Exceptional Talent - Can someone review the docs I'm planning to use?

Stage 1
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Hi there,

I’m on a skilled worker visa since May 2021 and working as a Senior Product Manager at a major tech company in the UK. Below are the letters and evidences I’m planning to use for my application. Please share what you think of these and any changes you’d recommend.

LOR1: Senior/principal tech PM from the company (not my direct line of leadership) on:

  1. how I found a solution that didn’t exist for a problem since inception of the business and secured the tech framework for a major feature enabling 24h delivery for customers in EU & UK, from tech & other stakeholders across the globe 2. success metrics, 3. expansion plans for 2025 (partner team buy-in, finance approval).

LOR2: Head/principal economist & decision scientist on: my work w/ economists and ML scientists to perform consumer research & apply the insights to experiment, validate and roll out a new/challenging solution for UK customers.

LOR 3: VP and board member of various SaaS startups/scaleups (skip level manager at that time) on: how I changed status quo of the way content, product and organic marketing and UX teams worked together in the company and helped secure the next round of funding for the company with my marketing output. I eventually landed in a top European B school after this experience and then in the big tech company in the UK.

MC:
Leading growth of a product as an employee:
Evidence 1: reference letter from principal AI tech PMT (different from LOR1) to show what I did as product manager in transforming an ML product into a user friendly dashboard to derive insights and make business decisions. Model is to predict customer expectations on a certain feature.
Evidence 2: snapshots of the model’s output & dashboard, proofs from website on the feature, business impact/results
Evidence 3: employment letter w/ total comp

OC1:
Led viral marketing for a scale-up (now a unicorn) - new area - used a channel that had x million visitors that bounced at >90% from the website. I designed a product-led user journey and allowed users to self-segment and choose the product → increase new customers.
Evidence 1: reference letter from VP of growth marketing at various startups who oversaw my work
Evidence 2: secured successive internship w/ company
Evidence 3: snapshots of the experiment

OC3:
influencing investment, strategy & growth for organic marketing: implemented a new strategy/framework which is now widely popular, and published a website overhaul saving $xxxK in paid marketing for a scale up SaaS business.
Evidence 1: website snapshots, framework used,
Evidence 2: employment letter w/ pay rise post-launch
Evidence 3: presentation by marketing director highlighting how my area saved $xxxK

If you think OC2 evidence is kinda repeating LOR3, I can use an LOR from a mentor who is an investor, consultant and CEO across AI based businesses. He has done the MBA with me and has seen me as a tech voice in the class and as a VP of tech & media club for the program, and knows me for the past 5 years. He can also attest that I have given advice for his AI startup to launch/scale in EU and I can potentially expand his startup as a CTO in the UK.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Highly appreciate your advice.

Edit: mistyped the 2nd OC.

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Hi @gk_shan

MC looks ok but can you add one more evidence from an external evidence? Since support letter and employment/salary info aren’t considered strong enough, you are pretty much left with 1 strong evidence here. MC is a tough one to clear and an additional strong one evidence will be good.

OC1

  • evidence 2 is not be counted as it doesn’t meet the criteria directly.
  • evidence 3 just looks like an extension of evidence 1.
    Again looks like 1 good evidence and need 1 more.

OC2: is about demonstrating evidence outside of your day to day job. This looks like more suited to OC3. And again can be stronger.

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Hi Priyanka,
thank you so much for the direction. I mistyped the number for the 2nd OC. It’s OC3. Can I move the reference letter from LOR3 to back this OC?

Then for LOR3, I use the MBA mentor’s letter although we’ve not worked together in the same company but have studied and worked/consulted together outside of our employment for his AI startup?

I’ve intentionally used the strongest references for the LORs.

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Is your MBA mentor an expert in digital technology?

Only support letters in criteria are not strong evidences. You can still add but need to think a little more if you can use something else

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Yes, he’s an AI consultant and founder/CEO of an AI based (product related to manufacturing) startup.

I see what you mean about the evidence docs. So I have the following now:

MC:

  1. ref letter from Senior PMT - ML
  2. ref letter Principal Economist
  3. snapshots of the dashboard & internal doc that I created (shows my login as a contributor) & internal ticket that shows me as the PM pushing the changes about the 24h delivery to live
  4. comp rise over the years compared to before joining the company / MBA.

OC1:

  1. letter from VP of marketing at startups who was my manager.
  2. proof of securing successive internship w/ company which can also be covered on the letter (or) letter from my b school careers team stating I was the VP of the tech club and ran a webinar to guide people in landing in tech companies, as I was the first one out of 150 odd candidates to secure a tech job at the start of the pandemic.
  3. snapshots of the experiment (doesn’t mention my name, but the referrer will mention this in the letter)

OC3:

  1. letter from VP and Board Member of various SaaS startups, who was my then director – covers results of the projects as I don’t have access to them anymore
  2. proofs of comp rise of 30% in 1 year
  3. proof of subsequent series C funding for the company for which the results of my project were useful (letter will back 2 & 3)

Are these better?

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I don’t see much difference in your evidences from your first draft. Please refer to the feedback I had shared earlier as well - some of your evidence docs eg the internship offer aren’t valid evidences for the criterias.

I would also highly recommend thoroughly going through the TN guidelines here so you know what kind of evidences are required Tech Nation Visa Guide - Tech Nation

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Thanks for your response. I had read the guide but struggled to weigh which evidence is stronger from what I can gather. I believe the following should work for both MC and OC1 - from two different companies and project examples:

“Evidence of innovation/product development, proof of product in market” – live website snapshots, and “associated traction through revenue” – results from the launches but only in a table format for OC1 as I’m not with the company anymore, but can share live results from current company for MC.

And for OC3: 1)growth results from the project and 2) compensation growth across 5 preceding years; my director at that time would validate my pay rise post-success.

Appreciate your advice.

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here’s my updated set of docs (have only attempted to strengthen and not change entirely from my previous plan):

LOR1: Senior/principal tech PM from the company (not my direct line of leadership) on:

  1. how I found a solution that didn’t exist for a problem since inception of the business and secured the tech framework for a major feature enabling 24h delivery for customers in EU & UK, from tech & other stakeholders across the globe 2. success metrics, 3. expansion plans for 2025 (partner team buy-in, finance approval).

LOR2: Head/principal economist & decision scientist on: my work w/ economists and ML scientists to perform consumer research & apply the insights to experiment, validate and roll out a new/industry-leading solution for UK customers.

LOR 3: from a mentor who is an investor, consultant and CEO across AI based businesses in the EU. He has done the MBA with me where I was a VP of tech & media club for the program, attesting that I have given advice for his AI startup to launch/scale in EU and I can potentially expand his startup as a CTO in the UK. Also states that I secured the first tech internship in the cohort from a scaleup saas company and brought them in as a new recruiter to the campus (can get evidence for this from my b school but I see evidence for LORs are not required – please advice if I have to)

MC:
E1: Letter from Principal PMT (formerly in the econ team) who has observed me & reviewed my results as a partner team senior leader
E2: snapshots of the dashboard & internal doc that I created (shows my login as a contributor) & internal ticket that shows me as the PM to CR and pushing to dev
E3: results showing increase in glanceviews and volume uptick.
plans approved for 2025 by senior leadership & potential revenue entitlement of $xxxMM approved by finance
E4: compensation summary vs glassdoor avg pay and stating that I’m at the 90th percentile range

OC1:
E1: Letter from Principal PMT from the AI team - partnered w/ them to build and transform an ML model into a dashboard – helped business users make decisions based on demand predictions. Will add details about model and why it was/is the leader in the industry so far.
E2: snapshots of the dashboard & internal doc that I created (shows my login as a contributor); newsletter announcement where I show my ownership of the tool
E3: results from a pilot by a business team that validates on the prediction vs actual on demand effect

OC3:
E1: VP and board member of various SaaS startups/scaleups (my director at that time) – how I changed the growth strategy, set new ways of cross-functional collaboration & $xxxK of savings following which we secured series D funding
E2: snaps of initial results from analytics, kudos from peers – all have my name on it
E3: series D funding announcment, my name mentioned on ProductHunt alongside CEO & another director (although this is from 2018; I did take about 2 yrs in the last 5 year period for my MBA)

In total I have about 6 years of experience in SaaS and 3 years in Amazon where I’m currently a sr product manager.
Outside day to day job that is related to tech: LOR1 & CV mention about me mentoring the data engineer, coaching team leads & engineers for their promos and conducting 20 different hiring interviews.

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@Francisca_Chiedu @pahuja

I’m nearing completion in putting together these docs. Anything you’d suggest me changing? Also any tip to bear in mind when writing SOP considering I’m on a skilled worker visa with only 20 more months left to ILR?
My reason is I need this to jump back into the start-up or scale up space and the opportunity with the AI startup is time sensitive due to the pace of the industry. I’m not able to consult them officially due to my contract and visa restrictions.

Many thanks for your time!

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You don’t need to mention about your skilled wprker visa in your personal statement. just give cleaer plans of your contribution to an AI startup.

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got it, thanks! do the above doc outline & evidences sound solid enough?

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Just published this checklist - it might help decide which evidence to use: UK Global Talent Visa TechNation Stage 1 Mandatory and Optional Criteria Checklist

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