Case and evidences for Exceptional Talent (help with review please)

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Hi!

I am going to submit my documents for exceptional talent by the next week. So I am here to request some review from the community. Any feedback appreciated :slight_smile:. I left some questions inside the text, so it would be great if you can help me not only with a review but with a concrete questions. Also I hope my case would help other applicants to have some reference.

So, my background is Head of software engineering in a big IT product-led company. I manage big department of software engineers who are distributed in different product-teams.

My LoRs

  1. My CTO, who would write about my achievements and activity at the work (as a Head of, as well as a lead developer earlier) and mention my side activities (like mentoring)
  2. Founder of sport programming school, who is ACM ICPC bronze medalist and who has taught 3 ACM ICPC medalist-teams. He is Ph.D in computer science and has a lot of public mentioning as an expert in sport programming. He knows about me for about ten years, and we have met in university.
  3. CTO in German startup with a product-focus (and some consultancy also, but he would not place some focus on that). We met on the long-term IT-management education programme. The downside here is that he does not have strong public profile but he is C-level, from another country and he definitely has a different point of view on me.

:question: Question 1: Is the downside of the referrer #3 really a downside? Or no problems?

If you’re interested I had another topic here about LoR author selection

Now the evidences go.
MC

  1. Document containing confirmations of my thought leadership
  • First page: Reference letter from the university where I participated as an expert on student project assessment panel twice and Screenshot of assessment panel invitations
  • Second page: screenshot and link to an article on Habr.com with my commentaries (it was a QnA-article of several experts in industry);
  1. Short-list of my talks, here I will use only part of them
  • First page: Link to my participation in round table in the huge russian IT-conference dotnext, as well as screenshot and analytics data
  • Second page: Link to a podcast where I participated as an expert, screenshots of this podcast announcement and analytics data

:question: Question 2: I have a list of talks that I can use for OC2 and for MC. How to I distribute talks between them? Can I use all of them here and there?

  1. Salary information: comparance with local market, list or promotions (because I have had pretty fast-paced career)

:question: Question 3: Do I need some evidence about being a leader in a product-led company, besides the LoRs?

OC 2 Impact out of the work

  1. Document containing info about my mentorship
  • Email with acceptance into a structured mentorship platform (solvery.io and getmentor.dev)
  • Screenshot and link to my profile (with more than 15 sessions stated)
  • Screenshot with text review from telegram talk from one or two of the mentees
  • Screenshot of mentorship session, maybe link for a record
  • Screenshot of platform mentioning in media
  1. Document with evidences of my impact on it-education
  • Reference letter from university course Director. It is written about my impact (taught one yearly programming course for advanced-group of 17 students; taught to modules in top-level interregional it-programme (30 students), why I was invited, how UK will benefit from me, etc
  • Photos of me teaching my students
  • Screenshots from internal teachers’ system with my name. Screenshots of code review that I made
  • Screenshot from telegram student group chat
  1. Document about my conferences and talks
  • Screenshots of announcement of my talk on the industry conference
  • Link to YouTube video of the round table
  • Link to podcast (that I mentioned in MC), announcement screenshots
  • Screenshot of the dotnext round table announcement (also mentioned in MC)
  • Screenshot of the announcement of my talk about internship for Google student developers community in my city. Also a photo of me talking there

OC 3 Contribution

  1. Reference letter from deputy CEO of my company, stating the financial growth of a company and linking my achievements with it. Also here comes the comfirmation of all diagrams that I use further

  2. The diagram of company structure (different departments, products, teams) and description of my impact on every part (where I hired developers, where I assessed them, performed process review etc)

  3. Document about my previous impact as a lead developer in one of our products

  • Reference letter from Project manager stating my impact and linking my results with project results (I developed an important module that helped the product to gain hundreds of b2b-customers)
  • Architecture diagram with info about my contributions
  • Screenshot of my GitHub contributions
  1. Document with my salary info, but focusing on bonus/equity part to state that I’m exceptionsl in this case within the company. Also here I add my performance review results (“exceeds expectations” for several years, and linking it with equity)

And, of course, personal statement (where I speak about my growth occurred, why I choose UK, how I want to share my expertise with the UK) and updated CV (where some of my achievements stated)

@Francisca_Chiedu @Maya @alex_james @Bubun @alexnk @goonjanmall @May @femibiwoye @oluwabig @tundeph and others, hope to get your feedback :pray:

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I think you should work more on MC

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Thanks for the feedback @Afolabi!

Do you have any suggestions?
I mean, now I have several proofs of recognising of my expertise (my commentaries as an expert, it would be 2 appearances) and also evidences of my several conference talks there. What do you think it is better for me to add there?

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You should distribute the talks so that you don’t repeat the same evidence in both the MC and OC as it’s advisable to have unique pieces of evidence per criteria.

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5

I think you have a good chance to get endorsed but you need to reorganize you evidence presentation.

For MC:1. Document containing confirmations of my thought leadership

I think reference letter where you assessed projects and the invitation letter is a single evidence. You need to add additional explanatory note that shows you are trying to demonstrate that you have in an expert panel, reference the example that is the tech nation guide.

Was the article on Habr.com written by you? If not I don’t think commentary is sufficient. Since it is not related to the university assessment panel, don’t add it to page 2. You are not encouraged to merge unrelated evidence.

  1. Short-list of my talks, here I will use only part of them. I think each talk is a unique evidence. You dint need to merge the talk and podcast in one evidence, both are unrelated. Instead, I would use the Russian conference showing invitation) poster, picture of you speaking on the main stage and pictures of the audience showing over 100 audience, programme of event showing your name and thank you letter if available. These should fill three pages. A list doesn’t say much. You can use the other speaking event and the podcast in OC2 as two separate evidence.

As for your evidence regarding your talks, you can split them between MC and OC2 just ensure they are unique also avoid evidence that are recent. Evidence that are close to the timing of your application are not acceptable.

For MC, you could have: 4 evidence:

  1. major conference
  2. university assessment pane
  3. Evidence of high salary
  4. And additional sector leading event.

For OC2:
I think the evidence of structure mentorship is solid.
The evidence for teaching may not be too string, were you paid for this or your contribution was mostly voluntary?

For OC2, you may want to consider the following evidence:

  1. Evidence of structured mentorship
  2. A sector leading conference with pictures of you speaking with over 100 people in attendance. Name on the programme of events, YouTube link, and other related evidence.
  3. You could add the podcast if the analytic shows significant or high viewership if not don’t use it.

OC3:
You may want to consider the following:

  1. Reference letter from the DCEO detailing your impact let your referee know it requires metrics of what you contributed and how your impact contributed to their growth, stating the figures and percentage of growth helps.

  2. Architecture diagram and GitHub contributions that shows your name you can add the letter if you have space for that otherwise evidence from your repos and architecture diagram should be sufficient.

  3. If your salary and equity option is different from the one in MC then you can use it. If not avoid repeating evidence.

In all, use unique evidence for each criteria, avoid adding unrelated evidence, avoid self-authored evidence, ensure you label your evidence correctly and add brief explanatory note where necessary.

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Thank you very much for the feedback!

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Huge thanks for such a detailed response @Francisca_Chiedu. Your advice really helped me to understand the better structure. Could you answer for some clarification questions please?

  1. Was the article on Habr.com
    written by you?

No, but I consider this as my media mention (because it’s the article from Habr.com directly, not from one of the users). Can this be considered as a media mention by the assessment panel? And therefore be used as an evidence for media recognition

  1. About my teaching evidence. I did not have any paid contract with the university, so it was done voluntary. Do you recommend me to use it as a separate evidence (separate from mentorship), or to not use it at all? I consider this evidence as a confirmation of my expertise and exceptionalism, it’s also written about my teaching abilities in some of the LoRs (as an example of industry results and as a possible outcome for UK economy)

  2. Podcast had significant viewership (the audience of this podcast is more than 1.500). Maybe it’s better for me to use it for MC?

  3. Regarding OC3. You mentioned that I need to avoid self-authored evidence, however this architecture and product structure diagram will be apparently created by me. What do I need to do to make it more solid in those terms? For example, would it be enough to have a confirmation of this diagram in letter from DCEO?

  4. Also about OC3 and salary evidence. Unlike the MC, here I want to give equity information, so the goal here is to show that I am very valuable within the company for my impact. In MC it would be just a salary and comparison with the market. Is this difference ok to consider them as a different evidences?

  5. I recently had an idea to use my talk on internal company conference, where I speak about our developers’ hiring strategy. I spoke at the main section where only company leaders spoke. Should I include it in OC3 evidences?

thanks again for your feedback, and looking forward to your reply

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If you just commented on the article from Habr.com then it’s not a media mention.

As for the teaching evidence, you could use it but get a letter from the university stating you did this on a voluntary basis and how it has furthered the sector through your teaching. You also need to confirm that it was for a period of time not just a one-teaching engagement.

“I consider this evidence as a confirmation of my expertise and exceptionalism, it’s also written about my teaching abilities in some of the LoRs” Note that OC2 is not to prove your expertise, rather you are demonstrating that you have advanced the digital technology a

Podcast had significant viewership (the audience of this podcast is more than 1.500). Maybe it’s better for me to use it for MC? You can use what you prefer, I have suggested what I think may be a strong evidence. Is this just a one off podcast or series? Is this a notable platform?

Regarding OC3. You mentioned that I need to avoid self-authored evidence, however this architecture and product structure diagram will be apparently created by me. What do I need to do to make it more solid in those terms? For example, would it be enough to have a confirmation of this diagram in letter from DCEO?

Response: I think the DCEO letter should stand alone but make reference to your contribution. The architecture is not necessarily self authored, the GitHub repos will show your name on the commits so point them to it.

Also about OC3 and salary evidence. Unlike the MC, here I want to give equity information, so the goal here is to show that I am very valuable within the company for my impact. In MC it would be just a salary and comparison with the market. Is this difference ok to consider them as a different evidences?

I personally add both salary and equity option as a single evidence.

I recently had an idea to use my talk on internal company conference, where I speak about our developers’ hiring strategy. I spoke at the main section where only company leaders spoke. Should I include it in OC3 evidences?

Internal company talk is not sufficient evidence. How does it show impact.

In my opinion I think you have prefer evidence, some of those evidence are not addressing the criteria they are listed in.
Not that MC is to evidence that you have been recognised as a leader.

OC2 is to demonstrate your have contributed to the growth of the sector? How did you do this?

OC3, is to evidence your impact in your organisation.

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Thanks a lot for your help @Francisca_Chiedu

If you just commented on the article from Habr.com (http://habr.com/) then it’s not a media mention.

Not at all. It was an article about management in IT, that was written by the Habr.com platform and they asked me to share my knowledge and give an expert commentary that they quote within that article. And I have two different articles with my quotes. So these quotes are part of the articles, and they used my quotes because they wanted to have a commentary for lleader in sector. Is this considered as media mention?

As for the teaching evidence, you could use it…

Yes, I will have the letter from university with the impact described (impact of programs I taught, student quantity, my talent as a tutor). I will ask them to mention that it is not part of the paid contract, thank you

Is this just a one off podcast or series? Is this a notable platform?

Podcast with me was just one episode of a series (which has other experts invited in other episodes). However the platform is notable - it is produced by hugest programming academy in country.

The architecture is not necessarily self authored, the GitHub repos will show your name on the commits so point them to it.

Since my position is managerial I have less code/commit artifacts, but several process diagrams/artifacts (the ones I have led). I will attach them as well, as soon these are the results of my work.
Also I would have a product scheme which states my impact in development processes on the whole products (e.g. hiring decisions, architecture impact, etc). This document is self-authored. Is it enough to attach this document as is?

I personally add both salary and equity option as a single evidence.

To MC? If yes, would it be enough to have just 2 of the evidences in OC3 (letter from dceo and my artifacts)?
Or I can put here an extra evidence from the last product I worked as a developer (there I have code commits, letter of reference and architecture diagram). Would it strengthen the position on OC3?

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If you are quoted within an article then it’s a media mention. Show screenshots of the article quoting your views and add explanatory note that they sought your expert view.