I’m Samuel Boadi Agyekum, a Ghanaian technologist currently in the UK, preparing my Tech Nation endorsement application under Global Talent (Exceptional Promise, Digital Technology). My journey has been a “build while carrying responsibility” story.
Before coming to the UK, I worked as an IT personnel during my national service at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana, where I gained first-hand experience of how technology decisions affect real people, real workflows, and real risk in critical environments. After relocating to the UK on a Skilled Worker visa, I took on a demanding frontline role in home care operations (support worker and driver, ensuring carers reach clients safely and on time). While doing this full time, I pursued and completed an MSc in Data Analytics and IT Security Management and built a public technical portfolio in parallel, often working on my projects during late nights and in-between shifts.
What I’m building now is evidence of practical, security-aware digital technology delivery: a reproducible multi-sport machine learning pipeline (with explainability and cross-dataset testing), and governance and IT security management work mapped to regulated environments. I’m intentionally showing not only “models” or “academic work”, but how I design systems to be verifiable, auditable, and safe to apply in real organisations.
Along the way, I received formal recognition for performance and excellence, including the Arden University Vice Chancellor’s Award and Arden Achiever Postgraduate STEM recognition.
My question is: based on your experience, what is the strongest way to position a profile like mine for assessors, so they clearly see future leadership and real-world impact, not just study? Specifically:
1. For Mandatory Criteria, what evidence types tend to land best for someone with a strong portfolio but limited “big-company” title experience?
2. Which Optional Criteria pairing would fit my profile most strongly?
3. What should my referees emphasise to make the recommendation letters persuasive and assessor-friendly?