Document Review for Exceptional Talent

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Hi everyone, hope you all are enjoying the weekend. I am planning to apply for the Exceptional Talent track and it would be great if you can help me review my set of documents and evidences:

Sector: AI & Machine Learning

Key Profile Highlights:

  • Head of Data Science at a British multinational (FTSE 100) – Company A (2021-Present)
  • Co-Founder & CTO of a bootstrapped B2B SaaS startup for over 3 years. The startup was headquartered in Singapore and served clients including Fortune-100 and publicly-listed companies across most of SouthEast Asia – Company B (2018-2021)
  • Data Science Lead in a well-funded climate tech startup in San Francisco – Company C (2017-2018)
  • PhD in Computer Science (Machine Learning) from a world-renowned university, consistently ranked among the Top 5 in Europe and the Top 20 worldwide

(I am in the UK for the past 2.5 years on a skilled worker visa)

LORs:

  • Chief Data Scientist of a British multinational (FTSE 100), ex-Director at Meta – Line Manager in Company A
  • Chief Data Scientist at a well-funded health tech startup, with past experiences in AstraZeneca, Cancer Research UK, Asda and many others
  • PhD Advisor and Professor with an exemplary research track record (h-index > 75). Quite well known and respected researcher with several international awards and recognition

MC

  1. Technical Leadership and Financial Impact in Company A: Introduce the key work that I’ve led around engineering, design and delivery of an end-to-end machine learning product that has generated millions in annual savings (evidenced by screenshots of financial summary). Describe the technical architecture, ML methodology, and present clear evidence of code contributions as evidenced by Github
  2. Salary: Salary, Cash/Share Bonus, and Promotion pack with relevant industry benchmarks
  3. Letter of Support: It is from a leading industry expert from Company A (Senior Leadership in Data); She has been consistently featured in Top 20 Woman in Data and Tech, Data IQ awards, etc. In her support letter, she has clearly highlighted the technical and financial impact I’ve driven (it validates and provide evidence to the claims that I’ve made in the above document)
  4. Technical Leadership in Company B: Introduce the startup and describe my role as CTO in driving the engineering roadmap (as evidenced by technical stack and architecture) and as Co-Founder in driving the product roadmap (as evidenced by product screenshots and customer testimonials)

OC3

  1. Technical Leadership and Financial Impact in Company A: Introduce another piece of work that I’ve led around re-engineering and optimisation of a data science based product to increase its impact, usage and business value. Currently it generates millions in incremental revenue for Company A (as evidenced by a short support letter from the stakeholder – 1 pager). Also provide the technical stack
  2. Financial Impact in Company B: Provide financial profile and revenues of the startup. In addition, our startup was one of the approved vendors of Singapore government’s key grant for SMEs; the approval process is quite rigorous for a business entity operating in Singapore and it can be treated as an unofficial endorsement, recommendation and recognition by the participating government agencies
  3. Expert Role as Reviewer for International Conferences and Journals: Invited consistently to provide expert commentary and review scientific and technical works from top rated international conferences and journals, as evidenced by email invitations and web links.

OC4

  1. Research Portfolio and Impact: List of all the relevant research projects and its impact both at a national and international level. I have been invited to present my work at top research labs (including Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Siemens Research, Telefonica Research, Nestle Research), but unfortunately I am unable to find any evidence to support the talk invitations for all of them.
  2. Peer-reviewed Research Publications and Journals: Over 20 research publications in top international conferences and journals across multiple disciplines, as evidenced by my Google Scholar profile showing the citations count and h/10 index. I also plan to highlight the impact factor and h5-index of all the conferences to quantify them as top-tier venues for publishing research.
  3. International Research Awards and Media Coverage: It contains a list of all the international research awards. In addition, I am providing all the evidences for the media coverage in both national and international venues (including the Economist)

Open Questions:

  • Too many letters of recommendation and support from Company A?
  • Should I swap a LOR with the letter of support in MC?
  • All my “research” evidence is older than 5 years old, I am assuming it will not cause any red flags?
  • I am unable to find any evidence to support the research talk invitations in OC4 Evidence 1. How should I strengthen my argument without any visible evidence? I believe the other evidence I am presenting to demonstrate impact is good enough, so should I remove the mention of talk invitations?

@Francisca_Chiedu @May @alexnk @hsafra and everyone else I will appreciate your feedback and review :slight_smile:

1 Like
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@elias I would love to hear your thoughts on my application (Your post was quite insightful when I was drafting my application)

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Hi @Francisca_Chiedu @May @alexnk @Maya @hsafra I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on my documents :pray:

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I think it’s fine

You state that the letter from MC backs up your other evidence. I think you should keep it there.

That’s a big problem. Any evidence older that 5 years wouldn’t be accepted by TN

You can ask the persons that invited you there to write a short email describing the sessions and their impact

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Thanks @hsafra for your feedback, I really appreciate you taking the time to review my documents

I finished my PhD in 2016, so most of my publications and press coverage of my research dates back from that period. After that, I left academia and transitioned to the corporate world. I can easily justify that the impact of my research has substantially increased in the last 5 years e.g., one of the research thread that we started in 2016 was used during the Covid-19 period and received wide-spread media coverage

Research is an integral part of my profile, so I am wondering how can I spin my research background and experience to my advantage?

Also, what do you think of the overall potential of my application pack for the exceptional talent track? What am I missing?

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You can’t really spin it. Evidence needs to be from the last 5 years so a high profile paper published in 2016 doesn’t cut it.

If this rules out your OC4 you’ll need to compile evidence for a different optional criteria.

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I noticed you repeated evidence in MC andOC3. All evidence must be unique.

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Thanks @Francisca_Chiedu, even though the titles are the same for MC Evidence 1 and OC3 Evidence 1, they describe and list the impact for 2 quite different data products. I hope that should be fine?

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@hsafra Thanks for your feedback. I do have 4 peer reviewed papers in top journals in the last 5 years but their citations count are in the order of 30-40 (as papers are recent they are still picking up citations) I imagine they would be considered credible evidence under OC4?

Also, given this, what do you think of the overall potential of my application pack for the exceptional talent track? What am I missing?

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@Francisca_Chiedu what are your thoughts?

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@alexnk @LizzyOrji I would to hear your thoughts on the suitability of the evidences for the exceptional talent category?

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After you pivoted away from research, over the recent years have any of your publication been used by others?If yes, how is it so?
Did you have current media mentions on your research work?

These are examples of how you can re-use your publication despite being dated.

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The guide mentions the publication itself, not citation count:

Evidence of at least one significant contribution to the field in the form of a paper published in a top-tier peer-reviewed journal.

These should be fine.

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Thanks @LizzyOrji for your feedback! Yes, I’ve publications in the recent 4-5 years and they are being cited by others. Unfortunately, I don’t have any current media mention of my research, all the media mentions are older than 5 years old

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@pahuja I would to hear your thoughts on the suitability of the evidences for the exceptional talent category?

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Hi @blackhawk

There’s a ton of great feedback above from others.

Your LORs and MC look good: assuming the LORs will strongly cover your significant contributions and impact.

OC3 #3: please stress upon specifically your contribution to the commercial success of the startup. Your role in the financials should be very clear.

OC4: This might be a weak spot since you don’t have third party evidence for #1 and your research publications are more than 5 years.

I would consider #1 as irrelevant if there’s no demonstrated proof. #1 and #2 are more than 5 years old. This will put your entire OC4 in danger. Even if you can do 2 strong evidences here in last 5 years along with third party validation, it could be ok.

Can you not consider OC1 of product innovation?

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@pahuja thanks for your feedback!

  • Your point on OC3 #3 is duly noted, and I will emphasise and provide evidence to support my role in driving the financials
  • Given my profile, I am finding it hard to provide credible evidence for “innovation”; I don’t have patents in the last 5 years. So that’s why I have consciously decided to not go for OC1 as an optional criteria
  • On OC4: Do you think OC4 would be strengthened if I can provide an additional reference letter as evidence validating my research work and its impact?
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To avoid confusion, use different titles.

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Can your PhD supervisor give you a letter for OC4?

Optional Criteria could be any of this evidence

  1. Letter of support from research supervisor
    Optional Criteria 4 Evidence
    2 Presentation at peer-reviewed conference.
    3 Proof of your peer review contributions to other works in the form of thank you email and certificates.

4 Merit based-awards scholarship award and excellent academic achievement

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@Francisca_Chiedu apologies for the late reply!

My PhD supervisor is providing one of the LoR. I’ve presentations, peer-reviewed papers/journals and merit-based awards, but all of them are more than 5 years old.

To strengthen my OC4, I’m now including a letter of support from a distinguished professor in the UK