eSignature Legality for Letter of Appreciation to Employee in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Letter of Appreciation to Employee in Canada

hi my name is mark colfey i'm a canadian immigration lawyer and in this video i'm going to show you how to draft employer reference letters that work so you think you're going to apply through express entry you're excited about this july announcement that the rounds of invitations are going to open up for you federal skilled worker applicants as well as the canadian experience class well if there's one part of that whole express entry process it's going to cause you more problems than any other it's those dreaded reference letters they can be a royal pain and immigration with this whole express entry regime and their one touch policy they make it extremely difficult because if you get those reference letters even off by just a slight slight fraction and let's face it not all reference letters are created equal it could result in your application getting rejected so you cannot take the chance but fortunately you're here and in this video i'm going to show you what to do but first i want to tell you a little story i think some of you know that i grew up on a farm and as farms go there comes times when you have to go into town to get supplies our little town was called carmen gaine it was 23 miles from our home my dad would send us in to get farm supplies and sometimes he would get there and we would forget the money well fortunately for us my dad had a good name with the whites and we had a tab there it's kind of like credit but not really having credit anyways when we would forget the money we just tell mr white hey we need this this this he'd say all right mark sounds good and i said my dad will be in to pay for it the next time he's in town no problem mark no problem at all and that was how it was done in those days our word was our bond flash forward to today that's not the case so no matter how much you believe that you've performed a dude that you've performed immigration is never going to accept your word alone for it in fact what they're going to be expecting is for you to prove your skilled work history and one of the components that is essential in you proving your work history is those reference letters so when words are no longer our bonds we have to rely on physical evidence and that's the reference letters so sometimes i wish that it wasn't the case heck when you submit your express entry application you're certifying that everything is true complete and correct in the application shouldn't that be enough nope it's not so let's dive in and let's just take a look at what reference letters really are supposed to look at well if you think about it ircc does do a pretty good job at laying out what is required and the essential components so what i want to do here is basically touch on each of those and drill into you once again that you must not forget to include anything in there now for those of you who are struggling with an employer maybe that isn't cooperative that has well a generic reference letter that they give all of their applicants and will not budge from it that can be problematic and that's why we have consults in our firm so that we can work through those other options that might be available if you can't get a perfect reference letter but we're not even going to talk about that now we're focusing now on what you need to do to perfect that reference letter so you no longer have a problem with immigration okay number one you need to make sure that the letter is printed on the company's letterhead and that it has the address and contact information the email etc of the supervisor that is well supervising your work it needs to have your full name and that name should match up with the name that's on the passport it doesn't have to be perfect it doesn't have to include your middle name but it does need to be easy for the officer to see that the reference letter relates to you next like i said company contact information so it needs to have full address it needs to have telephone email website what if your company doesn't have a website well we cover those kinds of things in the express entry course which starts in june and i drill down into a lot of these things at a far deeper level but today we're hitting the high points um sometimes companies will have a seal or stamp and it's not critical that you that uh a person has that and it's also not critical that the person uploads a business card um although in the past i did routinely advise my clients to do that in the early days of express entry but now not as not as critical but the person signing the letter needs to exist they need to be available in case immigration does decide to reach out to them so company letterhead address and contact information of the company and the person signing the letter and that person who's signing it should be an immediate supervisor or personnel officer someone who has knowledge of you and the fact that you work for the company and perform those duties all right now we get down into the nitty-gritty what specifically goes into the content of your reference letter and remember this is mandatory so if you don't have these you are opening up the possibility that an immigration officer could choose to reject your work history and if your work history goes bye bye so does your express entry application number one your title is the title determinate of everything else no and if you go back and watch the video that i did on choosing your correct knock it's the starting point what's essential is that the duties and responsibilities that are also listed in this letter match up with the substantial number of those main duties contained in the noc that you've chosen so job title if you want to put the knock in for that title you can remember sometimes employers will ask you for a little bit of guidance in how to structure it but whether they do it or whether you put the initial draft together for them to confirm and verify 100 percent that yes you did it at the end of the day you need to make sure that um everybody's on board everybody knows that the duties in that letter are what you actually performed you never want to just do the letter and then give it to the employer have them sign off and they have no knowledge of what goes in there make sure that the employer is aware and hopefully you have some input into it as well to make sure that it's correct job title duties and responsibilities job status what does that mean well are you still working for the company if that's the case then they need to indicate that was it previous work history that you're claiming then there should be a start date and an end date so that's kind of what job status has and then of course dates you worked for the company so you need to clearly set it out and i wouldn't go just with a month even though express entry only asks for the month i always have the exact start date and exact end date number of hours worked per week that's often omitted from letters but it's critical because that's how they determine whether or not you were full-time or part-time next annual salary well that's what it says is if you put if is putting hourly salary down enough maybe but the guide and the directions that immigration gives specifically says salary so i put down the annual salary and benefits if they're available so let's be honest right no reference letter um well let me just put it this way you can have a reference letter that's perfect and that's what you're striving for if you can't quite quite get it perfect then there are things that you can do to try to bolster it and those are some of the things that i cover in the course let's say if you can't get the employer to put your salary on there well what can you include by example do you have payslips pay stubs do you have bank statements showing the money deposited into your account with the name of the company listed there's a number of things that you can do and each of these elements that i've talked about today are pretty much essential if you can't get them in the letter then you need to figure out another way to demonstrate them to the officer and remember the officer is not like mr white with the hardware store he's not just going to accept what you've listed all right that's it for today guys and make sure you click on the description below you can access the course right now as of june 1st it is going live all designed to prepare you to be ready when those rounds of invitation start in july and don't forget every single course that is out there will connect with a corresponding master class and the master class for this will be at the end of june to give you guys time to go through review the material and then come the end of june there's going to be four hours of master class with me live q and a's where you can ask me anything and it's devoted just for the people that have subscribed for the june cohort all right guys thanks so much and we'll see you again soon good luck with your express entry crazy crazy journey you