Choosing the Right Work Experience Evaluation for your H-1B Petition

By: Patrick Boody 

When it comes to evaluating a foreign national’s work experience, it is essential to capture the breadth of what they have accomplished over the extent of their career, no matter its length, to equate such work experience and academic credentials to the possession of a U.S. degree in an applicable field. Here at Park Evaluations, we grant such equivalences through our in-house expert letters as well as those written by the professors with whom we partner. In sum, what differentiates the two is additional content contributing more significantly to the argument that over a candidate’s career, they have amassed what United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) calls—and requires of those seeking H1-B Visas via the avenue of work experience—progressively responsible experience. 

In-House Evaluation 

As the namesake implies, Park’s in-house evaluation is one written without commissioning any of the externally affiliated university professors we have on roster. Instead, Park’s in-house evaluator, is responsible for these. While certainly useful for H1-B candidates without much progressive responsibility to represent, as well as those candidates without an excess of corroborating support documentation, these general evaluations serve just as successfully as other work experience expert letters at establishing the hypothetical coursework mastered and degree equivalence attained from pairing degrees earned with work experience determined as falling under a specific field. 

Work Experience Expert Letter 

A more in-depth option, the work experience expert letter comprehensively evaluates all that the in-house evaluation does with the addition of it being written by an outside university professor, who analyzes at length and in detail a candidate’s progressive career tract to degrees of span and specificity unavailable in the more general in-house letter. The categorization of each job the candidate held as either entry-level, mid-career, or senior-tier, through the interpretation of the duties performed and the knowledge and skills entailed, in turn, produces a reflexive look at what a candidate has accomplished during their time working. Ultimately, the report will break down how a candidate has, over the arc of their career, been delegated work of a capacity that has incrementally grown in extent of responsibility and, more, how this progressively responsible experience combined with their academic background leaves an expert—they themselves notable authorities of the discipline being discussed—reason to believe an equivalence in their area of expertise is warranted.  

Which to choose 

Park offers both the in-house and the independent expert work experience expert letter to accommodate the ranging needs of our clients and the candidate’s petitions they are in charge of representing. To substantively argue a candidate’s case for progressive responsibility and their corresponding equivalence, it would be beneficial to opt for an experience expert letter from a university professor if the supporting documentation and scope of their career permits. Again, if limited by documentation, career experience, or budget concerns within a petition, an in-house evaluation highlights the duties of specific position(s) and links them with Bachelor’s-level knowledge and coursework before providing a final equivalence determination but is more of an overview of a candidate’s career than an in-depth look at their trajectory from job to job. Either option can be beneficial for a given situation, so it is important to weigh all factors and choose the best one for a particular petition. 

Please reach out to [email protected] for a free initial assessment of your candidate’s credentials and recommendation as to which work experience letter best meets your needs today!