Rate my application for Exceptional Talent

Hey everyone, please help me rate my application:

LOR [tentative, not finalized yet]

  1. Current Director, Meta in UK
  2. VP, product-led ML startup in USA [previously Director @ Meta, my Sr. Mgr @ Amazon]
  3. Founder CEO - product-led software startup in India

CV - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaibapchya/details/featured/1635508433932/single-media-viewer/

Personal statement

  • 40% Story about Georgia Tech Masters -> SWE @ Amazon in Palo Alto -> Sr. SWE @ Meta in London
  • 30% why UK/london
  • 30% how will UK tech benefit from me

MC

  1. Total comp [base + bonus + equity], Salary, market value comparison to prove its higher and in top 25%
  2. Academic papers [2 papers, 200 citation in ML/CV]
  3. 7+ linkedin recommendations from Senior Engineers, Managers in AWS & Meta talk about “leadership, talent”

OC2 [work beyond immediate occupation]

  1. Open Source contribution: Apache MXNet 80+ commits, Apache committer
  2. Stackoverflow 2.8k, Kaggle
  3. Blogposts on medium/linkedin 15+ articles [total 8k+ views] [3 selected in reputed publication]

OC3 [significant contribution]

  1. Reference letter from Manager on high-impact project $240k annual savings
  2. Whitepaper on impactful project in MXNet mentioned above
  3. 2 Official AWS blogs contributed related to Machine Learning

I could make the 10th evidence by separating out the 2 official AWS blogs into 2 separate evidences #9 and #10

3 Likes

@Victrr @nash_mills @Francisca_Chiedu @westside @akinolaking @Dare_Ayanwale I’ll be grateful to you’ll if you could take a look and review this package. Thanks in advance

Hello

You have a really impressive technical profile. I think you nailed OC2. OC3 is ok but can be improved. I am not so sure about MC.

For MC:

  • salary is a good one.
  • academic papers seem out of place in your application, not clear how the papers are proof that you are recognized as an exceptional talent. Are they recent or old? During your masters? I suggest you replace them with your contributions to open source or any of the examples explicitly stated in the guidance
  • I imagine the LinkedIn recommendations are by current or previous colleagues? and if they are like LinkedIn recommendations they will be too generic to be helpful. If you’re getting testimony from experts, I would avoid getting generic recommendations and get them specifically for the visa. Remember that these recommendations should be explicit in explaining how you’ve shown exceptional talent. Stating keywords like leadership and talent won’t be enough.

I suggest you re-spin your MC story a bit and don’t be afraid of reusing the same evidence across multiple categories.

On OC3:

  • reference : spot on
  • White paper: did you write it? (shouldn’t) does it discuss your contributions? or the project in general? If the project, then you need to still show how much did you contribute to it.
  • blogs: why were they impactful? Are you providing reach statistics(reads etc)? In general always remember that things you wrote in themselves cannot be proof of the impact, it is others’ perception of it that counts.

On the LoCs, the VP is good. The director is questionable if he’s your direct manager so they have to carefully tackle the points of the application and not stick to a generic letter. Finally the CEO, did you work for that startup or with that person? If yes then fine, if it is just a CEO you know, might not be enough.

On the personal statement: don’t dwell too much on the story, get to the point and summarize on what basis you’re applying and what in your application do you provide as evidence. In your mind, there’s a story why your application is a great fit, however the set of documents aone don’t tell the story. The statement is the glue that will join the pieces and prime the assessor’s mind to look at the documents the same way you look at them.

As a general note, don’t try to “cover all basis” out of fear, (e.g. academic papers belong really to OC4 but you’re not really adopting OC4), your application will come as trying so hard. Instead stay focused on a clear and consistent story of why you think you’re fit for the visa.

I hope this helps. Best of luck!

2 Likes

For MC3: LinkedIn or Medium are not considered sufficient as evidence according to the technation guide. I think you should get a recommendation or reference letter from the contacts to describe your contribution(s)

Good callout. Can I re-use #7 which is in OC3 for MC as well?