Hello all, I am currently on a Tier 2 visa and been on for almost 2 years. I’m finally deciding to apply for the Global talent visa and heavily considering the Exceptional talent route.
I have about 7 years experience in my field (software engineering) and have been a technical lead for about 3 years of the time.
I currently work as a tech lead one of the top banks in the UK.
For my evidences I’m considering for mamdatory
Evidence of high salary in my current employment
Reference from previous head of IT in a company detailing my contribution to 3 products in the company with varying impacts. One helping the company save money, one helping the company expand its core lending product from a regular b2c to a b2b2c model and also another product to bring more revenue into the business by selling some of its internal tools to other businesses
For Optional
Details of a project I worked on with a former manager around AI content writing
Details of my current role and impact in expanding the the business to new regions (as an acquisition tool) and thereby increasing customer funds held to more than £500M, details of my lead role and the fact that I manage about 5 more engineers functionally (internal mentorship) and 5 other as their line manager.
Details of a startup of which I am a technical cofounder with substantial equity and have raised over $500k.
Recommendations
1 CTO of previous company (unicorn)
2. Head of Partnership at a global company (former manager at a previous company and current cofounder of OC3. above)
3. CEO of previous company from Mandatory section above (2)
I’m not sure what my chances are but would be amazing to get some feedback. Thanks in advance
Thanks for the reply. I’m considering using the AI platform for the innovation aspect and the current employment role for impact. The other startup that raised funds also has some form of innovation with an existing known industry.
I I can probably move the current employment evidence from the optional upwards as I have more evidence to demonstrate impact to the business.
Typically all of my impact have come through the work environment as I don’t have publications or speaking engagements.
Do you think Exceptional promise might be worth a shot instead?
I’m basically trying to bring out all my experiences and figure out what to structure and which to put in the different categories.
During my employment (as a Senior Engineer) at a previous company A. Worked on 3 different products with varying impact on the company, 2 were done solely. The impacts where on company savings, and business expansion.
Was a technical cofounder and solely built the backend for an AI content generation platform with a former manager from company A (recognised leader after having exited a successful business and went on to be head of partnerships at a global company).
Role with one of the top digital banks (Company B), technically leading an engineering team (managing 9 other engineers) for an important product within the company, joined when product was at about £300M in customer funds and lead the expansion to new regions and now just over £500M. This role comes with a higher than average salary as well as documentation of promotions and bonuses for strong performances.
Currently a technical co-founder for a startup still in stealth mode but with over $500k in funding.
I do not contribute to major open source project but have a couple of public side projects on my github profile from a few years ago, projects like a full invoicing application, a hotel management system, etc. (Might not be useful but github shows very good activity).
A lot of my experiences have been with employment, making me having a rethink whether perhaps to try exceptional promise instead .
I’ve worked in about 4 companies within the last 5 years with varying degrees of impact (can include references from some of them as well).
@yorex Based on other successful applicants’ feedback here, you also need to show evidences which are not just references. Depending on which optimal criteria you select for yourself the evidences you need to show will vary.
Some of the evidences that you can show are news clippings, speaking or participating in a panel at a conference, open source project participation, etc.
You have mentioned that you have some public side projects on your GitHub but make sure that if you are showing them as evidences then you show the positive effect those projects had in the tech sector by providing numbers (quant analysis such as likes, number of forks, your contribution through commits, etc.)
I have just applied with the above but some subtle changes
Mandatory
Current main employment as a senior engineer/ tech role managing 11 engineers with high salary, bonuses and stock options
Evidence showing my role as a CTO/Cofounder of a startup having raised over $1 million in funding, one of my recommenders is a former CEO from a company I worked who also mentioned in his recommendation that he is an angel investor of my startup, also screenshot of acceptance into a top Global accelerator (US Based with 3% acceptance rate)
High salary history for past 3 jobs
Core role in a previous company I worked with important projects worked on
OC1
Cofounded startup innovative with explanation and screenshot of everything from code to jira and AWS managed by me
Innovation from a previous company on a project which was pioneering in the country at the time, now launched and doing very well
Another startup/project I worked on that hasn’t gotten any traction but is also a pretty new field (AI-based stuff)
OC3
Impact at current role as a technical lead, expansion, customer acquisition, etc
Impact at previous company, cost savings, customer acquisition,
Supporting letter from head of a department at my current paid employment
@somdipdey applied for Exceptional talent, pretty hopeful as I’ve tried my best to present all my achievements, had to leave out some as they were in 2017
Cofounded startup innovative with explanation and screenshot of everything from code to jira and AWS managed by me
Innovation from a previous company on a project which was pioneering in the country at the time, now launched and doing very well
Impact at current role as a technical lead, expansion, customer acquisition, etc
Impact at previous company, cost savings, customer acquisition.
I have founded two startups, 1 agriTech and 2 FinTech
How did you demonstrate customer acquisition. Did you screen shot from numbers from dashboard.
2. Applications usually have several code files, what did you provide. Is it screen shot of files or what.
Was this a letter from someone in the company explaining this? What evidence did you provide to support that the project is doing ‘very well’?
Included code screenshots, JIRA tasks, explanation on why it was pioneering, number of businesses using the product currently, screenshots of the product website
Again, was this a GitHub repo or document where you give details on this project?
Screenshot of code snippets (on Github), a screenshot of commit history, JIRA tasks, a screenshot of AWS infrastructure and the application dashboard itself showing what it does.
What documents did you provide for showing expansion, customer acquisition etc? Were these mentioned in the letter?
Screenshots of dashboard statistics clearly showing the particular expansion country metrics, and also mentioned in the supporting letter
Hi @yorex. Could you please give more details regarding the explanation you gave to prove that startup you co-founded was innovative? And the same question regarding the innovative project at a previous company. Did you use some media mentions to prove the innovation or a letter from an industry leader confirming this fact?
Written explanation of the project. E.g Project was innovative because at x time in the past in the country, things were being done this way WWW, with these problems PPP, however project XXX applied this novel approach YYY and ZZZ which was the first of its kind in the country at the time and led to outcome OOO. Any other thing such as media clippings, metrics/stats will further help
Regarding OC1, did you need to provide a patent Id? I am asking in reference to this “If you are an employee working in a new digital field or concept, this must be clearly demonstrated, for example by providing a patent application (patent should include verifiable ID on Google Patents).”
Do you I need to provide a patent id to meet this criteria?
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