Could You Please Rate My Profile For Exceptional Talent

Stage 1
1

Here is what I plan to submit for exceptional talent route

Personal Statement
Summarising my tech background and specifically talking about the evideinces submitted. Answers to the TN questions for personal statement.

CV
Usual stuff showing outcomes and impact of my work.

Letters of Recommendation

  1. CEO/Founder of product-led company I worked at for 2 years. Talkin about my impact in the company and some of my other activities outside of work.
  2. CTO/Co-Founder of a product-led company based in Europe and very active in the UK. We both worked at the same tech consultancy company around 2011 and that’s how knew each other and have been in contact since. Talks about the time we worked at the same company and my achievements outside of work in recent years.
  3. CEO/Founder of a product-led startup based in the US. His startup engaged me as a freelancer to build the innovative product fintech. Talks about my technical abilities and how I designed and built their app and how I handled the challenges that are common when building innovative apps.

Mandatory Criteria - Leadership

  1. Panelist on a high-profile panel about issues on how to advance tech in northern Nigeria.
  • Evidence: 3-page document with event poster with my picture, picture of me on the panel, screenshots of tweets about the event, screenshot of snippet of invitation letter to be on the panel.
  1. Led the organisation of a developer conference with more than 500 attendees.
  • Evidence: 2-page Reference letter from an individual who was in-charge of the umbrella developer group at Google for sub-saharan Africa but currently works as a senior developer advocate at a US-based company. Added pictures of event on last page making it 3 pages. 1 piece of evidence, 3 pages long.
  1. Reviewer of the pioneer National Occupational Standards (NOS) for the tech sector in Nigeria in preparation for policy making. Made numerous recommendations for the web development area I handled.
  • Evidence: 3-page Document with pictures of the materials I was given to work with including my recommendation notes, screenshot of invitation email.
  1. Speaker at high-profile digital technology sector event
  • Evidence: reference letter from conference organisers stating why I was selected to speak and conference attendee numbers.

Optional Criteria 2 - Activities outside of work

  1. Speaker at high profile software architecture conference.
  • Evidence: Links to video of my talk, screenshot of the video showing me speaking, picture of my speaker tag, picture of thank you card for speaking, screenshot of reference letter in MC above.
  1. Mentor for a structured program organised by the EU to identify and mentor 50 developers for 1 year internships in tech companies in a specific European country.
  • Evidence: 2-page reference letter from individual that was the program manager at organising company then but currently in-charge of a tech hub. Added pictures of hackathon event (used for selection of developers), picture of my mentor tag, screenshot of mentoring schedule with my name, and screenshot of invitation email to closing ceremony which took place a year later after mentees completed their internships. 1 piece of evidence, 3 pages long.
  1. Mentor in a structured accelerator program for startup founders and their senior team members organised by an Asian country and a local tech accelerator.
  • Evidence: 1-page reference letter from organisers. Added 2 pages with screenshot of email invitation, screenshot of all mentors (including my picture), and screenshot of email explaining what my role as a mentor. 1 piece of evidence, 3 pages long.

Optional Criteria 3 - Technical contribution and impact

    • Evidence: Reference letter from CTO of product-led startup I worked at (CEO of same company provided letter of recommendation) stating my contribution and impact. Worked on features used by more than 80k users of one of the products. The other has 190k users.
    • Evidence: Screenshot of my commits from company product repos (from 1 above).
  3. Impact of my technical contribution on being capital efficient in bootstrapping a product-led startup I founded 6 months ago.
  • Evidence: Data model (ERD), Screenshots of my commits, API documentation of API I built, snippet of shareholder document showing my shares.

What do you think about this and how would you rate my overall profile on a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being “highly-suitable” and 1 being “save your money”.

UPDATE: Removed evidence of answers on Quora. Removed agency related work.

2

@Francisca_Chiedu @Savvkin @MNeverOff @Shreeniwas_Iyer @mfilippov Would like to get your take on my profile when you have the time.

3

I think you have a strong profile. However, don’t complicate things with your agency related work, focus more on your impact in product-led companies. As for your recommendation letters I think you have to speak to people who know about your impact within the last five years. Also best to use people who know you outside your immediate managers or employers.

Your evidences appear “busy” you need to watch not to confuse the assessor with too much information, ensure you have explanatory notes on your evidence.

As for the optional criteria 2, are you going to show three conferences in one evidence?
For the impact, why are you not using proof of high income?

4

Thanks for your feedback @Francisca_Chiedu

Thanks.

This is noted.

Yes these know my impact in the last 5 years and have highlighted this in their letters. Also, they are all outside my immediate managers/employers. What I mean is I no longer work at the company mentioned for LOR 1 (I left in 2017). LOR 2 we worked together in the past but now runs his product-led startup and knows about my recent achievements. LOR 3 engaged me in a freelancer role for an app development project than ran for 5 years. I get your point on this though.

:thinking: I’ll look into this.

Yes, I have explanatory notes that give context to the evidences plus captions for all images/screenshots added.

Yes I am. Do you think it’s a bad idea? Adds to the “busyness”?

Mainly due to currency conversion. Naira amounts are high here in Nigeria but appear not so high when converted to GBP and weighed against average UK salaries, so I avoided using this. Also I am currently bootstrapping my startup.

Thanks for your insights once more. It really helps.

5

I think you should spread three conferences into separate evidence for mandatory and OC2

6

I think this makes sense. There are 2 options I see here:

  1. I can put the reference letter from the conference organisers in mandatory criteria and put screenshots and a link to the video of one of the talks for OC2 (with explanations of course).
    OR
  2. Use the reference letter from the conference organisers for both mandatory criteria and OC2.

Which do you think presents better @Francisca_Chiedu? Sorry for demanding a lot of your attention on this.