Career advice

An employer in Germany wants to hire you as an electrician. You have eight years of experience and a trade certificate from home. The employer still cannot put you on the job at your grade, because in several European countries this is a regulated profession: the state decides who may practise it, and your certificate has to be assessed first.

This surprises people, and it usually surprises them at the worst moment, after they have moved.

Regulated or not, that is the first question

Most jobs are not regulated. Nobody checks a marketing manager's diploma against a legal standard; the employer decides. But healthcare, teaching, several construction and electrical trades, professional driving, security work, accounting and law are regulated in many countries, and the list is different in each one. A profession that is free to practise in Poland may require a licence in Austria.

The European Commission keeps a database of regulated professions that you can search by profession and country. Ten minutes there tells you whether you are dealing with a paperwork exercise or a state licence, and that single fact changes how you plan the whole move.

Two different things called recognition

Academic recognition answers the question "what is this diploma equal to here", and is handled by the national ENIC-NARIC centre. You need it mostly for further study, and sometimes for a salary grade in the public sector.

Professional recognition answers "may this person work in this profession here", and is handled by whichever body regulates the trade: a chamber of crafts, a medical council, an education ministry. Inside the EU, qualifications earned in one member state move relatively smoothly under the 2005 directive on professional qualifications. Qualifications from outside the EU go through a national procedure instead, which is slower and looks at the content of your training rather than its name.

What the process actually asks of you

• Your diploma and, more importantly, the transcript listing hours and subjects. Assessors compare content, not titles.
• Certified translations, and often an apostille or legalisation from the country that issued the document.
• Proof of practice: employment records, contracts, references. For trades this often carries more weight than the certificate.
• Language proof at a level set by the profession, which for healthcare is usually higher than for construction.

Where the training does not match, the answer is rarely a refusal. It is normally an adaptation period at work or a test on the missing part, which is how most people actually get through.

Start it before you need it

Assessments take months, sometimes the better part of a year, and the documents you need are almost always easier to obtain while you are still in the country that issued them. Order extra certified copies now. Get the transcript, not only the diploma. Ask your last employer for a written reference with dates and duties while the person who remembers you still works there.

Germany runs a national portal for recognition and each region has an advice centre that will tell you which authority handles your case, for free. Similar services exist in most member states. Using them costs nothing and saves you from paying an agency for the same information.

Meanwhile you can work. Many people take a job at a lower grade while the file is being assessed, then move up when the decision arrives. Tell the employer that this is what you are doing. A firm that needs electricians will often wait for a good one, and some will pay for the assessment.