Hi, this might be a bit long but wanted to put all my evidences in perspective to get the best guidance. I haven’t spent up to 6 months at my current company and though I can show evidences of innovation, I wouldn’t want to risk it as getting a reference letter from them might not be ideal due to the time period requirement.
Recommendation letters
Letter from the digital strategist in charge of innovation at a UK company I worked detailing me as the first AI engineer in the company, how I built the AI landscape there and the time nd cost metrics saved by the AI ticketing system I built.
Letter from a professor of industrial AI who is also an AI consultant, with top-tier research papers published on AI. He was the course leader for my Masters degree in AI, and anchor of a popular AI hackathon I won which secured me an internship with an AI fintech company.
Letter from the founder of AI Saturdays, the largest AI ecosystem in Nigeria. She is also the general chair at Deep learning Indaba, a doctoral researcher with AI models and worked with google, intel, etc.
Mandatory criteria:
Global tech hero award detailing why I was chosen, the criteria, news clippings of my award on prominent media outlet, and views count of the news clipping.
Evidence of innovative AI ticketing system I built at my previous company. It was the first AI solution the company had used: AI architecture, technology used, time and cost saving metrics, GitHub contribution, and evidence of deployment, commendation for it. This app is an internal application used by customer agents for clients like ASOS, NHS, HM treasury etc. it saved time required to resolve a ticket from 5 minutes to 30 seconds.
Reference letter from head of development in former company supporting evidence two, news clippings of the company acquiring another company during the time of innovation of the AI ticketing solution. I also used this application to get a scholarship invite to OpenAI DevDay in London originally valued at £450 so I have added the invite in the letter, tieing it to my innovation.
Evidence of judging at a startup hackathon: Reason I was invited in form of invite letter, news clippings announcing the event, news clippings showcasing the winners of the event, with my name included as a judge, and role, and evidence of the winning applications launched on google store.
Reference letter from the awarding body in evidence one explaining the criteria on which I was awarded etc
OC2
Reference letter from the community lead of the largest AI ecosystem in my country. This non-profit has gotten grants worth 8000£, published ML datasets that can be used to improve speech recognition for african languages, african delicacy recognition by computer vision models and has received sponsorship from Cisco, Intel, and google. The reference letter explains why I was chosen as the co-lead data scientist for the 8th cohort of classes and the impact I made. Also I have added the offer I received as a co-lead scientist, impact via the dashboard detailing how feedback ratings increased for each class over the 17 week period. And student reviews.
Teaching neural networks as a class under a structured program. For the same organization above and the evidence includes: A 2 hour youtube video with almost 3000 views, and 300+ likes, evidence of GitHub contribution to the open-source girhub page, and the snippet of the AI notebook I used to teach the students, as well as student feedback.
Additional volunteering and Speaking evidence: evidence of volunteering and membership for Women in AI UK community, evidence of speaking at international womens day event, evidence of speaking at a yearly african tech event, evidence of mentorship under a structured program, with strong criteria for mentorship. Might not add adplist since it’s regarded as not sufficient though I have evidences of mentees getting AI roles through my mentorship impact.
OC3
Evidence of impact in sales and app downloads due to a predictive AI model I built for a product-led company. Contains sales statistics, AI implementation architecture, and explained impact.
Reference letter from the founder and CEO of company in 1. confirming the impact I made, with attached employment letter.
Your application shows strong technical foundations but needs refinement to meet exceptional promise standards. Based on successful applications I’ve reviewed, your AI ticketing system evidence is compelling since it demonstrates real commercial impact with concrete metrics. However, your evidence presentation needs better organization and stronger narrative coherence to stand out from routine submissions.
Your recommendation letters need more strategic diversity to show broader sector influence. Having three references is good but ensure each highlights different aspects of your contributions rather than similar endorsements. The professor’s letter should emphasize your research potential and academic excellence while the industry letters should focus on commercial innovation and leadership impact. I’ve seen applications rejected when multiple letters tell similar stories instead of building a comprehensive profile of exceptional talent.
Focus on strengthening your mandatory criteria with clearer evidence formatting and more specific impact metrics. Your Global Tech Hero award needs better contextualization about the selection criteria and competition level. The AI ticketing system evidence should include detailed technical architecture alongside the impressive time-saving metrics you mentioned. For your optional criteria, the teaching evidence with 3000 YouTube views is strong but combine it with student outcome data to show tangible impact on the AI community in your region.
Thank you Akash, the three reference letters are from people in Industry, Academia, and AI community building and research, each for my work as an AI engineer, academic/research experience, and community building. I will make sure they all tell different stories.
I will also strengthen the award context, time saving metrics and get real impact metrics on the teaching video.
Your outline demonstrates a strong technical foundation, but refining certain aspects is crucial to meet the exceptional promise standards. Key areas for improvement include:
Evidence Presentation: Organize your AI ticketing system evidence more effectively, and develop a stronger narrative to showcase its commercial impact and metrics eg. What was the impact of that time saved on the company’s commercials and why was it important? Ensure the reference letter addresses these. Evidence 1 & 5 can be clubbed as it’s for the same context. In MC, set more context of the stature of the award itself.
In OC2 ensure that your 1st evidence is clear that it was outside your day to day job and there’s no confusion that it was part of job or a role considering the offer letter you are showing. Skip the offer letter if it creates confusion. Position to align with guidelines. Ensure you mention impact on how 2 and 3 advance the field.
Recommendation Letters: Ensure strategic diversity in your references, with each letter highlighting different aspects of your contributions. For example:
Professor’s letter: Emphasize research potential and academic excellence however since you aren’t doing OC4, this can focus on OC2.
Industry letters: Focus on commercial innovation and leadership impact.
By addressing these areas, you can build a more comprehensive profile of exceptional talent and increase your application’s competitiveness.
@Akash_Joshi@pahuja
Sorry I have a concern; It is stated in OC3 criteria that evidence of impact can be shown by reference letters, but it also states reference letters alone do not suffice. I plan on using a reference letter from the company founder and CEO, as well as: 1. Product architecture, with the AI modules being my contribution.2. company dashboard showing impact the solution had before and after deployment, based on timelines. 3. Sales impact as evidenced from the wix dashboard we use for sales analytics. 4. My github contributions on the product. Because all these can’t take three pages, I plan to split them into two: a detailed reference letter and evidence of impact. Would this be sufficient for OC3? I also don’t want to submit just evidences without reference letter to avoid the evidences being marked as unverifiable.
Sounds like a good set of third party evidences! If they are all pointing to the same project and impact then they need to be part of one document, requiring you to have another independent piece of evidence showing impact.