Earlier I published a post about moving to UK on Tier 1 General visa. And looking at the response to that post, I thought it’s useful to publish the latest on Tier 1 General visa.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has recently mentioned the changes that will take place in April 2011 which include a permanent immigration cap on skilled immigration, a new exceptional talent visa, and new criteria for skilled workers with a job offer and intra-company transfers. There will in effect be significant changes in the rules for sponsoring non-EU workers. In addition the Tier 1 General skilled immigration visa will in effect end on 6 April 2011.

From 6 April 2011, there will an annual limit of 20,700 Tier 2 visas and 1,000 visas for the new ‘exceptional talent’ visa category. The exceptional talent visa will replace the popular Tier 1 (General) highly skilled immigration route.

So if you are thinking about applying for Tier 1 General Visa, either you do it now before 6th April 2011, or forget it!

Like I shared my plans with you earlier, I moved to UK and started my professional career here. It’s a big move and full of risk when you jump into something without any support. During my period of settlement, I learnt many ideas which help you to settle easily. Biggest support need is financial support in expensive UK, and wherever you save the UK pounds, they help you in rainy days.

I rented an apartment and was looking for the digital TV. I don’t buy anything without any deals, so I got my Sky HD TV, which is UK’s biggest digital TV provider with 30+ HD channels.

People normally don’t understand but they can almost get few free subscription months by using little bit of knowledge and research online. Many of them blindly call their customer support and buy the digital TV package. Won’t you like a free voucher to spend for your grocery & save some money? If you would like, read carefully.

If you would go and buy Sky HD TV, you would be charged £49 for the Sky HD TV box. How about if I get it free for you. I assume everybody in UK here does grocery shopping in Tesco stores (It’s like Wallmart in US). If you use this new offer from Sky HD TV, you would get £50 worth Tesco voucher making your Sky HD TV box completely free. Believe me, this is how I got my Sky HD box free and did not spend a penny on this box.

As simple as that!

After moving to UK, the first thing came into my mind is search for good broadband, so I had started looking for the offers right from the beginning. I realized that in here, Sky offers whole bundle package, like Digital TV, Broadband and Phone services together. Most of my friends here had opted for Sky due to their good quality (not customer service though), lot of channels of interest and whole lotta ongoing offers.

I would recommend signing up for Sky for new customers, specially when they offer good channels and moreover free offers like £50 Marks and Spencers (M&S) Voucher – what they were offering in December month 2008.

What else they are offering -
* Free Sky talk freetime – evening and weekend calls
* Free Sky broadband max for 3 month, unlimited broadband with up to 16mb download speed (Normally £10)
* Sky talk line rental for 3 month – no need to for the service (Normally £10)

Sky TV offer ends up offering you lot of money saving in UK, let’s see how much.

1. If you register with Sky TV during 19th Jan to 27th Jan, the installation cost would be £5 instead of regular £30 – Your saving £25
2. £50 Free M&S Voucher – Your saving £50
3. £15 off of your first Sky bill – Your saving £15
3. Sky Broadband Max for 3 months (Cost £10 per month) – Your saving £30
4. Sky talk is anyways free for evening and weekend calls, so does not matter if they include that in offer.
5. Switching to Sky talk line rental instead of paying it to BT (British telecom), no charges for 3 months where you would end up paying £30 to BT – Your saving £30

Total saving on signing up for SKY TV as new customer – £150

That’s good enough package, to register with Sky!

I have a tip to share with you that I learned from my own experience. This is a secret that I used while searching for a job in UK. What happens is most of the UK consultants prefer to talk to candidates that are available in UK, but when you have received your HSMP approval, the candidates become pretty anxious to search for the job. Keeping in mind, that UK consultants won’t prefer to talk to International candidates on phone, it’s a huge hurdle in front of potentially good candidates who are ready to fly and just waiting to see right opportunities across or use the time in hand while they prepare to fly.

I would suggest you should -

1. Register online to major job search portals in UK like jobserve.com, cwjobs.co.uk, reed.co.uk

2. Your resume should be updated with your UK address (where you gonna live after landing in UK) and your UK phone number

Now you must be thinking what could you do with UK phone number when you are abroad? The benefit is depending on your experience and resume, UK job consultants can start giving you calls and that gets you some job leads and helps you to start communication with consultants and also build up your confidence.

3. Now your resume hows like you are living in UK already, so by the time all the process initiates, you are closer to flying down to UK and saves the waiting time for job process during you wait abroad to fly to UK.

Here is Skype Online Number comes to your rescue

When you want to have a UK phone number, and get in touch with consultants confidently, Skype Online Phone Number would help you to establish a UK phone number which can be redirected to your local phone number / mobile number in your country. For example: India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Japan, Korea etc.

This helped me a lot to establish connections with UK consultants much before I land here, and I contacted them back again when I really landed up and the process went quickly ahead as I saved on the time of initial communication. Skype Online Number charged me like $6 every month + incoming Skype call cost from UK to India. But that worth the investment while I was ready to spend GBP 2000 for first initial settlement cost.

How Skype Online Phone number can help your business abroad?

UK Online Phone Number can also help your business abroad if your customers are global, majorly in UK and US. You can buy these phone numbers and set them up on your website or letter heads. These phone number again can be redirected to your local phone numbers, establishing the smooth communication between you and your potential client.

I would suggest you not to go with 070 numbers in UK as they are mostly used by online scammers and that might affect you as well.