Your membership application

Registering an account is not the same as becoming a member. The account is how you sign in; membership is something NIWE grants after reviewing an application. The path runs:

register → verify your email → complete your application → submit for review → approval → payment → membership number → certificate

Some organizations take payment before review and some after. Your own organization’s order is reflected in the onboarding steps you see, so follow the wizard rather than assuming.

None of the above applies if NIWE invited you by email. That happens when NIWEalready has you on its records — because you have been a member for years, say, and it has just moved onto this system.

Your invitation link asks you to set a password, and that is all there is to it. You are already a member: there is no application to fill in and no review to wait for. Setting your password takes you to your dashboard, where your membership number and certificate are waiting.

NIWEmay still ask you to fill in parts of your profile afterwards — a phone number, your place of work, a professional registration number. Those are things its records did not carry, and your dashboard will prompt you for them. Nothing about your membership waits on them.

An invitation link lasts seven days. If yours has expired, ask NIWE to send another.

A new account is sent to a wizard. You can leave at any point and come back; nothing is lost, and the wizard returns you to where you stopped.

There are up to six steps, and two of them are optional for the organization rather than for you. NIWEdecides whether to ask for phone verification at the start and whether to collect payment at the end, so the numbering you see may not match the list below. Follow the wizard’s own progress bar.

1. 1

   Step 1: Verify your phone number

   A code sent by SMS or WhatsApp, depending on which NIWE uses. This step appears only if NIWE has one of those channels configured. You may skip it and verify later from /settings/notifications (opens in a new tab), but an unverified number cannot receive SMS or WhatsApp notifications.
2. 2

   Step 2: Complete your profile

   Personal details, contact information, the membership category you are applying for, and any identifier fields NIWE requires.
3. 3

   Step 3: Add your education history

   Institutions, qualifications and dates. Most organizations expect at least one entry.
4. 4

   Step 4: Add your work experience

   Employers, roles and dates, in the same shape as education.
5. 5

   Step 5: References and submission

   Referees and next of kin, then the whole application on one page so you can check it before it goes to a reviewer.
6. 6

   Step 6: Complete payment

   Pay the fee for the membership category you chose. This step is omitted by organizations that collect nothing until after approval.

Have these to hand so you are not hunting mid-form:

• Dates for your qualifications and your main roles.
• Names, positions and contact details for your referees. Referees are people who can vouch for you; NIWE sets how many.
• Next of kin name and contact details.
• Any registration or licence number NIWE asks for. These are configured per organization, so what you are asked for may differ from another body you belong to.
• A profile photo, if NIWE uses one on certificates.

Submission happens from Settings → References, at the end of the review step. Until you submit, your application sits in draft and no one is looking at it — a common reason for a long silence is an application that was filled in but never submitted.

An administrator at NIWE reviews the application. They can approve it, reject it, or return it to you with notes asking for something to be fixed. You are notified whichever way it goes, through whichever channels you have enabled.

On approval you are assigned a membership number. This matters more than it sounds: your membership certificate cannot be issued until the number exists, so a freshly approved member may briefly see an approved status and no certificate.

• Draft — yours to edit. Not visible to reviewers and not in any queue.
• Submitted — with NIWE, awaiting review.
• Under review — a reviewer has picked it up.
• Approved — you are a member. Payment and membership number follow, in the order NIWE uses.
• Rejected — declined. The reviewer’s notes explain why, and say whether you may reapply.
• Inactive — taken out of play by NIWE, most often because you applied twice. You are emailed the reason. It can be reactivated, so contact NIWE if you think it was a mistake.

Your current status is on My Profile (opens in a new tab), with whatever the next action is alongside it.