You Moved First.
Your Licence Is Still in the Old Country.
Start this before you book a flight
Quick answer
If your profession is regulated, a separate body decides whether you may practise, and that decision is not part of your visa. Start it first, from your home country, because it is usually the longest step. Germany now has a route that lets you begin work while recognition runs after arrival. Canada requires a credential assessment before you can even enter the main immigration pool. Check with the regulator for your profession in your target country before you commit to anything else.
A nurse with nine years on a busy ward lands, settles the family, and starts applying. The replies are polite and identical: we cannot consider you until you are registered. She had assumed registration was paperwork you complete once you arrive. It is not paperwork. It is a process with its own assessments, its own fees, its own queue, and in her case its own year.
First, is your profession regulated?
This single question determines everything, and most people never ask it. In a regulated profession, the law reserves the job title and the practice for people licensed by a named body. Working without that licence is not merely difficult, it is not permitted. In a non-regulated profession, nobody licenses you and the employer decides for themselves what your qualification is worth.
| Profession type | Typical examples | Who decides | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulated | Nursing, medicine, pharmacy, teaching, law, engineering in many places, accountancy for certain functions | A national or provincial regulator, not the employer and not immigration | You need their licence before you can work. Start early, expect assessments and fees. |
| Non-regulated | IT, most business and finance roles, marketing, general management, much of engineering in some countries | The employer, case by case | No licence to obtain. A credential assessment is optional and mainly helps the employer trust your degree. |
The same profession can be regulated in one country and not in another, and in federal countries it can differ by province or state. Engineering is the classic example. Always check the specific regulator for the specific place.
The mistake underneath the mistake
People sequence around the visa because the visa is the part with a deadline and a website. Recognition has no deadline, so it drifts to the end. But recognition is usually the longest step and the one with the least flexibility, which means it should be the first thing you start and the last thing you finish. If you take one thing from this article, take the order.
Germany changed the order on purpose
Germany noticed that requiring full recognition before arrival was keeping out people it needed, and built a route around it. Under the recognition partnership introduced in 2024, a skilled worker can enter with a job offer and an employer who commits to supporting the recognition process, then complete recognition after arrival while already working. The permit is issued initially for a year and can be extended, and once full equivalence is established the status can convert to that of a skilled worker.
It is not a shortcut past the standard. You still need a qualification of at least two years that is recognised by the state where you trained, a concrete job offer, and an employer who qualifies to be a partner. What it changes is the order, and the order is what costs people a year. Recognition itself also carries real cost, with fees and language courses commonly running into four figures in euros. Budget for it rather than discovering it.
“The visa lets you enter. The licence lets you work. Almost nobody plans for the second one.”
Canada puts the assessment before the queue
Canada takes the opposite approach and asks for proof up front. For the main economic immigration programmes, a foreign degree must be assessed by a designated organisation before your education can count, so the assessment is not something you do after arriving. It is something you do before you can properly apply.
Fees are in the low hundreds of Canadian dollars and turnaround from the assessing organisation is typically measured in weeks. The part that catches people is not the assessment itself, it is the step before it: your university has to send documents directly, and universities are slow. Start with your own institution, not with the assessing body, because that is where the real delay lives.
For regulated professions there is a second layer on top. Nurses in Canada go through a national assessment service and then a provincial regulator, and the two stages together commonly run for many months. In the United States the route for internationally educated nurses runs through credential evaluation, English testing, a state board application and the licensing examination, and people who have done it describe a timeline of well over a year end to end.
Check the source, not the summary
Fees, processing times and rules in this area change frequently, and much of what is published about them online is out of date or copied from a copy. Treat every figure here as a rough order of magnitude and confirm the current position with the official regulator for your profession and the official government portal for the country. If a number matters to your plan, get it from the body that charges it.
The order that works
Find out if you are regulated, in the exact place you are going
Not the country in general. The province, state or region. Search for the name of your profession plus regulator plus the location, and get to an official site. This takes an afternoon and determines the next two years.
Find the named body and read their own requirements
Regulators publish exactly what they need: which qualifications they accept, which examinations they require, what English level, what supervised practice. Read the primary source. Consultancy summaries are frequently outdated and occasionally wrong.
Order your documents before you need them
Transcripts sent directly by your university, certified translations, syllabus documents, proof of registration at home, letters confirming hours worked. This is the step that silently takes months, and it is the one step you can complete entirely from where you are sitting right now.
Sit the English test to the standard the regulator wants, not the visa
Regulators very often demand a higher score than immigration does, and sometimes a specific test or a specific pattern of sub-scores. Take the visa score and you may pass immigration and fail registration. Aim at the higher bar once.
Start recognition from home, in parallel with everything else
Almost every route lets you begin before you move. Running recognition alongside the visa rather than after it is the single change that saves the most time.
Ask employers directly whether they support recognition
In Germany this is a formal route. Elsewhere it is informal but real, and hospitals, schools and engineering firms that hire internationally often have a process and someone who knows it. Ask in the first conversation rather than the last.
What to say to an employer while you are still unregistered
The scenario
Replying to an employer who asks about your registration status
✗ Avoid
I am not registered yet but I am hoping to complete the process soon after I arrive. I would be grateful for any opportunity and I am willing to start in any role while I sort out my registration.
✓ Use instead
My application with the regulator was submitted in March and my credential assessment is complete. The remaining step is the licensing examination, which I am booked to sit in September. I hold the English score the regulator requires, which is above the immigration threshold. I would be available to start in a supervised capacity from October.
The first answer asks the employer to carry the uncertainty. The second turns an unfinished process into a schedule with dates. Employers who hire internationally are not put off by candidates mid-registration. They are put off by candidates who cannot tell them when it ends.
Start this week, before anything else
- Confirm whether your profession is regulated in the exact province, state or region you are targeting.
- Find the regulator by name and read their international applicant page in full.
- Email your university today and ask what it takes for them to send transcripts directly to an overseas body.
- Check the English requirement set by the regulator, not the one set by immigration, and aim at the higher of the two.
- Write down the total expected fees and add a contingency. This is not a cheap process and surprise costs are what stall people halfway.
None of this makes the process shorter. It is a long process and it is genuinely harder than it should be for people who are already qualified and already needed. What the order changes is where the waiting happens. Done in the right sequence, you wait while you are still earning at home. Done in the wrong one, you wait after you have arrived, with rent to pay and a licence you cannot use.
Go deeper
Australia Just Raised the English Score for Nurses and Doctors.
The new threshold for AHPRA registration, and why the regulator's requirement is not the same as the visa requirement.
Read it →Did this help?
About the author
Muskan
Co-founder, WizardTeacher · Content and curriculum lead
Muskan is co-founder of WizardTeacher and leads all content and curriculum development. She researches exam formats, marking criteria, and preparation strategies to ensure every resource on WizardTeacher is grounded in what the examiners actually reward.