An employment verification letter is very much what it sounds like: a concrete form of evidence that you’re employed by a company.
The HR department will be very familiar with this type of letter since they often receive requests from employees for one. Its uses vary, but generally, it is to prove to a third party that you’re employed and have reliable, ongoing income.
The process of employment verification usually takes around 72 hours, but the time can vary depending on the third party requesting the information.
What is an employment verification letter?
An employment verification letter outlines basic information about an individual’s employment status.
It can go by various names, so if you’re asked for one of the following, you need to supply an employment verification letter:
- Employment confirmation
- Income verification
- Work verification
- Salary verification
So what exactly would you have to provide in such a letter? Just to give you an idea, here’s what you might find in an employment verification letter sample:
- Employee name
- Employment start date
- Salary
- Job title
- Company contact information
Bear in mind that the specific information included in the letter can vary based on company policy. Also, unless you’re self-employed and can speak to your own salary information, you can’t write your own employment verification letter.
The employment verification letter can be requested by a range of third parties with the primary goal of understanding an individual’s current employment and income status.
For example, a financial institution might request an employment verification letter to verify reliable income and approve an individual for a loan or mortgage. Landlords can also request the letter to ensure a potential future tenant can afford to pay the rent on an ongoing basis.
As you can imagine, the letter acts as a form of guarantee that the third party can expect to receive the money they’re owed. It’s a valid form of assurance because the content of the letter comes from a company you currently work for or worked for in the past, which largely mitigates the possibility of being deceived.
In some cases, you might even find that a new job requires the letter, as the employer wishes to verify that the information you’ve supplied about your employment history is correct.
Why is it important to have a good employment verification letter?
If you’re writing an employment verification letter on behalf of an employee in your company, it’s worth remembering that this could be hugely significant to them. It could make the difference between being approved or rejected for a mortgage or securing or losing out on a rental property and impact other high-stakes situations.
Besides what the letter could mean to the employee, writing a great letter is important because it may require different elements. A generic letter can be as good as useless in certain scenarios because the third party may request specific information. Here are some use cases for an employment verification letter:
- An employee requires a physical letter stating their previous job title, salary, and reason for termination to secure a new job.
- An employee needs a digital letter with their current salary and employment start date to apply for a mortgage.
- An employee has to prove their income to rent a property and requires proof of income in the form of pay stubs in addition to the letter.
As you can see, in each scenario, the format and what’s included in — and in addition to — the letter is important to the employee.
How do I write an employment verification letter?
To write an employment verification letter, it’s worth knowing all the standard elements you’d find in one. Then, all you have to do is factor in any specific information an employee might request on a case-by-case basis. You should write the letter on official company letterhead to prove that it’s coming from your company.
Here’s how to write an employment verification letter, and the information to include:
- Employee name
- Job title
- Job description
- Employment dates
- Salary (current or past)
- Reason for termination (if applicable)
For your company:
- Address
- Contact information
For the third party:
- Company name and address
With all this information, you’ll cover most scenarios where a new employee or past employee requests a letter. However, it’s possible that you’ll need to supply additional information, so always ask the employee if any specific information was requested by the third party.
Plus, you should be familiar with state requirements since they may forbid certain company information from being shared.
Employment verification letter template
Writing a verification letter yourself can be a good idea if you need to pen a highly personalized letter, but in most cases, it’s much easier and less time-consuming to use a template.
With the right employment verification letter templates, you’ll have a reliable starting point for any future letter you’re tasked with writing.
There are various types of templates, including the most common: the current employee verification letter and the past employee verification letter. Before we cover these two in depth and include practical templates you can use, let’s take a look at some of the other templates you might find useful:
- Landlord template
- Visa process template
- Job description template
- New employer template
- Rental contract template
Employment verification for a current employee
If you receive a request for an employment verification letter from an employee currently on the company’s books, then you’ll want to use a current employee template.
Job-seeker website Indeed has a current letter of employment sample you can adapt for the purpose of proving the employee in question currently works for your company:
ABC Inc.
101 Main Street
Dallas, TX 75201
August 1, 20XX
XYZ Loan Company, LLC
444 First Ave.
Dallas, TX 75001
To whom it may concern,
Please accept this letter as verification of Samantha’s employment with ABC Inc.
Employee Name: Samantha Rice
Employment Dates: May 5, 20XX – present
Current Job Title: Senior User Experience Researcher
Current Salary: $140,000
If you have any questions or need any additional information, please feel free to contact us at 214-555-0101 or [email protected].
Sincerely,
Richard Ramirez
Human Resources Manager
ABC Inc.
This template from Indeed relays all the pertinent information regarding a current employee and verifies that they work for your company. This helps landlords, financial institutions, or any other interested parties confirm that the employee is employed and how much they earn in their role.
As you can see, the most important information to include is the name of the employee and the dates of their ongoing employment, along with their job title and current salary.
Employment verification for a past employee
The employment verification letter template for past employees is mainly requested by employers wishing to run background checks on potential job candidates. It’s a way for employers to look behind the curtain of a candidate’s prior job experience and verify that they have worked for similar companies.
Here’s the Indeed template that you can make your own:
ABC Inc.
101 Main Street
Dallas, TX 75201
August 1, 20XX
XYZ Inc.
444 First Ave.
Dallas, TX 75001
Dear Mr. Smith,
This letter is to confirm that Samantha Rice was employed as a Senior User Experience Researcher at ABC Inc. from May 5, 20XX, to September 27, 20XX.
If you have any questions or need any additional information, please feel free to contact us at 214-555-0101 or [email protected].
Sincerely,
Richard Ramirez
Human Resources Manager
ABC Inc.
You’ll note that the main difference between the current and past employee verification letters is that the latter summarizes the employee’s time at the company in a brief sentence. It’s a less formal format since the employee no longer works at the company.
Tips for an effective employment verification letter
Even with a template, you can overcomplicate your letter or send it with basic errors that could slow down the process or even negatively impact the employee’s application. With a brief mental checklist, you can make sure that every letter you send is up to standard.
Here are three top tips to ensure your employment verification letters are always well-written:
Keep it brief
One of the biggest mistakes you could make with an employment verification letter is to treat it like a long-form essay. The letter isn’t a pledge of support to the employee in their application or a reference of their character — it simply serves to verify their employment at your company in the past or present.
So long as you provide the content in the standard business format, it shouldn’t expand beyond the basic information outlined in the templates above.
Tailor it to the employee's request
While templates can certainly be useful, it’s best not to lean on them too heavily. If you fill in the template and leave it at that, you may be missing out on key information that an employee requested.
For example, it could be that their new employer wants to know what exactly they did in their role at your company. In this case, you should write a brief job description to go along with the past employee verification letter template.
Be sure to read and re-read the original correspondence with the employee to be absolutely sure you have all the relevant information.
Proofread your letter
Before you hit ‘send,’ fact-check the letter by cross-referencing the information with the file you have on the employee, and do a run-through looking for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
Given how important the employment verification letter can be to the employee, you owe it to them to go over the letter at least once after writing it to make sure everything is in order.
Final notes
If you work in an HR department, you need to have easy access to information regarding individual employees so you can quickly produce employment verification letters upon request.
With Wrike, you can get a handle on company-wide services which can help you find everything you need, so you don’t have to trawl through the company archives to pull up relevant employee information. Here are some ways you can use Wrike’s business operations solution to store and retrieve important information and communicate with employees:
Wiki knowledge base
You can create a wiki knowledge base in Wrike that allows you to store, organize, and manage files and documents easily.
You can use it to house everything from PDFs to presentations, and best of all, as a centralized hub for information, you don’t have to switch between third-party file storage solutions, content repositories, and other sources to find what you need. Here’s what you can do with a Wrike wiki knowledge base:
- Use parent folders and single tasks to store various resources
- Backlog tasks for quick referencing
- Add and modify permissions for creating or editing tasks
- Label folders and subfolders and choose a folder structure
- Attach files from your hard drive
- Access it from the Wrike iOS and Android mobile apps
Approval requests
For an employment verification letter, you may need to request approval from various senior management figures to ensure everything is in order. In such a case, you need a quick approval request process, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in Wrike.
You can create custom statuses to trigger an approvals process and automatically notify the right team members of tasks awaiting their review.
In-app communication
If you include the employee requesting the letter in the process, you can keep them informed with Wrike’s in-app communication. Use the custom statuses as outlined above so they can track the task as it moves through various stages of completion.
You can also tag the employee with an @mention and write a comment that they’ll see pop up as a notification in their inbox.
Want to see how Wrike can streamline your HR processes? Get started with a free two-week trial today.
