An ACS employment reference needs to do more than confirm that you worked for a company. It must let the assessor understand who employed you, when and where you worked, how much you worked, what you were paid, which roles you held and what professional duties you actually performed. Test ACS employment reference requirements against payroll and contract records as well as the letter itself; a polished duty description does not resolve conflicting start dates or hours.
The current ACS Employment References guidance sets out 13 core items. Use this page as a verification checklist before submission—not as a script for inventing or standardising duties.
The 13-point ACS employment-reference checklist
- Employer name and address
- Company website URL
- Your full name
- Date of the letter
- Exact start and end dates in DD/MM/YYYY format (or current/till date)
- Employment status: permanent full-time, part-time or contractor
- Minimum hours worked per week
- Annual salary before tax and benefits
- Work location: Australia or Outside Australia for each position
- Position/role title
- Bullet-point duties actually performed
- Signature by an authorised company person; follow ACS requirements for digital signatures
- Signatory’s full name, position title, phone number and work email address
Why “full-time” is not enough
ACS defines eligible work experience around professional, remunerated work of at least 20 hours per week. A letter that says only “full-time” is less precise than one that states the minimum weekly hours. The salary, status and hours should also make sense alongside payroll and payment evidence.
For the documentary side of remuneration, ACS payment evidence needs its own check.
Probationary work is tested against the same core criteria; see when probationary IT employment can count as professional experience.
Multiple roles with one employer need their own dates and duties
A long tenure can become misleading when the current title is used for the entire period. If someone moved from Help Desk Analyst to Systems Administrator and later to Cloud Engineer, ACS expects the reference to break down each position with its own dates and duties. That shows when the career actually became relevant to the nominated occupation.
A promotion inside the same company should be broken into dates and duties when responsibilities materially changed.
The reference and payment evidence should reconcile
| Reference field | Cross-check against |
|---|---|
| Start/end dates | payslips, bank/tax/fund records and application timeline |
| Salary | payslips, tax and banking records |
| Employer legal name | official records and payment evidence |
| Location | work history and migration/residence records where relevant |
| Role changes | salary changes, contracts, promotion records and duties |
Do not write the letter from ANZSCO backwards
The duties should describe recurring work actually performed. Copying an occupation description into a reference strips out the details that make the employment credible. Technology names can help, but a tool list—“AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Python, SQL”—is not a duty. Explain the professional function.
For calibration on depth, see how much technical detail belongs in an ACS employment reference.
Who should sign: HR or a technical manager?
An authorised HR representative may be strongest on dates, salary, status and official title. A technical manager may be strongest on duties and professional responsibility. The ideal outcome is an authorised company process that combines accurate HR facts with technically accurate duties.
If the available signer is no longer employed by the company, check whether a former manager can support ACS employment evidence.
What if the employer cannot issue a compliant reference?
Do not force the exception into a normal employer letter. ACS has separate statutory-declaration/affidavit guidance for situations where an employment reference genuinely cannot be obtained. That route has additional requirements, including evidence explaining why the employer reference is unavailable.
If the practical problem is that the employer refuses or cannot provide a compliant letter, see what evidence can still help when an employer will not issue an ACS reference.
Final pre-submission test
Give the reference to someone who knows nothing about the applicant. Can they identify the employer, exact employment period, weekly hours, salary, work location, role changes, professional ICT function and the person verifying the letter? If any answer requires guessing, the reference is not yet doing its job.
A polished résumé cannot rescue missing primary records; a beautiful CV cannot fix weak ACS employment evidence.
Write an evidence ledger before asking HR for a letter
An employment reference is not merely a recommendation from a manager. It connects a role, an employer, duties, dates, hours and remuneration to a claimed period of skilled experience. Start with a spreadsheet where each row represents a distinct role period and each column identifies the document proving a particular fact. For example, a payslip may prove that money was paid, but normally cannot explain whether the employee designed a network architecture or monitored help-desk tickets. A technical supervisor may verify duties but may not control the payroll information. Using both forms of proof, rather than demanding that one page establish everything, makes the assessment file easier to follow.
What a useful duty description sounds like
Compare ‘responsible for software development’ with a description of implementing API endpoints, reviewing pull requests, testing data migrations, addressing production defects and deciding how authentication worked. The second version gives an assessor something concrete to map against an occupation. It also provides an interview-ready narrative that a former colleague can honestly corroborate. Avoid copying an occupation description and presenting it as a job history. Real employment includes trade-offs, maintenance, incidents and work that is only partly relevant. If the applicant progressed from support to development, identify that boundary instead of claiming all years were equivalent. Review the ACS General Skills pathway for the current distinction between employer references and proof of paid work.
Handling a closed employer or an uncooperative supervisor
Employment evidence can become difficult when the company has dissolved, changed ownership or refuses customized letters. Resist the temptation to create a letterhead or obtain a signature from someone who did not know your work. Gather contemporaneous contracts, tax statements, payslips, position descriptions and records showing who supervised the relevant project. ACS describes limited alternative evidence mechanisms, including certain third-party statutory declarations or affidavits, but the precise conditions must be checked before preparation. A declaration should establish how the witness knew the employee, which duties they personally observed, and what period they can truthfully attest to. It cannot turn hearsay into firsthand evidence.
Resolve contradictions before submission
If a contract says 38 hours per week but payroll shows a long unpaid leave, disclose and reconcile the gap. If the job title changed while duties remained stable, explain that rather than forcing the titles to match. If gross salary was paid across several currencies or payroll entities, document the relationship between the employing company and payer. A reviewer should be able to move from reference to payment record without guessing. For formal criteria, use the ACS document information hub and the relevant assessment pathway, because evidence requirements can be revised after a reference has been drafted.
The practical definition of a compliant referee letter belongs in employment-reference requirements. The separate payment-evidence policy guidance is essential where a reference alleges paid experience, while RPL assessment requirements explains why RPL employment evidence is not interchangeable with proof of knowledge.
