We have talked about the benefits of the E-3 Visa before and how you can get the visa to live and work in the US. Also in general terms we have advised on where to look for jobs in the US so you can best search for a position and employer that will sponsor your E3 visa.

Finally we have given the Top US Employers List which although is the top 200 H-1B visa sponsors last year is just as relevant for E-3 visa holders. It is just as relevant if not moreso because essentially the work benefits of the E3 visa for the employee once in the US is the same as the H1B visa but also has the added benefit of being able to be applied for all year round with a start date immediately following visa approval.

However for many the process is still so overwhelming as they are stuck all the way in Australia and wonder how in the hell they could convince somebody in the US to want to hire them compared to a local candidate.

I am sure many of you to a couple of the biggest job sites in the US like Monster.com (which I do recommend) and CareerBuilder.com (which I don’t recommend mainly for the plethora of junk jobs on there, the fact that spammers seem to like finding details on that site and sending you crap although this has got a lot better but most of all their terrible interface) and find roles and are just applying but with no response.

One of the most common things I think for the aspiring E3 visa applicant is coming to a pre-questionnaire for a position whereby they have to answer a question like “Are you authorized to work in the US” or “Can you work in the US without sponsorship” and unsure what to answer.

The truth is in my opinion that for most companies that ask that question, unless you have an internal or external referral to someone in the company, generally means they won’t consider hiring the average foreigner. This is probably for no other reason than they assume you are an H-1B applicant and they don’t want to the cost, uncertainy and delays that are part of that process.

This is unfortunate but the fact the E-3 Visa is virtually unknown by all of corporate America not to mention the Immigration community

It is OK because in a previous post we told you how to explain the E-3 Visa to a potential employer as well as in our opinion where to put this information in your resume.

So to continue my point, if you just the average person, it may be time well spent by NOT doing too many of those types of applications whereby you are having to answer that question in the negative. Your application is probably going to an immediate discard pile maybe only looked at if there are no good application in the group of people who can answer that question positively.

Apart from LinkedIn, Monster and Craigslist, my other really great suggestion in the application phase is direct applications to a company via their own website which may just be sending in your resume to a careers email (possibly with a cover letter). This may or may not be to a posted position as often positions are not advertised anywhere or just in obscure places.

Aside from the fact that this type of applying to companies who could offer you a job and sponsor your E3 Visa is frutiful in terms of responses, it also is a lot quicker that going through long questionnarie applications meaning you can apply to more places in a short space of time!

So all you have to do and you can use the job sites to help you here or industry group sites for your chosen industry to find all the companies that may exist in your niche. In today’s day in age they will have websites and then you are set. If those sites have HR contacts that is great in terms of addressing cover letters and emails.

As said in other posts, I highly recommend applying to small companies as well as they can be surprisingly open to hiring a foreigner and you can learn all you need to know here at E3visa.info and guide them through the process

The final tip which I have also stated before is get a US phone number (you can do it via Skype) and be prepared to fly here for interviews as daunting as it sounds. Of course pick your city and try and schedule as many job interviews as you can in a short space of time.

As you all are no doubt aware Travelzoo, Expedia and Webjet can be helpful to get good flight and accommodation deals.

Good Luck in your E-3 Visa quest!!

CJ

We mentioned in many posts how there is a list out there, sometimes difficult to find on the DOL (Department of Labor) site, but is freely available showing who are the companies that employed H-1B holders last year.

Of course this list is just as relevant to E-3 visa holders and even L-1 or J-1 Interns as they show the companies willing in large numbers to hire foreigners and more open to the sponsorship process.

There is do freely available list I am aware of for E-3 visas (they may for all I know lump into this list).

There is also no list for L-1 I am aware of and reportedly somewhere in the vicinity of 400,000 annually come on this visa in recent times. (there is no quota for L-1). However as this is an internal company transfer for multi-national companies that you have to be working at for at least 1 year, I am sure the companies you work for and apply to should be able to tell you more about transfer opportunities down the track to the US.

This list of course changes from year to year but the majority of companies you will see will consistently employ large numbers of foreigners and sponsor a lot of visas. Over the next few days we will reveal more of the list including tips for applying to the different types of companies on the list and the sectors they are in.

You will notice that this Top 100 is dominated, no unexpectedly, by companies in the IT sector. As that for many years has been where the shortage of US talent has been. Thus many people from India in the last decade especially have dominated the ranks of the H-1B visa approvals.

There are also a lot of academic institutions in this list as well which interesting because many of these organizations despite sponsoring a lot of visas will not have them counted in 65,000 quota!
This is of course great information for you when applying there as your chances improve greatly of securing your visa if offered a position so you are not competing against other applicants.

(to note many but not all non-profit, government and academic institutions do not have a quota binding them as the private instituitions do with 65,000 (+20,000 ADE) quota.

This is exactly what I was talking about when denouncing sites like H1Base as worthless and bordering on SCAM sites as they will send you this same list as part of their package as a major item. The only difference between them and me is they will charge you hundreds of dollars for it.

The full list actually contains close to 25,000 companies for last year so there are plenty of options just from the current batch of visa hiring pool from last year. However as mentioned in my recent guest author post about H-1 Visa Quota Predictions and the necessity to get your application in on April 1.

Ok without further delay here are the Top 100 US Visa Sponsoring Organizations from last year.

I hope this initial list is of benefit to you all and look forward to more of this list in the days to come

CJ