Finding a UK job from France: the filter that decides everything

Your job search is now a visa search

Before 2021 a French candidate and a British one competed on the same terms. Freedom of movement meant the question “can we hire this person?” had one answer: yes. Every piece of career advice you have ever read about the UK was written for that world.

Today your application is judged twice. Once on your merits, as before. And once on something that has nothing to do with you: whether this particular employer holds a licence to sponsor a foreign worker at all. Most UK employers do not. A brilliant application to an unlicensed company is not a near miss — it is a letter that could never have been answered.

That is why the single highest-value thing you can do is not polish your CV. It is filter the market before you spend a single application on it. And the filter is public.

The register almost nobody uses

The Home Office publishes the register of licensed sponsors as an open file, listing every organisation permitted to sponsor workers, republished every working day. It has five columns: the organisation’s name, its town, its county, its licence type and rating, and the route. Roughly 122,000 organisations currently hold a Skilled Worker licence, about a third of them in London — so this is a large market, not a handful of multinationals.

Used properly, it changes the shape of your search. Instead of applying to a hundred companies and discovering the obstacle at the final interview, you build a shortlist that is capable of hiring you, then apply hard to that list. It also answers a question recruiters dodge: when a job advert stays silent on sponsorship, the register tells you what the employer could do if it wanted to.

Read two columns, not one. The route must cover Skilled Worker — some organisations hold licences only for temporary or intra-company routes that will not help you. And then the rating, which is where candidates lose months:

• A rating — the normal state. The employer can assign certificates of sponsorship.
• B rating — a sponsor that has fallen short of its duties and been downgraded. It is on an action plan, and critically it cannot issue a certificate to a new hire at all. It may only sponsor people it already employs who are extending. Until it earns its A rating back, it cannot bring you in, however much it wants to.

Be proportionate about this: B ratings are rare — a few dozen organisations across the whole register. The point is not that you are likely to hit one, it is that the check takes ten seconds and the consequence is absolute. Two more practical quirks are worth knowing before you search. The name listed is the licensed legal entity, which is often not the brand you know, so search on a fragment rather than the full trading name. And the register carries no sector, no job titles and no contacts: it tells you an employer can sponsor and nothing at all about what they would sponsor.

The three locks on a sponsorable job

Even with a licensed, A-rated, willing employer, the role itself has to qualify. Three locks, all of which must open:

1. The licence, as above.
2. The skill level. Since 22 July 2025 the job must sit at RQF level 6 — degree level, where level 3 once sufficed. Roughly 180 occupations left the route that day. This is why a job you could have taken in 2024 may be closed to you now, with nothing having changed about you.
3. The salary. You must be paid the higher of £41,700 and the going rate for the job’s occupation code. Both, not either. A role can pay above £41,700 and still fail because its occupation’s going rate is higher.

Two narrow shortage lists still admit some lower-skilled roles, but they are being wound down: the certificate of sponsorship must be issued before 31 December 2026. If a recruiter tells you a role qualifies through a shortage list, that date is the thing to pin down.

What sponsoring actually costs them — and why it is worth knowing

When an employer says “we don’t sponsor”, it is more often an assumption about cost and hassle than a policy. Knowing the real figures lets you have a useful conversation instead of retreating.

For an employer that already holds a licence, hiring you adds the certificate of sponsorship at £525 plus the immigration skills charge, which rose by about a third on 16 December 2025 to £1,320 for the first year at a medium or large sponsor and £480 at a small business or charity, scaling with the length sponsored. Put concretely, a three-year hire costs a large employer roughly £4,500, and a small one or a charity roughly £2,000. Real sums, but a fraction of the cost of recruiting — and legally the employer’s, never recoverable from you.

One exemption is worth knowing if you work in research: the skills charge does not apply to scientists, researchers and higher education teaching professionals. Combined with the postdoctoral salary discount below, that makes universities and research institutes the cheapest sponsors in the whole system — a useful thing to know about where your applications are most likely to be welcomed.

For an employer with no licence, be honest with yourself: obtaining one is an administrative project with compliance duties attached, not a form. It happens, especially for a senior or scarce skill set, but it is a months-long ask and rarely the way a first UK job gets done.

If you are under 26, read this twice

The £41,700 threshold reads like a wall to anyone early in their career. It is not the only door. Several discounted options exist, and the one that matters most for young French candidates is the new entrant route: the floor drops to £33,400 and 70% of the going rate.

These conditions are alternatives, not a checklist, and that detail is the whole point: being under 26 on the date you apply qualifies you on age alone. No British degree, no prior UK visa, no study in the UK. It is the widest-open door in the entire system for young French candidates, it costs nothing to use, and it closes on your twenty-sixth birthday. The other ways in are being within two years of a UK student or graduate visa, or working towards a recognised professional registration or chartered status. Postdoctoral researchers in the listed science codes get the same terms. A doctorate relevant to the job gets 90% of the going rate from £37,500, and a STEM doctorate 80% from £33,400.

The catch is real and you should plan around it rather than discover it: choosing a new entrant route caps your total UK stay at four years. It is a runway, not a home. The sensible use is to enter on it, then move onto a full-threshold role before the cap bites — which is a conversation to have with an employer early, not in year three.

The British CV: what to remove before what to add

A French CV does not underperform in the UK; it actively signals the wrong things. Official UK careers guidance is explicit that you should not include your age, your date of birth, whether you are married, or your nationality. A French CV traditionally puts several of those in the header, often beside a photograph.

The reason is not aesthetic. British hiring is built around equality law, and a recruiter who can see your age or marital status is holding information they are not supposed to weigh. Many will simply not engage with a document that hands it to them. Remove the photo, the date of birth, the marital status and the nationality line — your right to work is proved later, by a share code, not by a line on a CV.

What replaces them: a short personal statement under your contact details saying who you are and what you are aiming at; work history with employer, job title, dates and two or three lines of what you actually did; education; and references, either named or the standard line that they are available on request. Write achievements rather than duties — British applications reward the sentence that says what changed because you were there.

How British hiring actually runs

Three differences catch French candidates out. Recruitment agencies carry far more of the market than in France, particularly outside graduate schemes, and a good specialist recruiter is a genuine ally who already knows which of their clients sponsor. LinkedIn is not optional — it functions as the real CV database, and an empty profile reads as absence rather than discretion. And interviews lean heavily on competency questions: “tell me about a time when…”, answered with a structured story of situation, task, action and result. It is a format you can rehearse, and French candidates who improvise elegantly instead often underperform against weaker candidates who prepared.

Two protections worth knowing. A UK recruitment agency cannot charge you a fee for finding you work — anyone asking a candidate to pay is acting unlawfully, whatever the service is called. And a British employer cannot lawfully ask you about age, marital status or whether you plan to have children, which is precisely why your CV should not volunteer any of it.

One practical mismatch to raise early: statutory notice in the UK is startlingly short. Once past a month of service, a UK employee resigning owes one week unless the contract says more, where a French cadre typically owes three months. A UK hiring manager saying “we’d like you to start in four weeks” is not being unreasonable by their standards — they simply have no mental model for your notice period, let alone your notice plus three weeks of visa processing. Say the real date at the offer stage, not after.

Proving your right to work, with no card to show

This is the post-Brexit detail that still catches everyone: a French passport no longer proves a right to work in the UK. Your employer must run a check, and if they get it wrong they carry the liability, which is exactly why some of them are nervous.

Once your visa is granted you hold an eVisa — a digital status, no card, no sticker. You prove it by generating a share code in your UKVI account and giving it to the employer along with your date of birth. Create the account and test the code before your first day: a login problem on the morning you are meant to start is entirely avoidable, and entirely your problem to solve.

A change worth noting if your plan involved side doors. From 1 October 2026, right-to-work liability extends beyond direct employment to subcontracting chains, online platforms that match workers with clients, and arrangements where one worker substitutes another. Gig, umbrella and subcontracted work in the UK now triggers the same formal checks as a payroll job. The informal route that used to exist is closing, and the penalties on the other side are severe enough — up to £60,000 per worker — that no serious business will take the risk for you.

One last thing to hold in view, because sponsored work carries a risk a French employee never has: your visa is tied to your sponsor. The employer must report the end of your employment to the Home Office. Losing the job does not merely cost you the job, it puts your right to be in the country in play — which is worth weighing when you compare a sponsored role against the protections you have in France.

The traps

• Applying before filtering. Months disappear into companies that were never able to hire you. Build the shortlist first.
• Reading the name and not the rating. A B-rated sponsor cannot take on a new hire at all.
• Assuming a licence means willingness. It means capability. Ask early and directly.
• Clearing £41,700 and stopping there. The going rate for your occupation code may be higher, and it is the higher figure that governs.
• Taking “we don’t sponsor” as final without testing it. Ask whether they hold a licence; the register already told you.
• Sending a French CV. Photo, age, marital status and nationality all work against you.
• Improvising competency interviews. The format is explicit; preparation beats eloquence.
• Forgetting the four-year cap if you enter as a new entrant.
• Discovering your notice period at the offer stage. Raise it while there is still room to plan the start date.

Your plan, in outline

Start with the register, not the job boards: build a shortlist of A-rated Skilled Worker sponsors in your sector and city. Check your occupation’s code clears degree level, and find its going rate so you know the real salary floor before any conversation about money. Rewrite the CV British-style, stripping what UK guidance says to remove. Then apply narrowly and hard, raise sponsorship early rather than late, and name your notice period at the offer stage. When the offer lands, translate it properly before you answer — a London gross is not a Paris gross, and the number that matters is what is left after tax, National Insurance and rent.