Hi @Raphael @Akash_Joshi, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you both for the time and guidance you consistently share with applicants here, it’s genuinely appreciated. I’d be grateful for your professional feedback on how best to structure my OC2 “voluntary judging” evidence.
I have a consistent record of serving as a voluntary judge. Three of these are with the same Ed Tech organisation, where I have judged over 50 of their cohort students on the tech projects they built. The three engagements took place in 2025 (last year), April 2026, and May 2026.
I don’t want to rely on a single organisation, so I also have a judging engagement with a separate organisation: an Innovation Lab Pitch Deck Competition for teenagers who built tech-based MVP products, where the winner received a cash prize. I intend to include this as supporting evidence. This event took place in 2025.
My concern:
The three Ed Tech engagements plus the Innovation Lab event can’t all fit within one evidence document, so I need to decide which to include, and I want to show a consistent track record without raising any red flags.
My questions:
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Should I include all three Ed Tech engagements (2025, April 2026, and May 2026) to demonstrate consistency? Or should I drop the April 2026 one, since it’s close to my application date (this June), to avoid the appearance of activity timed around the application?
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Should I include the May 2026 engagement at all, for the same reason? Or would I be better off using just the 2025 Ed Tech engagement plus the Innovation Lab event (also 2025), keeping everything comfortably before my application window?
Thank you in advance, I’d really value your guidance on the best way to combine these.
Proximity to your application date is not in itself a red flag. Assessors flag judging when the engagements look manufactured (one-off, no follow-up, no real organisation behind them), not when they happen to fall in the months before you apply. Real, documented engagements with established organisations are fine whenever they occurred.
The bigger concern is concentration. Three engagements with the same Ed Tech organisation reads as one relationship rather than a pattern. I’d keep the most substantive Ed Tech engagement plus the Innovation Lab event, and if there’s room, add one more Ed Tech instance to show repeat selection. Diversity of organisers carries more weight than volume from a single source.
For a fuller look at how this lands inside the wider OC2 piece, reach out to one of the advisers on this forum or to me directly.
@Ade_Ola Thank you for the kind words.
On your question: judging the work of peers can be a good MC evidence, all things being equal but for OC2 you would need to show that you mentored or guided the students through a project. And from what you wrote “where I have judged over 50 of their cohort students on the tech projects they built, it sounds like you may have mentored, assessed, or guided them on the individual projects they created. For this evidence to properly meet OC2, you need to be very clear about what you actually did.
On your concern:
The three EdTech engagements plus the Innovation Lab event can’t all fit within one evidence document, so I need to decide which to include, and I want to show a consistent track record without raising any red flags.
The first thing you want to do is show a recognition element for each engagement, for example, an email or letter showing they approached you to become a mentor, a short description with a photo demonstrating what you did, and a final image or evidence showing the impact of your contribution. So for each engagement, you can have around three images. If the organisations are reputable, and you can clearly show they approached you because of your expertise and that your work contributed to or advanced the sector, then this should be fine.
- Should I include all three Ed Tech engagements (2025, April 2026, and May 2026) to demonstrate consistency? Or should I drop the April 2026 one, since it’s close to my application date (this June), to avoid the appearance of activity timed around the application?
Since you have three engagements starting from 2025, include all three. The earliest date shows it was not primarily because of the application, and the 2026 help demonstrate continued contribution. Also, it’s important to note this, the Tech Nation guidance states that
Note that any evidence which has been made solely to support the timing of your application is unacceptable.Evidence should demonstrate a consistent level of activity over time.
What makes yours different is because you’ve had same or similar engagement over a year before.
All the best.
Thank you, @Akash_Joshi, this is a really useful point and I appreciate you taking the time.
Your concern about concentration makes sense. To be transparent about what I currently have: my repeat engagements are all with one Ed Tech organisation, though they span from 2025 into 2026 and go beyond judging, I also held a guidance session afterwards and was later invited by their board to join their Mentorship Board. For organiser diversity, I have one separate engagement with a different organisation, the Innovation Lab Pitch Deck Competition, which I’d include as supporting evidence.
So my repeat selection sits with a single organisation, but it’s well-documented and recurring, while my second organiser is a different, one-off event. Given that, would you lead with the depth of the Ed Tech relationship plus the one external organiser, or would you advise me to seek an additional organiser before applying to broaden the pattern? I’d value your honest steer.
Thank you again, your input is genuinely valuable.
Thank you, @Raphael, this is really helpful and I don’t take your help here for granted. You’re right that I need to be precise about what I actually did, and on reflection my role in the Ed Tech engagements went beyond simply scoring.
During the judging I gave each team feedback on what they had done well, where they fell short, and how to improve against industry standards, and afterwards I held a session to guide them on practical next steps and on meeting professional engineering standards in their work. After the session, two participants reached out to continue learning from me, with one explicitly asking me to mentor him and provide practice exercises, and a third person who had not attended but heard about the session’s insights from one of the participants also reached out, which showed the guidance carried value beyond the room. Beyond the individual participants, I also received an email from the organisation’s Program Manager, on behalf of their board, thanking me for the feedback the talents learned from and inviting me to join their Mentorship Board, a group of professionals who guide their talents through growth, career development, and project execution.
On that basis, for this engagement I can show the recognition element through the invitation to judge, what I actually did through the judging and the guidance session, and the impact through the participant mentorship requests and the board’s invitation citing the value of my feedback, structured the way you suggested. Would you say this combination works to meet OC2 as guiding and mentoring rather than just judging, and is there anything I should be mindful of in how I present it, particularly the participant messages, given some are young learners? I’d really value your view before I finalise. Thank you again for taking the time.
@Ade_Ola Thank you for the context. From what you’ve described, it leans more towards guidance and mentoring than judging. But regardless of what it is, judging evidence will not rightly meet OC2 and here is why.
If you are invited to judge the work of peers, or even people who are not your direct peers but are in the same field, it shows expertise. It means you have the credibility to review the work of others in your level or field. So if they are software developers, it is fair to say you are operating as a Software Engineer of Software Engineers. This shows recognition as an expert.
The issue here is that judging the work of a small group will not clearly and substantially show how you advanced the sector. But if you mentor, teach or train these people, you are contributing to the sector through knowledge transfer. OC2 is about showing how you contributed to the sector as a recognised expert.
I also have some reservations about EdTech engagements. The narrative that says:
“…I also received an email from the organisation’s Program Manager, on behalf of their board”
may make it sound like the EdTech is a tech organisation. You need to clarify that it is a non profit and that you were not paid, because OC2 should be voluntary contributions.
You also mentioned the learners being young. For OC2, this is not a problem as long as they are not children with no tech direction and they already have a tech path. But for MC, teaching secondary school students coding does not show that a Software Engineer is an expert. If you are invited to teach other software engineers, then you are indeed an expert of experts.
All the best
Thanks so much, @Raphael I really appreciate this feedback! It means a lot.
So yes, I did mentor them. After being invited to judge, I provided one-on-one mentorship and guidance, though we never met in person. My challenge is that I’m not sure how to prove the mentorship with photos. I do have the email confirming my official invitation to continue mentoring them after the judging events I attended, but no pictures.
What would you suggest here, @Raphael?
Thanks a lot.
From what you’ve shared, it’s difficult to give a proper strategic presentation strategy without actually seeing the evidence itself. The context you’ve described and the content we’re discussing may not fully align, and from experience, the details inside the evidence often change the entire direction.
If you’re happy to share the evidence here, I’m glad to take a look. Alternatively, you can reach out to any of the experts here, or to me directly, for more in‑depth and strategic guidance.
@Ade_Ola No, this doesn’t work for me. Everything I do here on the platform is voluntary so that others can also benefit from the guidance publicly. But the moment I have to access something privately, that becomes paid work and not voluntary support. If you prefer private review, that falls under my paid time.
Hello @Raphael, thank you very much for your response, and my apologies.
With the feedback you’ve provided, I’ll go ahead and make the updates, then reach out again if I still have significant doubts.
The feedback is priceless and I truly appreciate it.
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