Visa Officer at Maple Travel Ltd

Main Duties:

• Escorts applicants to the Embassy for their visa appointments.
• Processes the simplest to the most complex visa cases correctly and efficiently employing a polite manner to both applicants and Embassy employees with little or no need for guidance.
• Keeps informed of laws, regulations and SOPs related to visa cases.
• Either alone or as a team member, can take complete action on all classes of visas upon receipt including screening, data entry, visa classification, scanning of documents, photo capture, fingerprint capture, printing, quality assurance and tracking and issuance.
• Tracks applications, including emergencies or high profile cases.
• Advises officer of relevant applicant information which requires thorough knowledge of host country by providing consular officers with background information on local customs, traditions and personalities.
• Exercises discretion and high degree of professional responsibility in handling confidential/sensitive applicant information and documentation.
• When a security advisory opinion (SAO) is needed, prepares the draft SAO in the electronic visa system, exercising judgment in evaluating and synthesizing applicant information from the application and associated documentation. Notifies the officer when the SAO is ready for final review and electronic transmittal.
• Monitors daily the status of all cases pending SAO. Notifies the adjudicating officers whenever an SAO reply is received.
• Keeps fluent interaction with the Visa Unit Staff, Visa Unit Chief, and Deputy Consul General, providing advice, recommendations, and feedback on visa operations, as appropriate, to establish stateof-the-art daily visa processing.
• Ensures key case documents are properly scanned into the visa system.
• Provides interpretation and translation services as needed in English, including assistance during visa interviews; translation of documents and correspondence, including diplomatic notes. Makes phone calls and sends email in both languages in order to obtain information requested by the officer. 

Customer Service:

• Responds promptly and accurately in fluent English to a full range of complex customer inquiries and complaints in a courteous manner.
• Independently replies to routine inquiries (approximately 80% of total queries), identifying urgent and complex queries and routing them promptly to the Correspondence Team Leader.
• Sends emails to applicants to coordinate passport pickup or delivery.
•  Politely and efficiently handles upset customers seeking corrections to visas with errors.

Technical Operations: 

• Independently operates a personal computer,  laser printer, scanner,  and other specialized equipment to capture application data, take photos and print machine-readable visas.
• Places issued visas in applicant’s passports. Performs quality assurance checks on issued visas to ensure anti-fraud controls and correct information.
• Troubleshoots equipment, consular software and processing problems.