Reference Letter for a Skills Assessment: Format, Wording and Template

1. Your full legal name, matching your passport exactly.
2. Exact dates of employment — start and end, to the day.
3. Your position title, and any changes to it over time.
4. Employment basis — full-time, part-time or contract — plus hours per week.
5. Detailed duties — the substance of the letter, ideally as bullet points mapped to your ANZSCO code.
6. Signatory details — name, position, direct email or phone, on company letterhead, signed and dated.

A letter missing any of these will usually trigger a request for further information, which adds weeks.

This is the part that decides whether your employment counts. Two rules:

Mirror the ANZSCO description. Open the ANZSCO entry for your nominated code and make sure your listed duties genuinely correspond to it. Do not copy it word for word — that looks manufactured — but do not describe duties that belong to a different occupation either.

Be specific and technical. "Responsible for various engineering activities" is worthless. "Performed structural analysis and member sizing of steel-framed industrial buildings to AS 4100, and produced design documentation for construction" is evidence.

Your reference letters and your career episodes are read together. If the letters describe site supervision and your episodes describe design, the assessor will treat the contradiction as a credibility problem.

The default. Use this when your employer will sign a normal letter and you only need to establish dates, position and duties.

Use this when your employment is the evidence that has to carry your points claim, or when your duties need to map visibly to an ANZSCO description. It is longer on purpose: the duty list is what the assessor reads.

Note the salary line and the direct contact details. Neither is strictly mandatory, but both make the letter markedly harder to doubt — and salary supports a claim that the role was skilled rather than trainee-level.

Written in the first person by a supervisor or senior colleague, not by you. Have it witnessed as your jurisdiction requires, and attach the supporting evidence listed further down.

Point 5 matters more than people expect. A declaration that does not explain why a normal reference is unavailable invites the assessor to wonder what is being avoided.

There is no employer to sign a reference, so you assemble a pack instead. Include a covering statutory declaration of your own duties plus as much of the following as exists:

• Business registration — ABN, company registration, trade licence
• Client letters — on the client's letterhead, confirming the engineering services you personally delivered, the dates, and the project
• Signed contracts or purchase orders naming you and the scope
• Invoices and matching bank statements showing payment received across the claimed period
• Tax returns or business activity statements covering the same years
• Deliverables — drawings, reports or calculations carrying your name and date

Client letters do most of the work here. One letter from each of two or three substantial clients, each describing the engineering you performed for them, is stronger evidence than a thick file of invoices.

This is common — companies close, managers move on, HR policies forbid duty descriptions. The accepted fallback is a statutory declaration or affidavit by a supervisor or senior colleague who worked with you, giving the same six items in the first person, supported by:

• Employment contract and appointment letter
• Payslips and bank statements showing salary credits
• Tax records showing the employer
• Resignation acceptance or experience certificate, even if it lacks duties
• Company registration proof, if the employer no longer exists

Expect closer scrutiny. Assemble more evidence than you think you need.