Hi all, thanks for the help consistently rendered in this community. I’ve used several of your comments on applications of others to put mine together.
I’d really appreciate your feedback on my application.
Category: Exceptional Promise
Recommendation Letters
Letter 1 is from the C.E.O & Co-founder of my current place of work (AI startup). He is also a Chair Professor at a UK University.
Letter 2 is from the Former CTO/Founder of my previous company. The company is a fintech in Nigeria that has raised to total of 8 million USD and they process millions of USD in transactions annually. Recommender has over 12 years experience as an engineering leader
Letter 3 is from the Chief Digital Officer of a top 5 Nigerian Commercial bank with over 12.5 million customers and over 5 billion USD in assets under management. The Recommender has about 2 decades of experience with previous experience in top organizations like Sony, Oracle.
Personal Statement
Talks about my background, education, journey and my contributions to the UK in the past 1 and half years of living here and further contributions I will be making to the ecosystem.
Mandatory Criteria
MC 1 - I led the growth of a product-led digital technology company; an AI company. I joined as a founding engineer and led engineering directions as the company grew.
Evidence includes: system architecture designs I made, screenshots of figma designs I made, pictures of me representing the company in talks and conferences, Screenshots of the Jira board I set up for task management among myself and other engineers, news clippings from industry-related blogs about the company, news clippings of our last fund raise less than 4 months ago, and a reference letter from the VP of engineering who is my manager talking about my impact on the company’s success.
MC 2 - I led the growth of a social enterprise; I built a platform that has been used to train Nigerian youths in digital skills. The success of the project led to a bigger deal with google for the NGO worth about 600 thousand pounds.
Evidence includes: A screenshot of the platform showing my work, screenshot showing over 8000 youths trained in digital skills, link to google play store, news clipping of the bigger deal, screenshots of code written, and reference letter from the director talking about my impact and engineering leadership of the team during my time with them.
MC3 - Evidence of my contract that I command a high salary. Checking on payscale, I am above the 90th percentile of earners in my career with the same years of experience. Evidence is Payslip of salary for the last 3 months
Optional Criteria
OC 2 - Work outside of my immediate occupation that contributed to the advancement of the digital technology sector
I was invited to speak to over 150 youths in Nigeria about Digital Skills and improving employability. My focus was Software Engineering. (I still have screenshots of me speaking and engagements in the comment section but the link no longer works, it seems the organization lost the YouTube channel)
I was invited by a social enterprise to talk about how to improve one’s chances when applying for jobs in tech. (This is still on YouTube)
I was invited to be an Engineering mentor for a period of 6 months and I met with the mentees weekly for that period. The mentorship program is structured and has a curriculum. I also have a reference letter from them that speaks about the criteria they used in selecting mentors. I have a screenshot of the testimonial one of the mentees posted on linkedin last year.
I co-hosted a tech meetup in Birmingham for product designers and software engineers, with 54 guests in attendance. I have evidence from posts of different attendees on LinkedIn and pictures. The luma invite is also still accessible.
I was interviewed by an agency to speak about my journey, growth (interview is on YouTube). Video has over 100 views
Evidence includes: Pictures, Link to YouTube live stream, event flyers, commendations on LinkedIn from one of the mentees, Linkedin screenshot of invites to the events. Links to some of the recorded sessions
OC 3 - Key engineer of a product-led digital technology company.
Evidence includes: Screenshots of figma designs I made for products 1 and 2, reference letter from the engineering manager talking about the impact I made on product 1, Architectural designs, Flow and Sequence diagrams for both products 1 and 2
Note: I would also like to point out that I worked with company of Recommender 2 and Recommender 3 in parallel, as a full-time employee and both were remote. I hope technation will not frown on this?
Thanks guys @Francisca_Chiedu @Maya @pahuja @cosmic.wilderness @hsafra @bukola @westside @Akash_Joshi @alexnk