Free experience letter generator for employers and HR

Who writes this letter, and why it matters

An experience letter is a statement made by a company about somebody who worked there. Its entire value comes from that. A future employer reads it and thinks: this organisation is prepared to put its name to these facts.

That is why the letter has to come from the employer. If you are the person who left, the honest use of a page like this is to draft what you are asking for and hand it to your old manager or HR contact to check, amend and issue on their own paper. Writing one yourself and presenting it as though the company issued it is forgery, and background checks catch it more often than people assume. A single phone call to the number on the letter is usually all it takes.

Everything below is written for the person doing the issuing.

The four letters people ask for

These names get used interchangeably, but they say different things and it is worth picking the right one.

If somebody simply asks for a letter without saying which, an experience letter is almost always what they mean.

What a good letter has to contain

A letter missing any of these is the one that gets queried.

• The company name and address. Without them the letter cannot be traced back to anybody.
• A date. An undated letter reads as a draft, and it also tells the reader how current the information is.
• The employee’s full legal name. Exactly as it appears on their documents, not a shortened version.
• The role held. The single most useful line in the letter for whoever reads it next.
• Both dates. A start and an end are what turn a friendly note into proof of service.
• A named signatory with a job title. The reader needs to know it came from somebody with the authority to issue it.
• A way to verify it. More on this below, because it matters more than everything else.

The verification detail people leave out

A future employer that wants to confirm the letter is genuine needs somewhere to write or call. A company email address or a switchboard number is enough.

Letters with no contact route on them are the ones most likely to be doubted, and the doubt lands on your former employee rather than on you. It costs one line and it is the difference between a letter that settles the question and one that raises it.

Deciding how much to say about performance

This is the part that needs judgement, and it is where a template can quietly get you into trouble.

A warm letter for somebody who genuinely earned it is a kindness that costs nothing. A warm letter for somebody who was dismissed puts your company in an awkward position if the next employer ever picks up the phone. What you write should be something you would be comfortable repeating out loud.

That is why the neutral option exists. A letter that simply confirms the role, the dates and that duties were carried out is entirely respectable. It gives the person what they need for their file, it is completely accurate, and it commits you to nothing you cannot support. Where a departure was difficult, saying less is usually both kinder and safer than saying something untrue.

Whatever tone you choose, keep it consistent across people who left in similar circumstances. Two employees comparing letters is a more common scenario than most employers expect.

Should salary be mentioned?

Usually not, and the setting here is switched off by default for that reason.

Salary is private information. Putting it in writing can weaken somebody in their next negotiation, since a new employer that sees the previous figure tends to anchor to it. Most recipients do not need it and did not ask for it.

There are exceptions. Some countries and some visa processes expect a salary line, and occasionally the employee specifically asks because they need it for a loan or a rental application. In those cases include it, but include it because it was requested rather than out of habit.

Listing duties, and why it helps

A job title alone tells the next employer very little. Operations Manager means something quite different at a forty person company than at a national chain.

Three or four short lines describing what the person actually did makes the letter far more useful, and it costs you five minutes. Keep them factual and specific. Managed replenishment planning across forty two retail sites says more than was responsible for operational duties, and it is easier to write because it is simply true.

This is optional in the letter for a reason. If the departure was contentious, or if you simply do not know the detail well enough to be accurate, leave it out rather than guessing.

Are you obliged to give one?

That depends entirely on where you are, and it is worth checking your local position rather than assuming.

In some countries a certificate of service is a legal entitlement that an employee can request, with rules about what it may and may not contain. In others it is purely a matter of company policy and goodwill. Some jurisdictions specifically restrict negative comment in such letters.

What holds fairly consistently everywhere is that if you do issue one, it must be accurate. A letter with the wrong dates or an inflated job title can cause a real problem later, for the employee and for the company that signed it. Check the dates against your records rather than against memory.

Making it look like a proper document

The letter this page produces is deliberately plain and correctly structured. To finish it properly:

• Put it on headed paper. Download the Word version, drop it into your company template, and print from there. A letter with the company logo and registered details on it carries more weight than the same words on white paper.
• Sign it by hand. A printed and physically signed copy, then scanned, is still the strongest version. A typed name alone is the weakest.
• Add a reference number if your organisation uses them. It signals the letter came out of a real process rather than being written in five minutes.
• Keep a copy. File it against the employee record, so if somebody rings to verify it in two years, you can confirm exactly what was issued.
• Send a PDF, not a Word file. A PDF is harder to alter after it leaves you, which protects both sides.

If you are the employee reading this

You are allowed to ask, and most employers will say yes. A few things make the request go smoothly.

Ask before your last day, while people still remember you and while your manager is still your manager. Ask the right person, which is usually HR rather than your immediate boss, though a note from your boss to HR helps. Say what you need it for, since a visa application and a job application call for slightly different documents.

And make it easy. Drafting exactly what you are asking for and sending it over means somebody can read it, correct anything wrong and issue it in ten minutes rather than starting from a blank page. That is a legitimate and welcome thing to do. Handing over a draft is entirely different from issuing the letter yourself.

Once you have it, our merge tool will combine it with your resume and certificates into one attachment, and the PDF compressor handles portals with tight upload limits. If you are also updating your application, the resume builder is next door.

Why none of this leaves your device

Think about what goes into one of these letters. Full names, employment dates, job titles, employee numbers, sometimes salaries, and the fact that a specific person left a specific company on a specific date. That is personal data about a named individual, and in most places you have a legal duty to look after it.

Typing all of that into a website that uploads it to a server, stores it against an account and keeps it under a retention policy nobody at your company has reviewed is a data protection decision, whether or not anyone treats it as one.

Here it is kept in your own browser and nowhere else. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and the draft saved on your machine can be cleared with one button. Open the network panel in your developer tools and watch it run if you would rather see that than take our word for it. It also means you can write these with the connection off entirely.