Husband is a carpenter but has no papers so are trying to prove skills with references. Anyone in the same boat, if so any suggestions for references, what to include, how many? he has total of 7 years experience with 2 companies but has gaps doing other things inbetween do you need to provide refs for other occupations? any help would be much appreciated, thanks

Sam, we were in the same boat nearly 2 1/2 years ago when we first started out in the application process, hubby is carpenter no papers etc. We went with an agent, and to be honest if we hadnt, i'd doubt we would have passed becasue the amount of information and detail they require is unbelievable !!!! The agent gave us templates to send to his previous employers which helped but everything had to be in the finest detail, it got silly, we had to put things like how many different types of saws he has used. To save you time, i personally would ask for an agents help on TRA part, i think its the hardest bit of the whole application !!
But best of luck, and if theres anything you want to ask, just pm me

Yes we are going with an agent as i know its really complicated, did your agent give you guides to help with references etc, how long did yours take, where you successful? I'm sure i'll be in contact again thanks for info

yes they gave us a pc disk with templates on it and how to do resume detailing every year of his apprenticeship. It took 14 weeks from submission to getting a response and thankfully we passed first time. But our agent was really helpful and when we sent all the letter in, they told us whether it would be accepeted or not, they seemed to know what they were talking about which was good becasue we hadnt a clue !!!

Hi my husband is also a carpenter with no completed qualifications. We didn't use an agent and passed it in 7 weeks but we did have to put everything down.

Basically I made a template of a job description for each of his companies that he worked for and varied it abit for each company. I made sure that I put down every tool used and every job he did, no matter how small. I sent these to each company with a begging letter asking them to do a reference and attach the job description to the reference. You must ensure that you read through the TRA document on information required and make sure that you ask the referee's to put that exact information in (things like, salary, job title, start and finish dates) etc.

We included references from friends and neighbours and anyone he had done work for. We also included photos of work he had done and site drawings detailing what work he was doing. Make sure that you put everything in no matter how trivial.

I am not sure about gaps in employment but I would be honest and advise of what he did in that time and perhaps add in references for any home work that he did for neighbours/friends etc. so it looks as though he has kept his hand in.

Hope this helps.