Work Experience Reference Letter for a Skills Assessment
In most skills assessment files, the employment reference letter is the document that most determines the outcome — more so than transcripts or academic certificates.
The reason: an assessing authority cannot directly verify what you did at Company A in 2019. A reference letter from someone in authority there is the primary source of evidence.
What a properly written reference letter should contain
The letter should fully include:
Information about the person writing the letter:
- The full name of the signatory
- Job title and department
- Contact details (email, telephone number)
- Company name and address
Information about you:
- Your full name
- Your exact job title
- Start and end dates (or “to date” if still employed)
- Type of employment: full-time or part-time; if part-time, how many hours per week
Description of duties — the most important part: This is the part many reference letters write too generically. The assessing authority needs to know specifically:
- What you did, not just what you did in general terms
- The technologies, tools, and systems you used (especially important for ICT)
- The scale of the project and the team you worked with
- Your level of independence in decision-making
Signature and company stamp (if available).
Example of a duties description — sufficient vs insufficient
Insufficient:
“Worked as a Software Engineer, responsible for software development and system maintenance.”
Sufficient:
“As a Software Engineer at XYZ Ltd from March 2020 to December 2022, Mr. Nguyen was responsible for designing and developing RESTful APIs using Node.js and Express.js, building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions and Docker, participating in sprint planning as part of an Agile team of 8 engineers, and conducting code reviews for junior developers. He worked independently on multiple customer-facing features for an e-commerce platform serving 50,000+ users.”
The difference: the second description gives the assessing authority enough information to judge whether this is professional ICT work.
How to request a letter from a current or former employer
Current employer: Contact the HR department or your direct manager. Explain the purpose (needed for an immigration skills assessment) and provide a template or a list of the content required.
Former employer in another country: Make contact by email. Provide an English-language template for them to fill in — do not let them write from scratch, as they usually do not know what is required.
The letter does not need to be notarised (unless the assessing authority specifically requires it) — but it must include contact details for the signatory so the authority can verify it if needed.
When the former company no longer exists
This is a real and difficult situation:
Find someone who previously held authority: Your former manager or a senior colleague may write a letter in a personal capacity, confirming that they worked with you and can attest to your role.
Statutory Declaration: In many countries, you can submit a statutory declaration if you cannot obtain a letter from the employer. Its legal weight varies by assessing authority, so check first.
Supporting evidence: Payslips, employment contracts, salary records, company emails, a verified LinkedIn profile — all of these help when a direct reference letter is missing.
Lodge your file with an explanation: If you cannot obtain a letter from some former companies, explain clearly in your file why — and provide the best alternative evidence you can. Deliberately not mentioning it is worse than explaining honestly.
Requesting a letter early is always right
The biggest difficulty is requesting a letter from an employer many years in the past. The manager has left, HR no longer holds the records, the company has changed its name — all of these are common.
As soon as you leave a job somewhere, request a reference letter straight away — even if you do not need it right then. A letter kept in your mailbox costs nothing, but it can be very hard to obtain again after five years.