Experienced Product Manager - Exceptional Talent

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Hello Everyone,

I am an product manager with over 7 years experience that has built innovative and successful products with my team members at two product-led Fintech Unicorn Companies in Africa and Latin America respectively looking to apply for the Tech Nation Exceptional Talent Endorsement.

Please I would like to get some guidance from Product Managers who have received the endorsement on the best set of evidences and documents that I can provide to submit a strong application.

Thanks

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Hi Ayo, I think the TN guide would help a lot - have you looked through it?

In my opinion, I’d definitely suggest having:

  1. Your compensation for those 2 fintech - if you’ve received share options, show a screenshot or document to proof too
  2. Getting a recommendation letter from the CEO or C-level executives at those companies. Key things would be to answer TN’s key questions listed on the guide for LOR but don’t forget to highlight:
    2.1 Which teams did you own, the key successes (project or improvements)
    2.2 Citing numbers to back the claim of why those successes were game-changing for the company & hence played a part in perhaps bringing them towards Unicorn status
    2.3 How they think you’d be valuable for the UK tech industry

These 2 above would form the basic/fundamentals of your application.

Additional & critical evidence would be to show recognition or contribution OUTside of your work or at least from outside of your company. This could be:

  1. Work outside your normal full-time job: e.g.
  • Any external advisory service that you might have provided to another company - so contract/compensation proof + letter of recommendation from the executives of those companies
  • Any talks/lectures you give at public conferences, and universities (photos, invitation letter, letter of recommendation from the key member of the organizing committee which states your contribution)
  • Any interviews you give to the media
  1. Recognition from outside of your full-time job/company
  • Online news article or blog post on the project/ product that you launched and how much impact it has - this should tie in with the projects mentioned in the recommendation letter if possible. So the story is coherent
  • Letter of recommendation from an industry expert about the impact of your project or how innovative it was

Of course - if you have other types of contribution outside of work e.g. published academic paper or other things that is relevant & definitely contribute to furthering the tech industry - you should add them i

I’ve been on the portal for a month but have been studying the previous posts closely so hopefully, this was helpful to you. It seems many that are rejected focused too much on how awesome they are at their current/past jobs, but TN seems to want that as the base but needs evidence outside of those full-time jobs as well on how one is an exceptional talent.

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Thank you so much NNN. Your feedback has been very valuable and helpful. I will take note of all of these points in preparing my evidence and documentation for the application.

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One last thing, quoting TN guide: “Letters of Reference alone are not sufficient and should be supported by other evidence.” I think it’s best for additional LOR (if you hv on top of the 3 core ones), to come together with an evidence (blog post, screenshots etc).

All the best with your application!