After reading through this article I get the feeling there are going to be a lot less foreigners working in Indonesia with these new requirements. The Indonesian language requirements don't seem to be implemented yet, which will only complicate things further. The additional requirements also make it easier for immigration to deport foreigners for any breach in their visa, even if they do their best to follow the "rules".
The amount of time recommended for a working visa has changed from one year to six months for advisor positions in the service, trading, and consulting sectors.
The first step to getting a KITAS starts with your sponsor company. They will need to obtain an IMTA (Izin Mempekerjakan Tenaga Kerja Asing) from the department of Manpower, which will authorise the company to hire foreign employees. This document will dictate the number of foreigners that the company is permitted to hire along with the number of job titles that it is permitted to assign. So if a company can hire five employees with two titles, the intake might officially be four engineers and one director, for example. In recent years, local companies have found the IMTA increasingly difficult to obtain, according to a group of human resource officers who prefer to remain anonymous.
it’s more complicated, as many foreigners are hired as Tenaga Ahli or “experts,” Immigration and Manpower are now requesting, or rather demanding, that the employee’s educational background corresponds directly with the scope of the sponsoring company. This means that to work as an engineer in Indonesia you must have an engineering degree. The government is also asking applicants to prove they have prior work experience—ideally five years—in their prospective position. This is all to be confirmed by a competence certificate or a letter of reference from a previous employer.
The application to secure your VTT must now also include details of a Tenaga Pendamping or Indonesian working companion. The idea behind this is that you are to train a junior Indonesian colleague throughout the course of your time in Indonesia with the view that they will eventually be able to replace you (in a professional capacity, of course). Practically, this is a notion which companies must at least pay lip service to in order to submit an application. Once all that, plus a mandatory HIV test, is in hand, it is up to the Jakarta immigration office to grant you a VTT.