Been reading through the 'self-help' ITA booklet...
 

....now I am confused :o This is going to be a long one.

Like most of us I am keen to supply all the information they require and make a good impression. The areas they are concerned about are the de facto and work experience from what i can gather. The de facto I am happy with....

The work experience. Ok, i have statements from past employers confirming we worked for them but:

1) One of them will only confirm start and end dates; their policy is to not divulge any other information. So i cant confirm it was a full time job. Plus the job title doesnt actually reflect the job we did.

2) Some of them have said yeh it was a full time job, but not specified they were 40hr weeks.

Do i need to be concerned by these two problems? We have NI contribution reports and Work history reports from Inland revenue to back up all this. And i am about to write to all the employers again to be a bit more explicit :rolleyes:


OK, next problem. We ticked the box on the EOI to say we had a skill in an area of long term skill shortages. We are IT trained and experienced, and we are just scraping 10 years experience.

1) In our earlier jobs, the job title does not marry with the actual task carried out. (For example, part time cashier is the job title - what he did in fact was manage the shop floor and provide support on the IT side of things). And like most people here, those employers no longer hold records on employees that far back. With no other evidence available to us, how about we write a personal written account of what we did week to week - do you think that is viable?

2) Do they expect full job descriptions from the ex-employers? or a personal written account when asked the question how your work experience meets the criteria of their long term skill shortages.

3) For the past couple of years we have been running our own limited company (not self employed). Would it still be wise to get the accountant to write a letter, otherwise we will end up writing each other's references lol.


This ITA is painful. :D