Evidence Review Request for Talent or Promise

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Hi everyone, please I’d really appreciate any help reviewing my evidences and helping me answering a few questions I have below:

Here are my evidences:

LOR1: CTO & co-founder of my current product led company
LOR2: CTO & co-founder of my immediate product led company
LOR3: Engineering manager at a major product led company in UK

MC 1: Evidence of high salary from two jobs with one full time and the other contract when compared to local benchmark

MC 2: Evidence of leading the growth of a product led company as a founding senior frontend engineer building all the company public facing web applications and helping the company scale to APAC countries
2. A Reference letter from the CEO/Co-founder to back up my contribution
3. Screenshot of annual report showing company’s growth over time

MC3: Evidence of leading growth of a product lead company as a software engineer.
2. Managing a team of two devs and 2 interns.
3. Screenshot of transactions within the period.
4. LOR2 to also attests to my contribution here

OC 3: Contribution to an open source project that currently has 14.6k starts and my contribution was also acknowledged and commended by the Head of engineering at Laravel

OC 3: Creating of open source project with 124 star, 82 forks, 3 contributor with one of the fork building on my work on another repo with credit to my work and the project having 50 forks 127 stars

OC3: Creation of npm package with total downloads of 150K+ in the last three years

OC3: a. Key engineer in a product lead company - built and manage there customer dashboard as contract staff on salary
b. Reference letter from the Chief Innovation Officer

OC 2: Built online platform for student aspiring for higher institution to prepare for the entrance exam online for free. It contains 47K+ past questions, up to 20k users and 600K+ google impression in 6 months on Googie analytics.

OC 2: Built an online e-library for my department hosting 750 course materials. The website section of the department linkedIn have the link of the website posted there.

OC4: Evidence of Academic excellence with award for best graduating student, scholarship for masters and Research published on Springer (All In non computer related course but engineering)

Note:

I have 7 years exprience working in tech company even though i have started coding more than tens years ago

The two evidences in OC2 were started more than 7 years ago, but I still maintain them till date.

Questions:

What are my chances - Talent or Promise?

If talent because of the 7 years of experience, are my evidences strong enough for Talent?

What is the implication if i try Promise?

Lastly is it possible to get Promise if my evidence is not strong enough after applying under Talent?

1 Like
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Commenting here because I see some similarities with my situation and would really appreciate any responses to yours.

I apologize for tagging you out of the blue, @Akash_Joshi. It would really help to get your insight and perspective on this. Thank you!

And thank you for sharing your question here, @successtar. I hope you receive a response that brings clarity, and I wish you the best with your application!

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Thank you for the kind words.

I really appreciate it.

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Your evidence shows good variety, but there are a few key areas where you can strengthen your application. With 7 years of experience, you’re in a tricky spot where the committee might push you toward Talent instead of Promise if your evidence isn’t clearly positioned for the Promise pathway.

Your open source work is strong, especially the 14.6k star contribution with acknowledgment from Laravel’s Head of Engineering. This is solid OC3 material. However, your salary evidence for MC1 needs more context than just showing high pay - the committee now expects you to explain your specific innovations and contributions that justified this salary, backed by reference letters. For MC2 and MC3, make sure your reference letters clearly detail your individual contributions to the company’s growth, not just general team achievements or internal dashboards.

For OC2, your student platform with 20k users and 600k impressions has potential, but it was started 7 years ago. The committee looks for sustained contribution over recent years, not just maintenance. Consider whether you have evidence of continuous active development or community impact within the last 2-3 years. Your OC3 evidence from multiple product companies is good, but ensure each company clearly fits the “product-led digital technology company” definition - not consulting or service companies. Get reference letters that focus on measurable impact you personally delivered.

You have a solid foundation here. Focus on getting strong reference letters that highlight why you show exceptional talent, detail your specific technical innovations, explain your planned UK contributions, and tie everything back to recent achievements. Your open source contributions and founding engineer experience at scaling companies are genuine strengths - just make sure the evidence clearly demonstrates your individual impact with objective proof.

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Thank you for the detailed explanation, @Akash_Joshi

I really appreciate it.

I will continue working on strengthening my evidence for the Talent route, as it seems the 7 years of experience might work against me if I try the Promise route.

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@successtar You have listed OC3, OC2 and OC4. You are required to choose only two from OC1,OC2,OC3 and OC4.

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@Raphael Thank you for helping me to point that out.

I really appreciate.

I may have to drop the OC4 evidence even though I am thinking it might be a strong evidence.

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Choosing a criterion should be strategic and not because of the numbers and one of the yardstick is the strength and how it rightly meet the criterion requirements, aligns with your narrative and experience over the required period.

All the best.

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Thank you for the insight.

Only that at times it might be a bit tricky to ascertain which of the evidences to put forward.

I will work on all the feedback.

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I do understand! You can have a look at the examples on the guide, study successful and unsuccessful applications of people in your skill area and you can seek for guidance here.

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Thank you so much.

I will work on that.

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