.

With eligibility, costs and timing established early, you can make an informed hiring decision and plan the steps with your adviser.

What does sponsorship mean?

Sponsorship is the process by which an employer approved by the Home Office supports someone’s application for permission to work in a particular job. This article focuses on the Skilled

Worker visa, a common route for employing people in eligible skilled roles.

The process has three main steps:

• Your business obtains a sponsor licence: permission from the Home Office to sponsor workers under the relevant immigration route.

  
  

• You assign a Certificate of Sponsorship: an electronic record confirming the candidate’s job, salary and other employment details. It is not a visa.

  
  

• The candidate applies for their visa: the Home Office decides whether to grant permission for that sponsored employment.

  
  

Your adviser can guide the applications and help you put the required record-keeping and reporting arrangements into your existing HR processes.

Which candidates might need it?

“They already work for another UK company.”

Ask which visa they hold. A Skilled Worker visa normally permits employment in the job sponsored by their current employer. It does not automatically allow them to leave that company and start a new job with you, even if the visa has years left to run.

For a standard change of employer, your business must sponsor the new role and the candidate must obtain approval to update their immigration permission before starting. If you do not hold a sponsor licence, you will normally need to apply for one first. It is also worth checking whether another immigration route would allow them to join without sponsorship.

Our practical advice: discuss sponsorship alongside the notice period so you can agree a start date that works for the business and the candidate. They need approval for the new employment before starting.

“They recently graduated from a UK university.”

They may hold a Graduate visa: temporary permission allowing eligible international students to remain in the UK after completing an eligible UK qualification and work in most jobs without employer sponsorship. Completing a degree does not automatically give someone this visa; check what permission they actually hold.

For example, an accountancy firm could recruit someone whose Graduate visa has ten months remaining. Subject to the right to work check, sponsorship may not be needed immediately. The visa cannot be extended, but an eligible employee may move onto a Skilled Worker visa. Checking this early gives the firm time to plan for retaining them.

Our advice: treat this as part of retention planning. Check that the future role and salary would qualify, then build the application timetable around the employee’s visa expiry.

“They live overseas.”

If they have no existing permission to take the UK job, they will need an appropriate immigration route. Skilled Worker sponsorship may be available if the employer, role and candidate qualify.

“They can work without sponsorship.”

This may be correct. For example, indefinite leave to remain and settled status are forms of permission to live in the UK without a time limit and generally permit employment without sponsorship. Other visas can also allow work without sponsorship. Verify the individual’s permission rather than assuming every non-British candidate needs a sponsored visa.

Check their right to work before they start

A right to work check is the employer’s prescribed check that someone is legally allowed to do the job being offered. Carry it out before employment begins, using a consistent process for all recruits.

For someone with an eVisa, the Home Office’s digital record of immigration permission, this normally means using the employer online checking service. The candidate provides a share code, a code allowing you to access their work permission, and their date of birth. Check their identity, any work restrictions and the expiry date, and retain the dated result.

Build this into your normal onboarding checklist. Use the prescribed employer check rather than relying on a visa expiry date or a screenshot supplied by the candidate. Where new permission is required, verify it before they start. Diarise any required follow-up checks and ask your adviser to clarify anything uncertain.

Will the job qualify?

An initial assessment checks the actual duties against an eligible occupation code, the Home Office classification for the job, and confirms the skill and salary requirements. This gives you a clear basis for deciding whether to proceed.

The usual Skilled Worker salary requirement is £41,700 a year or the occupation’s going rate, whichever is higher. The going rate is the salary benchmark for that occupation, adjusted for working hours. Different provisions apply to certain candidates and roles, so assess the actual appointment.

An engineering recruitment example

A business wants to hire a mechanical design engineer who is currently sponsored by another UK employer. It offers £52,000 basic salary for a 37.5-hour week.

Assume the duties genuinely fall under occupation code 2122, Mechanical engineers. Its current standard going rate is £46,800 for those hours, so the offer exceeds both that benchmark and the usual general threshold. An assessment would then confirm the remaining employer and candidate requirements.

With those points confirmed, the business can arrange its own sponsorship and the candidate’s application for permission to change employer, then coordinate the start date with approval and the right to work check.

Mechanical engineers, civil engineers and chartered and certified accountants are examples of higher-skilled occupations eligible under the current rules. Their eligibility has no December 2026 expiry and does not depend on the Temporary Shortage List, which provides time-limited access for certain other occupations. Recheck the rules and salary requirements before proceeding with a 2027 hire.