Navigating the H-1B Visa Process Requires More Than Luck

Organizations evaluate the best ways in which to prepare their employees to file for H-1B visas.

For many in-house mobility professionals, the annual H-1B filing season brings with it a set of challenges that perennially must be addressed as part of managing a company’s talent strategy.  How do you prepare your organization for the unpredictability of a lottery registration with entry determined more by luck than by qualifications?  Will there be an opportunity for an additional registrant lottery later in the year if allocations are not filled from initially selected registrants?  What are the options for individuals not selected for an H-1B season, particularly if they are international students at a U.S. institution that have exhausted their optional practical training (OPT) or curricular practical training (CPT)?

During a Worldwide ERC-hosted corporate immigration roundtable held last week, over 30 mobility professionals from around the globe came together virtually to discuss these questions and to share their experiences and insights in addressing these challenges.  This roundtable reflects one of the member benefits that Worldwide ERC offers throughout the year to support the workforce mobility industry, and the rich conversation that ensued resulted in valuable insights and practical best practices for participants. 

Reflecting on the conversation, below are a couple of takeaways for mobility professionals navigating the H-1B process:

FY 2024 Is More Competitive Than Last Year:  For FY 2023 (October 2022-September 2023), USCIS indicated that approximately 26 percent of registrants for the H-1B lottery were selected to submit an application in order to meet annual allotment.  While the agency has not yet released the official tally of registrants and number selected to apply for this fiscal year (October 2023-September 2024), initial feedback from mobility professionals – based on notices their candidates received – indicates a far more competitive lottery this year.  Companies that saw selection rates in the 25-30+ percent range last fiscal year commonly are seeing only 15-20 percent this time.  And for smaller volume employers, the volatility was even more stark.  Some lucky organizations got many of their registrants accepted this fiscal year, but some ended up with zero or  only a handful of selections for their candidates.

For Mobility Professionals, the H-1B Process Is a Very Human One:  For mobility professionals, particularly those in-house, the numbers around the H-1B visa process each year are more than statistics.  They correlate to individual people connected with their organizations whose lives will be directly impacted by what occurs with the lottery and application process.  Mobility professionals at our roundtable discussed at length how to navigate the personal elements, which extend beyond the candidates to also include their families and the business unit managers who are invested in seeing a program come to fruition. 

To do this, mobility professionals at the roundtable highlighted two critical elements of the H-1B process:

• Understand and communicate expectations and requirements throughout the process. One tactic shared by multiple organizations was doing an internal analysis of the candidate population prior to submitting a registration to understand the potential challenges or impacts related to their selection or non-selection.  Based on this analysis, conversations can be held with candidates and managers to discuss individual circumstances and address their questions or concerns.  Effective communication was also identified as a critical best practice.  Practices to support this included:  establishing a regular communication cadence with candidates, managers, and associated HR partners; creating online resource hubs or designating internal subject matter experts for sharing information; and tailoring pre-registration training presentations or materials to help constituents navigate the process.

• Partner with Human Resources. Depending on an organization’s internal structure, the mobility function can have varying degrees of integration into the HR function.  Regardless of the structure, a close and collaborative relationship with the HR business partners, talent acquisition recruiters, or other HR leaders connected with the business units associated with a candidate was identified as an essential element of the H-1B visa process.

Many mobility teams have created training or background materials to make sure that their HR partners understand the requirements and process related to the H-1B visa, and some have also created ambassador programs that invest in training select recruiters or HR business partners to be subject matter experts within their HR unit that can help address many of the first-line questions without having to always engage the mobility team or outside counsel for general matters.

Conversations like the one held by the Worldwide ERC immigration roundtable are vital resources for in-house mobility professionals.  If you are a corporate in-house mobility professional and interested in joining a future roundtable conversation, click here to view the upcoming schedule or connect with me or Worldwide ERC’s Corporate Mobility Liaison, Deisy Garcia.

Michael T. Jackson is the Vice President, Member Relations and Operations, at Worldwide ERC.