Pls Review My Application - Exceptional Promise - Data Scientist

Stage 1
1

Hi All,
Thanks in advance for your time and opinion, I’m applying through the exceptional talent route as a technical person (data scientist). could you please let me know what you think about my application?

  • Personal Statement

  • CV

  • Recommendation Letters: All are on letterheads or signed via DocuSign, Recommenders explain how they know me, my contributions, why I should be considered a promising talent, and how I can contribute to the UK digital sector.

    • Recommendation 1: From my university professor who is the Program Leader for MSc in Data Science and IoT in the UK.
    • Recommendation 2: From my immediate colleague and mentor, an ex-Microsoft Senior Data Scientist and author of one of Amazon’s top-selling books about Machine Learning.
    • Recommendation 3: From my friend and mentor, the Founder and CEO of a London-based startup, that focuses on providing customer experience insights for the hospitality sector using machine learning.

  • Evidence 1: A cover letter describing all the documents included in my application.

  • Evidence 2: A reference letter from the CEO of the company I’m working for, explaining how I led the growth of the company and product, enabling substantial revenue and customer growth, and why they believe I meet exceptional promise. (MC)

  • Evidence 3: A reference letter from the Product Chief Officer of the company I’m working for, detailing how I drove the company’s growth and product development, contributed to substantial revenue and customer growth, and why they believe I meet exceptional promise. (MC)

  • Evidence 4: A letter outlining changes to my employment agreement from my current employer, thanking me for my significant contribution to the company’s success, stating the amount of increase to my annual salary as well as the share option agreement as a reward for key employees. Also, I referred to PayScale to indicate that my salary is within the 90th percentile in the city in which I live. (MC)

  • Evidence 5: A reference letter from the Product Chief Officer of the company I’m working for, explaining how I led the development of the products as a key developer within the company. (OC3)

  • Evidence 6: Screenshots of my contributions (commits) to the code repository, as well as screenshots of my contribution to the progress of the project in Azure DevOps. (OC3)

  • Evidence 7: Recognition from a large mentorship community, multiple times, as a top 1% mentor in data science and a significant contributor to the community. I’ve added screenshots of reviews from my mentees, stats from my contributions, and a link to my profile. (OC2 & MC)

  • Evidence 8: A reference letter from my university professor confirming my participation in volunteer teaching with more than 400 students. I have also added screenshots of our email communications. (OC2)

  • Evidence 9: For all the following, I’ve included screenshots and links where appropriate: (OC2)

    • Organizing a Slack tech community with around 100 members,
    • Publishing blogs on data-related topics on my personal website consistently with an average of 1000 views per month.
    • Holding several online workshops with over 40 participants on data-related topics.
    • Launching the Beta version of an AI-powered web application contributing to both mental health and the digital sector.
    • A summary of GitHub contribution (commits) to well-known data science libraries.

  • Evidence 10: Additional recommendations:

    • Recommendation 4: From my immediate manager who has a PhD in Machine Learning and is currently working as the Head of Data at Future Anthem. LinkedIn Profile
    • Recommendation 5: From one of my friends who has a PhD in computer vision, is currently working as a Chief Data Scientist, and won the best paper award at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Event (CVPR2023). LinkedIn Profile
2

recommendation/ reference letters rim immediate colleagues are not acceptable. please refer to Tech nation guide. Your evidence are mostly reference letters, the guide also states this is not sufficient. to get more constructive comment, best to list your evidence based on the criteria you are selecting.

3

Thanks for your reply. I added the criteria.
Could you please point me to that section of the guide where it is stated recommendation letters by immediate colleagues are not accepted? I could find two sentences referring to reference letters only:

  1. Evidence of recognition, such as Reference Letters, provided by an immediate colleague, manager, or friend are not sufficient.

  2. Clarified wording for Mandatory Criteria that Letters of Reference from an immediate colleague are not sufficient.

moreover, I’m submitting five recommendations in total, three of which are from people outside of my organization.

Also, regarding using reference letters, now that I mapped the evidence to the criteria I guess it should be clear that I’m not using reference letters merely to address the criteria, but there are other documents included.

once again, thanks for your comment, please let me know if there are any other points I should consider.

4

It could be implied that the statement extends to recommendation letters. I have seen refusal letter stating that the recommender are immediate colleague.

1 Like
5

I’ll think you need to include other evidence to strengthen MC. Achievements beyond reference letters that can be publicly verified.