How to Move to the UK (Part 1)

*Note: These articles are all from my family's perspective only.

I thought I would start a series to document how we got here since the process can seem daunting if you are just starting out. Honestly, we were really lucky because my husband's company gave us help with every step along the way. We still had to manage all of the moving parts, keep track of deadlines, bug people when we weren't getting answers, and use our intuition to know when we needed to do more of the background work ourselves.

So, here we go.

This first part is going to be about how the job led us here. When my husband first started looking for additional roles within his company and we realized the opportunity was there to move abroad, I hopped on some expat groups on Facebook (for better or worse) to get a feel for the process. This was actually a couple of months before the huge influx of people wanting to leave the US, so initially the forums were rather mellow. It was mostly people asking "I have ___ career, what Visa do I apply for" or the general questions of "how do I move to the UK". I read the book "How to Move Abroad" by Jessica Drucker, not necessarily to gain information, but mostly to gauge my emotions while reading the book - does the idea excite me? Scare me? Interest me? Make me want to stay put? Ultimately, we decided this was our chance to take this adventure with our family. Another opportunity might not come along. So, Nick accepted. Plus, it's a really cool job for him (he just had his name published in Nature magazine!).

Thankfully, his company has a big office in London, and the job he applied for is located at that office so our ticket into the UK was their sponsorship of him on a Skilled Worker visa. I don't have any knowledge of any other types of visas, so I can't add any further guidance if this one doesn't apply to you. There are certain eligible jobs that fall under the SWV, and the process requires you to have a confirmed job and a Certificate of Sponsorship from a company based in the UK.

Backing up a little bit, here's how the timeline worked out for us as we kick started our moving abroad process. Nick was offered a job within his company, but a new area than he was previously working in. He applied in September and the offer was made about 2-4 weeks later, so by October he had accepted. He began working at his new job in November, but from the US at this point (per a negotiation we made).

Let me pause to say that a deal breaker for us was having to move before my kids' school year was over in the US, so we opted to wait to move to the UK until May.

If we had dove head first into the process right away, I would imagine it would've still taken about 8-12 weeks at least to get into the UK with our visas in hand and that's with no hiccups.

After he accepted his job, we told the kids and then honestly, not a lot happened for awhile. We met with the vendors who were helping us for preliminary meetings (visa, housing, relocation manager, school consultant) but there wasn't a lot to do yet. Around November we also met with a local realtor to get started on the process to sell our house since it was our goal to have it sold before we left (for tax reasons), but God laughed at us with that one and we didn't close on it until 3 months after we moved.

So, by the end of the year, we didn't really have to do much yet. You can not apply for a visa until 3 months before you are due to start work in the UK, and I believe that once your visa is issued you also have 90 days to enter the country.

Nick and I went to London in December 2024 for work. Since, we decided to wait to move, his boss wanted him in person in London every three months until we officially moved, so his portion of the trip was covered and we just had to pay my way there. It was a great trip, and we got to explore a few areas we were considering. It made the realize that the weather was going to be something that I had to get used to since in the middle of December it was wet, cold, and dark by 3 PM.

Around that same time, we did obtain information about the benefits we had in regards to a preview trip with our family, so we went ahead and booked a trip with the kids to London over their spring break in March. Highly recommend taking advantage of this benefit if it is offered to you. It was extremely helpful to build the kids' excitement, but also to rip off the newness of an overnight flight, buses, the tube system, and to put an image to where we would be going.

Okay, I'll end Part 1 here. I mostly wanted to talk about the visa. Happy to answer any questions you might have regarding a skilled worker visa. We are lucky to have a company that allowed us to delay our move, so our timeline is probably slightly different than if you were to get a job offer and hit the ground running with the process.