Paid hospitality internship program clarifications

Paid hospitality internship program clarifications

As you may have already read, we have been quite busy with restructuring ISPC to ensure we offer our partners the highest possible service and improve our lines of communications. One of the areas that we have specifically identified is making sure that all applicants accepted for our 'paid hospitality program' will qualify for a viable visa.

As some of you may be aware, we have at times encountered some visa processing delays due to changes to the visa acceptance criteria by DIMA as well as uncertainty about the best visa option for applicants.

Our new processes as can be seen in the previous article will ensure that all applications are assessed and advised on the best visa option with almost 100% certainty at the time of application receipt. The following is a also a summary of the two main visa options for our paid hospitality program which will hopefully assist our partners in assessing enquiries from potential applicants:

416 visa

As well as the criteria identified above;

• Applicants must have academic background (either currently studying or completed studies) in a 'hospitality related field. Where it's unclear if the field of studies has clear relevance to the internship field, applicants will need to submit to ISPC a copy of their academic transcripts showing subjects studied (In English). This is so our operations team can make a valid assessment on whether there's clear link or not.
• Applicants must have completed a minimum of 12 months of studies.
• All Hospitality placements under the 416 visa will be of 'rotational' nature. In order to abide by the purpose of the 416 visa applicants will need to be rotated within various departments of the hotel. The primary purpose of the ISPC 416 program is to offer interns an opportunity to 'enhance their career opportunities and training'. A rotational placement within the hotel/resort will ensure applicants are given cross and comprehensive training within the field. This is obviously an excellent change that will improve the quality of placements even further.

Occupational Trainee visa

As well as the criteria outlined above;

• Applicants that do not qualify for the 416 visa will need to be either chefs or partly qualified chefs (I.E. studying towards the completion of their training). The main purpose of the OT visa is to enhance the applicant's training. DIMA has therefore recently indicated that applicants that already have in excess of 4 years practical work experience in a hotel environment are unlikely to need any further training in this field. ISPC would also be unable to offer such applicants a training opportunity that would 'better' their existing knowledge.
• Training opportunities for Chefs/partly qualified Chefs are however much more diverse that other areas within the Hospitality field such as F+B, Housekeeping etc. ISPC has therefore decided to restrict OTV application to Chefs and qualified Chefs under the paid Hospitality program.