Please review my Exceptional Talent (tech) application plan

Stage 1
1

Hi everyone,

First of all, I’d like to thank the community for such a contribution - the discussions here helped me a lot to understand the process. Here’s what I have planned so far.

Background:
I am a software development professional with 8 years plus experience in web development, that includes 6 years+ in a product led company based in Denmark (SaaS application - Revenue $2.7M by 2024) where I am currently working as Lead Backend Developer from within the UK. I moved to UK in 2021 for MSc and currently on Skilled Worker Visa.

LORs:

  • Director of Federal Investigation Agency (Cybercrime): Previously worked as Program Head in a Non-Profit org where he mentored my startup in 2015 in an acceleration program, knows my work for more than 12 months from then where we accomplished considerable awards i.e. Winning Hackathon, media mention in DW article. LOR also talks about my recent work.
  • CEO of a tech company where I worked from 2015 to 2017, talks about my work then and discusses my recent work.
  • CEO of my current company where I am working since 2017

MC: Please guide if I should merge any of the evidences

  • Evidence MC1: Our product (B2B) is being used by 100+ organizations with ~72k users, including some of the well known UK based organizations and others in EU and US. Will be discussing some of the client testimonials including screenshots from our company website.
  • Evidence MC2: Our product is partnered with well know company (Revenue $120M), screenshots from their website where they talk about our product.
  • Evidence MC3: Our product is being discussed in someone’s MS thesis, where the entire thesis is based on our product. Product’s name is mentioned 67 times. This evidence also includes article from Forbes that mentions our product name.
  • Evidence MC4: This evidence includes screenshots from theorg.com that includes me in the org chart. Screenshot of our products own website about us page where I am mentioned along with my role with other team members. On the third page of this document, there is an employment letter from the company confirming my time and role. This links me to the product where I play a key role in its success.

OC1:

  • Evidence OC1.1: Market traction through revenue - includes some screenshots of third party websites indicating the revenue information
  • Evidence OC1.2: This includes some of the example of my innovative solutions within the company, One of the solution has helped elevating the performance of few of the stats. Another solution helped in migration of the product’s two different databases and merging it to one without loosing any data and 100% accuracy and no down-time.
  • Evidence OC1.3: Reference letter from the CTO discussing those solutions.

OC3:

  • Evidence OC3.1: Screenshots from internal Github account (commits) from different repositories where it can be seen that I am the top contributor since 2017. The impact is quite obvious that this contributions has laid down the core implementation of the entire SaaS application.
  • Evidence OC3.2: Screenshots of some of the ERDs authored by me. Screenshots of internal Gitlab Wiki pages where I have authored a guide on branching strategies and deployment flow for the team.

Additional Evidences:

  • There is an evidence that I am not sure where to fit in, ideally it should go in OC2 but since it is my work from 2015, I decided not to opt for OC2. This is the product which I co-founded in my early career that is also being discussed in LOR1. This was a project that has won us hackathons and couple of other competitions including one hosted by MIT boston. This is the project being mentioned in DW article on how it addresses public health problems within my home country province.
  • High salary: Above average salary in my area for my role, plus virtual shares I am entitled to.

Thank you for your time if you have read through here, I’d really appreciate your feedback on the plan above.

1 Like
2

It looks like MC1-3 evidence is based around the success of the current company’s product but I couldn’t see evidence of your contribution to it. While it may be a good product TN are looking for your personal impact on it, not only that it’s a good product. You need to show what you’ve done personally.
MC4: just being on the team is not evidence enough. TN have no way to know from that what you’ve done and what your peers have.

OC1.1: What’s your personal impact on this?
OC1.2: migrating databases without downtime isn’t a new concept, it’s widely done in production systems. Can you show an innovative way you’ve done that?

OC3: Can you tie both of these in to measurable business metrics like growth or system uptime?
OC3.1: don’t leave it as “quite obvious” since what’s obvious for you might not be for the assessing panel. Make sure to explain the impact and not just have screenshots.

Overall, all you evidence is from this single workplace. TN will want external evidence to support a exceptional talent application as they expect people with this experience to have done things beyond a single company.

1 Like
3

Hi @hsafra,

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

It looks like MC1-3 evidence is based around the success of the current company’s product but I couldn’t see evidence of your contribution to it. While it may be a good product TN are looking for your personal impact on it, not only that it’s a good product. You need to show what you’ve done personally.
MC4: just being on the team is not evidence enough. TN have no way to know from that what you’ve done and what your peers have.

I kept the contribution part in OC3 - what would be the best way to link my contribution over here as well? My LORs also talk about my work and contribution in this company, specially the CEO of this company that highlights that I have been key man behind the backend implementation of the entire SaaS application, discussing different core features of the product that I designed and implemented. The company was established in 2016 and I have been there since 2017 and I have been leading the backend development since then, which helped the growth of the product as discussed by CEO.

This product is a relatively new concept i.e. Employee Advocacy. When searching my name along with the new concept, my name (from the about us page of this product) pops up on top. Would that be of any help?

OC1.1: What’s your personal impact on this?

I implemented the core parts of the product (more than 50% of the product) as highlighted in MC and LOR3.

OC3: Can you tie both of these in to measurable business metrics like growth or system uptime?

Would OC3.3 self-documented evidence discussing some of the core features I implemented and importance of those features within the product would be an idea? These has resulted in improvement in performance (some screenshots from slack conversation where CTO and CEO has appraised the impact). Implemented the gamification features and some other features that are praised by Head of Customer Success on how those features were welcomed and helped the organizations achieve their employee advocacy goals. Could include the reference letter from the Head of Customer Success as well.

Overall, all you evidence is from this single workplace. TN will want external evidence to support a exceptional talent application as they expect people with this experience to have done things beyond a single company.

Yeah I understand that, I could opt for OC2 as I have a great stackoverflow profile, but I don’t have any mentorship evidences. I have quite an impressive open source contribution but that is not within the last 5 years.

I’d be glad to hear your suggestions on how to improve and restructure my plan to make it comply with TN expectations.

4

The problem is that all the evidence in MC doesn’t show what you did, but rather what the company has. You need to explain and show your role - otherwise it’ll all be ruled out since each evidence needs to stand on it’s own and you can’t use the evidence in OC3 to corroborate MC.

TN really expect a person applying for exceptional talent to have evidence of impact on the wider sector and not just a single company. I would highly advise finding such evidence - what do you have in addition to your stackoverflow profile?

1 Like
5

Regarding explaining my role in the company, my employment letter from co-founder and LOR from CEO talks about it. Would that be sufficient? I can also add some evidences showing I have designed and implemented most of the core functionalities of the product.

Other than that, I have the following in addition to the stackoverflow profile.

  • Above average salary in my area i.e. £60k with shares worth £25k that are granted to me over the time since 2021 till date.
  • MSc in Data Science with distinction (but I don’t think it is relevant in MC, correct me if I am wrong)
  • The work I have done in the past years with this company is a new field or concept i.e. Employee Advocacy (would be explaining in the evidence if opted for it) which is increasingly adopted globally and still a relatively new concept in my home country where there are no such platforms and not being used within organisations, making me standout as a leading talent in the field not only in my home country but globally as well (one of LORs also talk about this). Would such an evidence be useful in MC?

For OC1, I’m thinking of moving some of the evidences from MC (with slightly modifications) to show the revenue, market traction along with national and international sales.

6

Sorry for the tag @Maya, @Francisca_Chiedu and @pahuja but while I await to hear from @hsafra , I’d really appreciate your opinion and suggestions as well.

Thank you.

7

Hi @zaheer15351

as discussed by other members in this forum , your mandatory (Recognition) evidences demonstrate how the app is successful, or recognised and do not highlight you as a potential /talent leader! try to have these evidences relate to you, your achievements? and not the product.

OC3 should demonstrate your impact, and always in any category its advisable to have external validation of your impact. your draft depends more into self-authored documents including screenshots. How will you demonstrate that using an external validation.

The application over all is to position you as a talent and not your products or companies you worked for. you can indeed add those evidences if your name is mentioned, or it includes content about your involvement, achievement, role, etc.

best of luck!

8

Thank you for your input @Maya, really appreciate it.

I am actually trying to address the following example for MC from technation guidelines.

You led the growth of a product-led digital technology company, product or team inside a digital technology company, as evidenced by reference letter(s) from leading industry expert(s) describing your work, or as evidenced by news clippings, lines of code from public repos or similar evidence.

As per my role in this company, being lead and major contributor of most of the features of the product, I demonstrate that I led the growth of the aforementioned company which is being recognized as evidenced by media clippings and similar evidences.

I am not sure how is this point usually addressed by others being an employee and not necessarily founder or C-suit executive.

1 Like
9

Hi @zaheer15351

You can provide screenshot of the workflow, diagrams, your coding in developing these features, proofing this was your input and work, (maybe from Jira Dashboard or any system that was used)
You can provide a letter in details demonstrating your impact, innovation and always advisable to illustrate this in numbers (of growth, time reductions %, improving QA, higher tractions). Ask the question? why do you want assessors to appreciate your innovation? or impact ? at this stage? how was your contribution? why was it beneficial?!
the blogs of the product then can added to evidence your work too.

Remember , no-one knows the journey of your development or background unless you share it in your evidences. Read your evidences, as someone doesn’t know you or share it with your colleagues to have feedback, ask yourself ; will you be convinced that you did the growth?

1 Like
10

That clarifies a lot, I thought I’d only keep the contribution part if the OC3 but as I haven’t been working in too many companies, I was reluctant to mention contribution both in MC and OC3. However, I have plenty of contributions within this product and I can mention of different features I have been working on within this product keeping it unique for both MC and OC3.

I’ll reflect back on my structure of the evidences.

Thank you so much for your help.