If you hire from abroad into Saudi Arabia, the single most useful thing to understand about the accreditation system is its timing: it happens before the visa, not after arrival.

That one fact reorders the whole hiring plan. A qualification problem that used to surface after mobilisation now surfaces before the entry visa can be issued — which is better, but only if you find it before you have signed.

There are two separate programmes, and which one applies depends entirely on the professional group of the role.

Two programmes, split by skill group

التحقق المهني — professional verification. Applies to the high-skill professions of SSCO groups 1–3, engineering and health among them. It is documentary: the ministry checks the academic qualification and whether it matches the level and field of the profession, against the Saudi Standard Classification of Occupations and the standard classification of educational levels and specialisations. It runs on a unified platform, is fully automated, and takes place in the country of origin before entry. Its legal basis is Council of Ministers Resolution 195. Rollout is now complete across 160 countries and covers 1,007 professions.

الفحص المهني — professional examination. Applies to groups 4–9, the skilled trades: electrical, plumbing, automotive electrics, automotive mechanics, refrigeration and air conditioning, and others. It is a test, not a document check — 75 minutes covering theory and practical, under ministerial decision 137860. The certificate is valid for five years. It is offered in five languages: Arabic, English, Hindi, Urdu and Filipino.

The distinction matters commercially, because the failure modes are completely different.

For trades, the certificate you were shown may be worthless

The examination guide is explicit that professional certificates from the worker's home country are not convertible — "لا يمكن معادلة شهاداتهم". There is no route by which a trade certificate issued in Manila, Karachi or Cairo substitutes for the Saudi examination.

This is the gap that costs recruiters money. A candidate is sourced against a certificate, a fee is paid, mobilisation is arranged — and the entry visa cannot be issued because the examination has not been passed. Passing it is a stated precondition of the work entry visa for the covered professions.

There are two retakes after a first failure, three attempts in total. Exhaust them and no work permit is issued for that profession. For an agency working on volume, that is a candidate who cannot be placed in the role they were recruited for, after the cost of recruiting them has already been spent.

The obligation phased in by employer size between 2021 and 2022, starting with entities of 3,000+ workers and reaching entities of 1–5 workers on 2 January 2022. It has applied to everyone since.

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For engineers and health professionals, the check is on the qualification itself

Groups 1–3 do not sit an exam. Their qualification is verified against the issuing institution and assessed for compatibility with the profession — the right level, the right field.

This produces a different failure mode: not a failed test, but a degree that does not survive checking, or that checks out and then turns out to be the wrong field for the job title. A civil engineering degree offered against a role registered as a mechanical engineering position is a file that stalls, even though nothing about the degree is false.

For engineering specifically, there is a second layer that many employers discover late. Under the engineering professions decree (93483, in force 30 June 2026), professional accreditation from the Saudi Council of Engineers is mandatory, and engineers without it do not count towards the Saudization percentage at all. That applies to Saudi engineers too. Verbatim from the guide: "يشترط حصول المهندس على الاعتماد المهني من الهيئة السعودية للمهندسين، ولا يتم احتساب المهندسين غير المعتمدين ضمن نسب التوطين".

So an engineering hire can be simultaneously visa-eligible and useless to your Nitaqat position — the two systems test different things.

Where the employer's exposure actually sits

Neither programme protects you from the thing that costs the most: discovering a problem after you have committed.

The ministry checks the qualification. It does not tell you, at sourcing stage, whether this candidate's degree will survive that check, whether the employment history on the CV is real, or whether the person in the interview is the person named on the certificate. By the time the state's check returns an answer, you have made an offer.

The cheapest moment to find a bad file is before the offer. What that requires in practice:

  • Identity confirmed against the document, not against a photocopy of it.
  • Qualification confirmed with the awarding institution itself — primary source verification — rather than inferred from a certificate that looks right.
  • Employment history confirmed with the named employers, which is the part CVs are least reliable on and the part no state programme checks at all.

None of that replaces the ministry's process. It front-runs it, so that the file you submit is one you already know will hold.

Trust Agent runs those three checks on a candidate before you commit. The free tier covers three active candidates, which is enough to run it on your next hire and see the finished passport: start free.

What we could not verify, and are not going to state

In the interest of not adding to the noise: we could not confirm in a primary source the examination fees, the current list of examination centres by country, processing times for either programme, or the exact list of the 160 countries covered by verification. Figures circulate for all of these and they contradict each other. The examination guide still published by the ministry dates from 2021 and its list of centres is visibly out of date.

If you need those specifics for a plan, get them from the ministry or Qiwa directly rather than from a secondary source — this one included.

Sources

Related: the three gates that precede the visa, and whether the awarding university is on the Saudi recognised list.