Every professional we represent clears the same two published standards. Both are checked before a name reaches an employer, and both are visible on the record that travels with them.
We verify employers and dates rather than accepting a résumé summary. The requirement is twenty years in the discipline, not twenty years of working in general, because a long career in an adjacent field does not produce the judgment an employer is paying for.
This is a qualification bar. A meaningful share of the people who approach us do not clear it, and we tell them so directly.
One of the most common questions an employer has about a deeply experienced professional is whether their skills are still current. Most candidates never get a clean chance to answer it. So we document the answer, in whichever form genuinely proves it for that discipline.
Any one of the following counts, and each one carries a date: an active professional credential in good standing; training or certification completed in the past 24 months; a documented recent project using the required technology; a recent implementation or work sample; a current regulatory or CPE requirement being met; or demonstrable proficiency on the specific platform the role runs on.
Two rules keep it honest. It has to be specific to the discipline, not a generic course. And it has to carry a date, because the date is what does the work — an active CPA with current CPE is current, and so is an engineer who shipped on that platform last year.
Employers receive a short record alongside the résumé: years in discipline, the currency proof and its date, a ramp-time estimate from a former manager, and one stated weakness. It is deliberately short. It exists to answer the questions that stall a hire, and nothing else.
Nothing. Where training is required, we point people toward publicly funded routes and education partners rather than billing them. A credential a candidate had to buy is not evidence of anything except that they could afford it.
Quality Engineer, automotive tier one
Twenty years is where a professional has almost certainly worked through a full cycle of their discipline — the downturn, the audit, the migration, the failure nobody had documented. The date on the currency proof matters as much as the number: it converts a claim into something an employer can check.