Documents Required

[Tina Desai]

Hello,
What documents will be required to be given to a company in UK? Generally in India one needs the relieving letter of the immediate last company, latest sal slip, few photos and if needed identity documents like passport etc. Is there any difference in UK?
Tina

[Tina Desai]

Anyone?

[Mike Gershman]

Tina:

I'm sorry that I can't answer your questions, but perhaps you can answer mine.

What is a relieving letter?
Can an employer refuse to write one?
Does the government enforce this process?

Thanks

Mike

[Tina Desai]

phew I thought someone asnwered!
hehehehe..

relieving letter is a letter stating that you are releived from the duties of so and so company working as so and so (say developer) starting from this date to that date.

This is a general format. Some companies do not include date, in which case, make it a point to get an 'experience letter' from them stating the same.

I do not know where from you are. And even if u tell me, I am not the correct person to enquire about the laws there. I do not know if your gov. has any say in it.

But at my country it does not. And it is upto the employer to relieve me. The letter is also upto him. There is nothing much we can do but to talk good and get things done.

HTH
Tina

[Sridhar Garimella]

Tina,

I thought of posting a reply today morning but I forgot b.coz of some urgent work. My wife managed to get a job few days back and they asked following documents if I remember correctly.

-- Passport copies
-- Work permit related documents from Home Office
-- Couple of refereces
-- She has to fill a form on her first working day

This may not be the case every where in UK.

Cheers,
Sridhar.

[Tina Desai]

Originally posted by Sridhar Garimella:

-- Passport copies
-- Work permit related documents from Home Office
-- Couple of refereces
-- She has to fill a form on her first working day

Thanks Shridhar,
Just to confirm, I guess they asked for no originals (maybe for checking but not for submitting).

They don't need any previous exp documents? sounds strange. Do they work out through references?

Here, references means the people worked with/for earlier, right?

Tina

[Sridhar Garimella]

Tina,

Yes only photo copies.

Yeap she got to give references with whom she worked earlier.

Cheers, Sridhar.

[Sridhar Garimella]

Tina,

They may work out through refrences or they may assign to some agency for background checking in US(b.coz my wife worked in US before marriage).

Cheers,
Sridhar.

[Tina Desai]

Thanks! You have been a great help!

I did expect them to be the photocopies. Thanks for confirming.

Originally posted by Sridhar Garimella:
They may work out through refrences or they may assign to some agency for background checking in US(b.coz my wife worked in US before marriage).

I did hear about this. Is it coz they do not refer to any other documents, they concentrate on references?

I have seen hardly anyone contacting the references given when I was back home. Here, does each and every time I give a reference, that person will be contacted? As non of my work was for onsite, it would be better to inform the references about such a thing, if any, in advance.

Tina

[Mike Gershman]

Tina:

I checked for you with a friend in the UK and the "relieving letter" is not used there to his knowledge.

Reference checking is an art.

Many companies ask their managers not to give detailed references to avoid lawsuits. Nonetheless, a good hiring manager can usually get enough out of your ex-boss to verify the basics. If you left on bad terms, try to give a previous boss or a senior co-worker or two. Be sure the references' phone numbers and emails are current - no one will do that research for you.

There are also agencies that check your background for a fee, but they are better at finding outright lies than bad work patterns.

Don't fake any of your documents or references. I had the very sad duty of firing an excellent employee on the spot over a false statement on his application.

My earlier question was not whether the Indian government will help you get a relieving letter but whether the Indian government requires your new company to check for this letter when you are hired.

I hope you like the UK. I had a great time there.

[Joe King]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:

I checked for you with a friend in the UK and the "relieving letter" is not used there to his knowledge.

This is true - I'd never heard of a "relieving letter" before reading this thread! (I'm British by the way...). Although an employer does not write a letter saying when you finished working for them, for tax reasons you receive a form called a P45, issued by the government. If you have previously worked in the UK, employers will ask to see the P45 from your last job when giving you a new one.

A new employer will also ask for something called a National Insurance number. Everyone here has one of these, which is used by the government to keep track of you for tax purposes. I'm not sure what happens if you come to the UK from another country with respect to a NI number. I'd guess that this gets sorted out along with a work visa, or some kind of visa number can be given instead.

Reference checking is an art.

Many companies ask their managers not to give detailed references to avoid lawsuits. Nonetheless, a good hiring manager can usually get enough out of your ex-boss to verify the basics. If you left on bad terms, try to give a previous boss or a senior co-worker or two. Be sure the references' phone numbers and emails are current - no one will do that research for you.

This is very true. In the current UK IT job market experience counts for a great deal. Employers will look at qualifications, but will be far more interested in experience, and will be highly likely to either contact previous employers, or to want to read written references from them.

[Tina Desai]

Thanks to you all for your replies.

Still, there is always a possibility of getting wrong information about a person in some cases. How does a company handle that?

If one has two references of people one is very sure of. And the company needs 3 from the applicant. It would not make sense to give a reference of someone just for the sake of it. I can cost a person the job.

Checking the references is a very old thing for UK employers? Or it began when someone presented fake documents?

Tina

[Arjun Shastry]

Checking the references in Britain is an very old art.When Indian mathematician Ramanujan sent some research papers to Cambridge,all Profs. except G.H. Hardy threw the papers to garbage bcos there was not any reference.

[ September 07, 2004: Message edited by: Arjun Shastry ]

[Tina Desai]

Hey I didn't know that