IN THIS GUIDE · An industrial design offer spanning prototypes and marketing presentations
Start with the TN eligibility and application overview
Identify the design decisions
Ask what product features, form, usability or production-related design questions the employee addresses. Describe the outputs and who approves them. This provides more information than a list of modelling tools and distinguishes design responsibility from simply assembling a prototype to someone else’s instructions.
Explain the prototype work
Describe why prototypes are built and how testing informs design changes. Include the applicant’s own contribution accurately. If some tasks are primarily fabrication or routine operation, keep them in the description so counsel can assess the job as a whole.
Account for commercial responsibilities
Clarify whether presentations explain design choices or whether the employee owns sales targets, accounts or campaigns. Include any commission or commercial performance measures where relevant. Do not omit these facts simply to make the offer read as pure product design.
Establish the precise credential alternative
The Industrial Designer entry includes the listed degree or a qualifying post-secondary diploma or certificate plus three years of experience. Check the regulatory definitions and document the path relied on. A portfolio explains design work; it does not replace the required qualification and experience evidence. Decide at the outset which of the two paths the file will rely on, because the evidence differs completely. The degree route turns on a transcript and the conferral record. The diploma-and-experience route turns instead on dated employment confirmations describing three years of the relevant work. Claiming both while proving neither is the ordinary way this part of a file fails.
Decide who owns the design output
Ownership of what the applicant produces deserves settling before duties are described, because it reveals the true shape of the arrangement. An assignment clause transferring rights to the employer sits naturally beside salaried professional employment; a licence granted by the applicant, with rights retained, describes a supplier relationship. Hypothetical example: a specialty cheese distributor offers a Canadian citizen a United States post drafted as consulting on ripening-room layout. Where the company pays a fixed salary, directs the schedule and owns the resulting specifications, the file can be built around the listed Management Consultant entry. Where the applicant would instead own the venture engaging them and take a share of the distribution margin, that is work for a business of their own, and self-employment is not permitted.
Resolve the money questions before the letter is drafted
Compensation raises a pivot of its own. A salaried offer sits comfortably with the classification, while an offer of equity in the employing company invites a question about whether the applicant would be working for a business of their own, which is not permitted here. Establish the proposed shareholding, any option grant and any right to appoint directors before drafting begins, and record a small passive stake with the shareholder register that shows it. Where the stake carries control, a different route may fit the facts.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.