[October] Stage 1 Endorsement Applications status

Hello there!

For all those who applied in the month of October 2021 and are awaiting for the endorsements, feel free to share your experience here. It would help others as well.

I applied for Stage 1 endorsement for Global Talent visa (exceptional promise) on October 5th 2021.

Thanks.

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I guess you should start first by sharing your own experience with the application process.

Absolutely! I first started thinking about applying for this particular visa in August 2021, then I spent most of September collecting all the supporting data (including the recommendation letters).

By 25 September, I thought I had collected everything, I paid for the fee and when I started to upload everything, I realised I was missing many small things and part of my narrative was incomplete (it was hard to get a full picture if you didn’t know my career closely). So I had 15 days to close all gaps and I rushed. Finally, after 10 days, I think I managed to close most gaps and yesterday I hit “Submit”. :slight_smile:

A bit about me: in 2018 I graduated in CS and moved to London to work for Facebook as a software engineer. In 2.5 years I grew from junior to senior engineer, being a tech lead in one team. During college, I worked on a few startups and founded one myself. With the startup I founded, we won a startup competition.

My application goes for:

  • Two innovations (1st optional criteria): (a) startup I founded and (b) one of the startups I worked at during college. As supporting evidences on (a), I used the startup competition award + news + a custom written document covering all about the product (hypothesis, screenshots of the product and usage data). As supporting evidence on (b), I used an additional letter from my employer + revenue data from the startup + news about the startup (to prove it existed).
  • Impact (3rd optional criteria): my work at Facebook. As a supporting document, I used employment letter (which also includes evidence of high salary) + letter from a senior colleague + a custom written document explaining the product I work on and impact I had on it.

For the mandatory criteria, I used a combination of award (from the startup I founded) + news + high salary + performance evaluation at Facebook (I was consistently performing far above average).

I ended up reusing the same evidence on multiple criteria.

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Update on my application: Submitted on 5th October, got endorsed on 11th October. No fast track.

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@lms congratulation on Endorsement. Did you apply for talent or promise? I am asking because you used same criteria fir most evidence? Did you also use github profile as evidence?

Did you apply for talent or promise?

Promise

I am asking because you used same criteria fir most evidence?

What do you mean? I had a narrative around 3 different work I’ve done before. 2 counting towards innovation, 1 counting towards impact. This impactful work also happened to produce a high salary, so I could reuse this in two different places. On the innovation side, I got an award as well, so again I could reuse in two different places.

Did you also use github profile as evidence?

No, I have not.

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Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks so much for sharing this. I am still gathering documents (LORs) and others

Congratulations for your endorsement.

Lol I think just working at facebook is def an amazing feat. I’m not surprised you got in. Well done. Can you please talk about how you got your LORs. I don’t know how I can go about asking people for this and who to even ask since they should be random people that I’ve never worked with.

Also how did you provide feedback from your Mentee’s. Do they also need to write letters and sign them? My own feedback is in my WhatsApp- they thanked me there.

Lol I think just working at facebook is def an amazing feat. I’m not surprised you got in. Well done.

Thanks!

Can you please talk about how you got your LORs. I don’t know how I can go about asking people for this and who to even ask since they should be random people that I’ve never worked with.

I made a list of people I have worked closely with that could talk in depth about my work (think about managers, clients, colleagues, etc). Then I reached out to them, setup sometime over VC (15-20min), explained what I was trying to achieve, what I needed and why I thought they could help me. Once they were happy, I setup a doc with all requirements from TechNation (the list of questions available on their guide) and shared with them. I gave them as much time as they needed, also.

Also how did you provide feedback from your Mentee’s. Do they also need to write letters and sign them? My own feedback is in my WhatsApp- they thanked me there.

This wasn’t on my application, so I can’t help much. But I guess a recommendation letter from them would be valid, if they hold a senior position in a reputable company.

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