How to get your foreign qualifications recognised abroad

It depends on one question: is your profession regulated in the country you are moving to? A profession is regulated when access to it requires a specific qualification, or when the title itself is legally protected — doctor, nurse, teacher, lawyer and many engineering and trade roles, depending on the country. For those, you need approval from the competent authority before you practise or use the title.

Most jobs in IT, marketing, sales, finance, operations and research are not regulated. You can apply directly, and the employer decides whether your degree fits. A formal comparison is still worth having when a recruiter does not recognise your university, when a visa asks for it, or when a public employer has to classify your level.

Check before you pay for anything. In the EU, the Regulated Professions Database provides information on the professions covered by the professional qualifications directive (2005/36/EC). The UK’s Regulated Professions Register launched in 2023 with information on 200 regulated professions, and Germany’s anabin database lists regulated professions and the authorities that recognise them.

ENIC-NARIC is the network of national information centres on the recognition of qualifications, working under the Lisbon Recognition Convention. It covers 56 countries. The centres are information points: they tell you which body decides in their country and how the procedure works. Some, such as UK ENIC, also issue comparison statements themselves.

Use the network’s country pages to find your destination’s centre. It is the fastest way to avoid paying a private evaluator for a document the authority you actually need will not accept.

The body, the name of the document and the price differ in each destination. Here are the main routes — the table below links each country’s own guide.

• Germany: the federal portal Recognition in Germany (anerkennung-in-deutschland.de) has a Recognition Finder that names the authority for your profession and city. For unregulated degrees, the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB) issues a Statement of Comparability for €208, which you can use with government offices, embassies and employers — including for visa and EU Blue Card applications.
• United Kingdom: UK ENIC, the national information centre, compares international qualifications to the UK system through a Statement of Comparability for £69.60. It does not comment on grades, individual subjects or English proficiency. Regulated professions go to the regulator listed on the Regulated Professions Register.
• Canada: for Express Entry you need an Educational Credential Assessment from one of five designated organisations — Comparative Education Service (University of Toronto), International Credential Assessment Service of Canada, World Education Services, IQAS or ICES — or the Medical Council of Canada, Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada or Canadian Architectural Certification Board if those are your professions. The ECA is for the immigration application; if your job is regulated, check that regulator’s own requirements as well.
• United States: there is no national recognition authority. The employer decides for jobs, the institution for study, the state licensing board for licensed professions and federal authorities for immigration. Evaluations are done by private services; NACES and AICE are two associations of such evaluators. The Department of Education endorses none of them and advises using the service the institution, employer or board you are applying to recommends.
• Australia: skilled visas use a skills assessment from the assessing authority named for your occupation on the skilled occupation lists. Home Affairs only accepts an assessment from the relevant authority, and it is mandatory for some visas.
• New Zealand: NZQA’s International Qualifications Assessment places your qualification on the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework, for work and immigration purposes. A standard IQA costs NZ$445.
• Denmark: the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science issues a free assessment, normally within two months; regulated professions need an authorisation instead. Our Danish recognition guide covers both routes.

For an unregulated degree, expect weeks rather than months: 15 working days at UK ENIC, a maximum of two months in Denmark, three months for a regular ZAB statement in Germany. Fees run from nothing in Denmark to a few hundred euros or dollars elsewhere, plus translations, which are rarely included.

The clock starts when your file is complete, not when you first apply, and missing documents are the usual cause of delay. Regulated professions take longer: Germany’s recognition portal promises a notice within three to four months at the latest, but a skills analysis or a compensation measure — an aptitude test or an adaptation period — can add many months after that. Start before you move if you can.

Under Article VII of the Lisbon Recognition Convention, countries have committed to assessing the qualifications of refugees and displaced people even when they cannot be documented. Several procedures exist for this. The European Qualifications Passport for Refugees combines the documents you have with a structured interview. Denmark issues a background report, and New Zealand offers refugees a funded assessment. In Germany, universities check the plausibility of a refugee’s education for admission.

If your documents are missing for other reasons — a closed university, a lost diploma — contact the recognition centre before giving up and ask what alternative evidence it accepts. Our refugee guide covers the wider job search for people who fled their country.

The authority compares your training with the local one and decides. In Germany the possible outcomes for a regulated profession are full recognition, no recognition with the option of compensation measures, or no recognition. Compensation measures are the usual middle ground: an aptitude test, an adaptation period under supervision, or top-up courses.

If your qualification is from the EU, EEA or Switzerland, the EU rules on professional qualifications give you a clearer procedure, and some professions can use the European Professional Card. From outside Europe, expect a longer route. Use the waiting time well: work in an adjacent unregulated role — care assistant, laboratory technician, teaching assistant, engineering technician — that builds local experience and the language, and put your recognition progress on your CV.

Write the original qualification exactly as it appears on your diploma, then the official equivalent in the assessor’s words, with the year. Recruiters skim the education section in seconds; a recognised local level answers their first question before they ask it.

Never translate your degree into a protected local title you do not hold, and never write a licence you do not have yet. “Recognition in progress” with the completed steps is honest and reads as momentum. For the rest of the CV, see our CV format by country guide.