I am writing this to let people that are thinking about going through the process for an E3 visa know that while there are a lot of forms to fill in, the process is overall very painless. The actual interview session, which is the part most people are most worried about, took no more than two minutes.

What follows are the tips and processes that I followed. This is by no means legal advise, but is what I did to successfully secure my working visa.

• Have your new employer complete a Labor Condition Application – this is key, and best to get done early on. An LCA certifies that your new job is a ‘specialty occupation,’ and is a simple form for your employer to fill out. This will get approved within a couple of days
• Sign up for VisaPoint – this is the U.S. Embassy’s online visa system, and allows you to book your interview and fill out forms
• Fill out your forms – through VisaPoint, you can fill out your DS-156, which is the main application form. You must fill this out online, but since the system takes the information you put into VisaPoint it makes it easier anyway. If you are a male aged between 16 and 45, you must also fill out a DS-157, which is linked from within VisaPoint and asks a few questions about whether you have ever performed military service and the like. You can fill the DS-157 out by hand.
• Make your appointment – do it early. While I was able to get an appointment within a week, it can get busy. You do this through VisaPoint.
• Be prepared – this, in my opinion, is the most crucial step in the process. Before my interview, I went back and got references from many previous employers, recruiters, a University Academic Registrar, and even my high school computers teacher. The key is to show a high level of skill over a long period of time (which was not the 15 years the embassy recommended, though). If you have your University degree, get your transcript. Collect as much information as you can, put it in a folder with your visa, DS-156, DS-157, and LCA ready for the day. You will also need a self addressed Express Post Platinum satchel, and will have to pay your application fee at the Post Office (ask at the counter for the Non-Immigrant Visa Application Fee, $180 at the time of writing). Make sure you bring the envelope and receipt for the payment on the day.
• On the day – first and foremost, wear a suit. A lot of people don’t, but it makes you look and feel far more legitimate and professional if you do. These people must judge your character in a very short period of time, so anything you can do to make yourself look trustworthy is helpful. On the day, the process is:
  • Check in with security, have your visa ready for this
  • Queue and wait to be called for the person that checks your forms. This is not the interview, but instead just an officer that makes sure you’ve brought everything
  • If you have everything, you will be put into another queue to wait to be called to the special elevator, which will take you to another security checkpoint, followed by another waiting room.
  • After waiting in this new waiting room, you will be called to hand in your forms and passport, then (wait for it) – be asked to go back and wait to be called again.
  • You will be called back again – and this is the actual interview. You will be asked about your academic and employment background, and also about your ties to Australia (this is a non-Immigrant visa, after all). To satisfy the ‘ties’ requirement, you need only to have family left over here. The academic and employment part is completely up to the interviewing officer – in my case, he trusted that I was suitably qualified just on my word (this is where the suit comes in handy) and did not even look at my references. Despite this, I would never try it without having lots of documentation.
  • Head home, and wait for your passport to be delivered back to you in your Express Post satchel with a shiny new U.S visa inside

The whole process of going to the embassy took around three hours, but 99% of this is waiting in queues. Do not be discouraged by the information from the embassy – when it comes down to it, the only requirements are a DS-156, DS-157, LCA, Express Post satchel, receipt for the application fee, and your Australian passport. The rest is just proving you’re worthy, and the really key things are: get as much documentation on your work and academic history as possible, be organized and keep everything together for the day, and on the day dress professionally.

If anyone looking to get an E3 would like to discuss the process further, I’d be happy to help. Leave a comment or get me on the contact page.

For a start, I truly want to publicly thank the guys at Happener. Markus and Greg totally blew away any and all preconceptions I had about recruitment by being personal, fun, and actually caring about the outcome. It pains me to put them in the same category as recruiters. These guys went so far above and beyond the call of duty, and have become both people I respect greatly, and very good friends. If you are sick of the old ‘bums in seats’ approach to recruiting, give these guys a call – they are in the business of hooking up fantastic companies with fantastic people. In any event, I’ll have more to say about them some other time…

Secondly, I’d love to give a big shout out to the folks at Massive Interactive, who I have been working with for the last two months. Had I not had the opportunity to travel to SF, I would have signed with them permanently in a heartbeat – they are a bunch of incredibly smart people working on incredibly cool things. I hope that if I do come back to Australia to live in the future, they might consider having me back. This is despite them being a .NET house, and me being an OS guy, so that has to tell you something.

I’d also like to thank all the fine people at 3jam, the company that I’m trekking across the world to be involved in. They have bent over backwards to help me out at every stage, and I look forward to meeting them all over a few beers tomorrow night.

Then, there are all the wonderful friends in Sydney. You are all fantastic people, and having so many come up to me at STUB to wish me well last night was a fantastic feeling. While I haven’t been a Sydney boy for that long, you have all been very welcoming, and are very important to me in your own special ways. I look forward to coming back for visits, and I hope that if any of you find yourselves in San Francisco that you get in touch.

Of course, I wouldn’t be at this point in my life without the help and guidance of my parents, and the companionship of my girlfriend. But I will be talking to them in a not-so-public forum…

There will be a few posts coming up over the next few weeks about the process I’ve gone through to get here, and of course the experiences I’ll be having over there. I especially want to post information about the visa process, which was far easier than I thought it would be, even though I have never completed my University degree. Stay tuned, and I’ll be life streaming the whole trip on Twitter and Brightkite, of course.