Why Traditional Employment Letters Are No Longer Enough

For decades, the standard way to prove past employment has been simple:
A letter on company letterhead, signed by a manager or HR representative, printed or scanned, and sent to the person who requested it.

On the surface, it looks “official.”
In reality, it’s one of the weakest and easiest-to-manipulate forms of proof.

Today, when employers, recruitment agencies, and background verification companies receive these documents, they’re forced into a difficult position:

• Trust the document as-is and take on risk, or
• Spend extra time and money manually re-checking everything.

This is precisely the gap emprofy.com is designed to close.

The Problem: Paper and PDF Letters Are Easy to Fake

Once an employment letter leaves the company’s secure environment and is converted into a PDF, printout, or scan, it begins to lose its reliability.

Common issues include:

• Easy editing
  PDF and Word files can be edited to change job titles, dates, salary, or responsibilities with basic tools.
  Even scanned documents can be altered with image editors.
• Copied letterheads and signatures
  Company logos, letterheads, and even signatures can be taken from older documents or the company website and reused on forged letters.
• Unclear or unverifiable signatories
  The person who “signed” the letter may have left the company, never worked there, or may not actually be authorized to confirm employment.
• No audit trail
  There is usually no record of:
  • Who generated the document
  • When it was generated
  • Whether it was ever modified after being created

Once it’s in the candidate’s hands, no one can prove what happened to it.

Why Employers and Background Check Companies Struggle to Trust These Documents

When an employer or background screening organization receives a letter or PDF from a candidate, they face a serious trust problem:

1. They didn’t receive it directly from the source
   It’s usually forwarded by the candidate, not sent securely from the previous employer’s official systems.
2. The contact details might be outdated or incorrect
   The phone number or email listed on the letter may no longer be active—or may reach the wrong person.
3. Multiple formats and standards
   Every company writes letters in a different style. There’s no standard format, so each one has to be interpreted manually.
4. High volume, limited time
   For recruiters and background checking firms handling hundreds or thousands of candidates, manually validating each letter is not scalable.

The Result: A Second Round of Manual Verification

Because of these issues, many organizations feel forced to:

• Email or call the previous employer directly
• Ask them to confirm dates, titles, responsibilities, and performance
• Cross-check what’s in the letter against what HR or the manager says

This brings its own problems:

• Time-consuming – Chasing responses across time zones can take days or weeks.
• Costly – Staff spend valuable hours on low-value admin work.
• Inconsistent – Some employers respond quickly, others never respond at all.
• Frustrating for candidates – Hiring and onboarding get delayed, even when they’re telling the truth.

Why It’s Essential to Digitally Collect Employment Documents

Beyond authenticity, there’s another considerable risk: future access.

Even if a letter is genuine today, that doesn’t mean it will be easy (or even possible) to recreate or verify it years later. Organizations change—and so do their systems.

Here are key reasons why employment documents must be collected and stored digitally, in a secure, independent system:

1. The company may shut down
   • If a company closes, there may be no HR department left to confirm anything.
   • Former employees can be left with no official proof of their work history.
2. The company could be acquired or merged.
   • New owners may not retain old records or may only keep them in a limited form.
   • Old HR data might be archived, deleted, or inaccessible to frontline staff.
3. The company may change its HR or payroll system.
   • During system migrations, old employment data can be lost, corrupted, or stored in difficult-to-access formats.
   • HR teams may not have the time or tools to dig up records from legacy systems.
4. Disasters and conflicts can destroy records.
   • War, political instability, natural disasters, or data center incidents can wipe out physical and digital records.
   • Employees who built their careers in such regions can suddenly struggle to prove even basic employment history.

When employment records aren’t captured and preserved in a secure, neutral platform, honest candidates pay the price—especially those moving countries or changing careers several years later.

How emprofy.com Fixes This Trust Problem

emprofy.com is built to eliminate these authenticity and traceability issues from the ground up.

Instead of relying on easily forged letters that travel through email and personal devices, the platform enables:

1. Verified employer accounts
   • Organizations are validated before they can issue documents.
   • Only authorized HR, managers, or designated representatives can submit employment confirmations.
2. Secure, digital document creation and storage
   • Employment documents and reference responses are captured directly in the platform.
   • Every document is linked to a verified source and stored in a secure digital vault.
3. Full traceability of origin and changes
   • The system records who issued the document, when, and for which candidate.
   • There is a clear chain of custody from issuer to verifier—no guesswork.
4. Candidate cannot alter or edit documents
   • Once an employer submits a document, the candidate cannot modify it.
   • They can only request and share it, not rewrite it.
5. Instant, trusted access for employers and verifiers
   • Prospective employers, background screening firms, and other authorized parties can access documents directly from the platform.
   • They no longer have to rely on forwarded PDFs or “please see attached” emails.
6. Future-proofed employment history
   • Even if a company shuts down, is acquired, changes systems, or suffers a disaster, the employment record already stored in emprofy.com remains accessible.
   • Candidates keep a durable, portable proof of their work history.

From Fragile Letters to Trustworthy Digital Proof

The old way—printed letters, scanned PDFs, and forwarded emails—was never designed for a global, digital, high-mobility workforce. It creates unnecessary friction for:

• Candidates, must repeatedly prove the same experience.
• Employers and recruiters, who are tired of chasing and re-checking.
• Background verification firms, which carry risk when they can’t fully validate documents.

By moving to a verified, tamper-resistant, digital model, emprofy.com preserves the origin, integrity, and longevity of employment documents—and eliminates the need for expensive, manual second rounds of validation.

If you want to stop worrying about forged letters, missing records, and endless follow-up calls, a secure digital employment history isn’t just “nice to have” anymore.
It’s essential.