In Employer driven immigration system, an employer must provide a job offer to a foreign national, sponsor his/ her application and go through a labor market test. This labor market test is to ensure that this vacancy has not been filled up by any local worker. The labor market test differs from country to country. This scheme is generally a temporary scheme. An employer must provide a job offer before the individual can get entry to the country for work purposes. Employers need to submit a request to the labor market test in the majority of cases. This labor market test is basically to ensure that the employer is unable to fill the position locally. Firstly, these job positions need to be published locally on different government sites, and job portals. Some countries like Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden made rules for employers to use public employment services to post the job openings.
The immigrant-driven system does not need a job offer and potential candidates are selected through a point-based system. This was first introduced in Canada in 1967, and in Australia in 1989 followed by New Zealand in 1991. The point-based system was also introduced in Denmark, Austria, and Netherland but they are comparatively less popular. The point system is used to select potential candidates on the basis of some criteria which is common among most of the countries that follow this system like age, language skills, profession, experience, educational qualifications, and family relations in the host country. In the point system, younger migrants get more points. Language skills are required and more points for better proficiency and if somebody has a work experience which falls in shortage occupation list gets more points. There are two different economic models on which point-based criteria have been decided. One is with the short-term goal of fulfilling the shortage of labor in the destination country. Another goal is to boost the economic condition of the country which is inspired by the earnings or the human capital model.