Employment experience letter tips

In order to prove that you are a skilled worker, you need provide letters from your current and previous employers in the last 10 years. This is for you to be able to provide the evidence for your proof of work.  There are a couple of nuances here. If you miss those then additional questions might be raised. Not all employers will provide the experience letters as expected by Canadian authorities. Here are some handy tips.

What is the official requirement?

Please note that if you held multiple positions in a company then you are supposed to provide the responsibilities of ALL the positions in the company. For instance if you worked 10 years in a company and had 3 positions say software engineer, senior software engineer and manager, they would want all the 3 mentioned in the letter.

• The letter should be on the company's letter head, with the following information -
• Company address, phone number & email
• Your name
• Name, title and signature of immediate supervisor or official person like HR
• Number of hours worked per week/month i.e. full-time or part-time
• Annual salary
• Dates worked for the company i.e. actively working for the company or in the past.
• If you are self-employed then -
• Evidence of business ownership
• Documentation of service provided to clients from third-party individuals with payment details (you cannot just provide an affidavit. It has to be from someone else who received your service)

What happens if your employer doesn't give you the perfect letter?

Many times, former employer(s) have policy issues due to which they can't give you a detailed letter. In our case, our former employer had a policy to provide only the last position held in the company on the letter. So, this is what we ultimately submitted.

• The letter we got from the employer that had only the latest position
• We got reference letters from our colleagues and old supervisor listing our job duties for the other positions.
• Added the joining and promotion letters for those positions - Since these are issued by the company, it would ensure that you actually held that job title.
• Added the proof of income for those years - This will give a better confidence to the Canadian authorities on your case because you earned the legitimate pay for that position. 
• The number of hours per week - This is important for the IRCC to understand your number of years of skilled experience.  30 hrs per week for 12 months is considered 1 year of skilled experience.  If you worked 15 hours per week for 24 months then that is considered as part-time. Refer the CIC link.

What if I don't want to include some of my experience as proof of work?

1. Do not omit or skip your experience in the last 10 years because your application is reviewed as a whole (Your address history, travel history, activity information along with your work experience will reveal the void if you intentionally omit it). 
2. If you have experience that isn't skilled and you aren't claiming points for it, then you can add it as personal history. 
3. Remember, for a given employer you have to state ALL positions (skilled and unskilled as well) in the lettee. You cannot omit any position in the letter.  You may claim points only for the skilled positions. 
4. If submitting as a family and either one in the couple isn't currently working but has experience in the last 10 years, please include it. Applications are reviewed as a whole. Couples where both are skilled have better advantage.

What additional documents can you upload? 

1.  If the company doesn't give the experience letter at all, then in addition to the above, also add the relieving letter.
2. In both the cases where the company doesn't give you the perfect letter or no letter at all, please attach the email that has the correspondence between you and the employer. This will show the Canadian authorities that you tried your best to procure the letter but the company didn't give it.
3. You have the ability to upload a letter of explanation when uploading your documents. Explain all these points in the letter so that there is no confusion. You can also add contacts of your managers or colleagues in case they would like to inquire about your employment.

Next Steps -

• Ready to approach your employer? Here's a sample employment letter template.
• How does CIC verify my work experience? Read along.
• Worked for a company that was merged or acquired or shutdown? - Here are some tips.
• Want to work on other parts of your application?
• Ready to submit your application? Here are some things you should know.
• Further reading for completed application!

DISCLAIMER - This post is based completely on my research and experience.  If you have a more complex case, please reach out to sn immigration attorney. 

All the best and wish you luck with dealing with your employers!

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