Recognition of Prior Learning is an alternative assessment process to study, that turns your career experience into national qualifications, based on work examples. Following is a guide to the types of work examples you can provide. Including how to use AI to support you when you’re feeling stuck.
To comply with national regulators, your skills and knowledge must be assessed to meet the standards required by the industry responsible for the qualification you are seeking.
Our RPL assessors match your skills and knowledge to the units in a qualification through the work examples you provide.
The whole process is designed to be smooth and straightforward. The more prepared you are, the easier and quicker it will be.
Here is a list of different types of work examples you can gather to showcase your skills and knowledge.
Have fun ‘showing-off’ your skills!
Resume or CV or Work History
Your resume or CV outlines your work history, skills, and knowledge that you have collected over your years of employment. Keep it up to date
LinkedIn Profile
If you have a LinkedIn profile send us the link. This acts as a secondary resume and is very beneficial for our assessors.
Position Descriptions
These describe the job that your employer expects you to be doing. It usually outlines the tasks you’ll do, the skills and knowledge required. This helps the assessor understand what tasks you perform in your role and may help in determining what skill and knowledge level you operate under.
Qualifications, statements, or licences
A copy of any existing qualifications or licenses you have can help the RPL assessor determine your knowledge level.
Most qualifications also have a Statement of Attainment or a Record of Results. We need to see these too as sometimes credit transfer can form part of your RPL assessment and requires these documents. You can even upload certificates from company training, work approval licences or on-line courses from LinkedIn.
Your USI number
A USI is a life-long education number, creating an online record of your nationally accredited training attainments within Australia. If you provide us with your USI we can look up details of any VET training you have completed since 2015.
Here you will find detailed instructions on granting Churchill Education access to your academic records as part of your RPL assessment.
More information on USIs, including how to find yours:
USI – What is it?
Performance appraisals, annual reviews, or references
These documents show us how your employer values your skills and knowledge. They must be official documents; in that they should at least show the business logo and link to that company.
Records of seminars or workshops
If you have attended staff professional development activities, work-related seminars, online discussions, practical workshops, or other courses and can provide any documents of achievement or attendance.
Job Running Sheets or Task Logs
Completed examples of these may demonstrate your skills and links to the assigned job tasks. It may also show where you have assigned tasks to team members or worked with others to complete a job.
Journals, daily notes or work diaries
If you document your daily tasks for any reason, these can be a valuable example of what you do in your daily work. We may be able to use it to document your time management skills or planning skills.
Any documents that you have written
Any reports, policies and procedures, flowcharts, spreadsheet presentations, technical documents, that you have created, are useful for demonstrating your knowledge, research and technical skills.
Projects
If you have been involved in managing projects, the common documents involved might be presentations, planning process documents, emails to stakeholders, reports, meeting minutes, relevant photographs, final handover reports, videos or recorded conversations.
Photos, Videos or Audio
To demonstrate that you have performed tasks, these types of work examples can be very useful. Photo and videos can support your written reports or emails where you have contributed useful knowledge or skills to a task or job that has been assigned to you or that you have assigned to others.
Short audio recordings of conversations can verify your knowledge and authority on a topic.
Emails – internal or external
Saving copies of emails that you have sent during your work, show your involvement in team communication either as a leader or a team member. Emails can show your authority, involvement in a task, emotional intelligence, assigning tasks, sending reports etc., all of which may be valuable in demonstrating your skills and knowledge.
Anything else
If there are other work examples that have not been outlined that you think may support your application, please feel free to include them. Remember that the documents must have been your work or if they are created by someone else, your involvement in having them created – if you were a leader or manager and asked someone to create something for you – there will be an email trail. Show us!
Sensitive documents
Any of the documents that you send us can be redacted if you think that certain content is sensitive. We provide you with a secure link to upload your work to our server, where it is visible only to your Career & Education Advisor and the RPL assessor team.
[NEW] How to Use AI to Support You When You’re Not Sure What Documents to Provide
If you’re feeling unsure about what documents might best demonstrate your experience for RPL, AI can be a surprisingly helpful tool to get you started. Here are some simple ways you can use AI—like ChatGPT—to support your preparation:
1. Generate a list of possible documents based on your job role
Not sure what counts as valid evidence? Try prompting AI with something like:
“I worked as a project manager for 5 years in the construction industry. What types of documents could I use to show my experience for RPL?”
The AI can give you a tailored list of ideas that match your industry and role—some you may not have thought of!
2. Draft or update your resume or work history
If your resume is out of date or you don’t have one at all, AI can help. Just describe your job, your main tasks, and where you’ve worked, and AI can help you write or polish a professional resume.
3. Summarise your responsibilities or projects
Struggling to remember what you did in a past role, or how to describe it clearly? AI can help you draft a short overview based on your notes or job titles—great for supporting documents like a statement of experience or work summary.
4. Prepare explanations of your role in team projects
If your evidence includes group work, AI can help you articulate your specific contribution. For example, it can help you write a short paragraph describing your role in a team-based project or explain your leadership responsibilities.
5. Edit or redact documents
AI can help you edit documents for clarity or remove sensitive information before you upload them—simply copy and paste the text (no attachments) and ask for help redacting or rephrasing while keeping the meaning clear.
6. Organise your documents
If you’re overwhelmed by what you have, you can list out all your documents, and AI can help you group them by relevance to skills or units, or suggest which ones are stronger for certain qualifications.
Remember, you don’t have to be an expert in wording or document preparation—that’s what our RPL assessors are here for. But using tools like AI can help you feel more confident and get your paperwork sorted faster.
Of course, your Churchill Career & Education Advisor is always here to help too.
Ready to get started on turning your career experience into national qualifications? You can apply here for a free appraisal or via any of the methods below.
