I applied for GT Exceptional Talent endorsement on 24th April and got a rejection on 30th April.
There was a lot of subjective feedback on the provided proofs and information.
One of the comments about the reference letters said,
" Regarding their mandatory references, they are very complimentary regarding the candidate’s actual work. This is supportive. But, some signatures are also very clearly digitally created and are not provided with audit trails, as required."
All the letters were genuinely signed by the referees and mailed to me directly. I am not sure how to show an audit trail for this.
Hi @yashkotha sorry about the outcome. Did you use docusign for the letters? If so, you need to show a signature trail that’s available in docusign - it’s mentioned in guidelines too. It’s nearly impossible to fairly comment without actually seeing what the signatures looked like and if it aligns with the feedback but you can counter in the appeal to prove why it’s not created and authentic signature - you would know best (without seeing the signature myself).
@pahuja The letters weren’t signed using any digital signing platform.
They were signed just by using pdf readers or word documents since they wrote the letters themselves.
So there is no way to show any audit trail in that case, other than the emails with document attachments, which I received from them.
I think there are new assessors missinterpreting the guide as the audit trail is only needed when a document signature service like docusign is used. You need to explain this in your appeal. It is a copy and paste response. I also saw the exact feedback on another application. Looks like the new people have taken over the assesment.
The compensation payslips proof that I submitted showed an annual earnings of approx £90,000 which is higher than the average earning potential of a UI/UX Designer salary in uk which is between £55,000 - £75,000.
Do you think they are not reading the details at all?
Thanks so much for sharing this, and I’m really sorry about your experience.
My recommendation letters were originally signed as PDFs. Now I need to go back and ask my referees to sign them using DocuSign. Could anyone clarify how to obtain the audit trail? Does it come as a separate file, or does it need to be merged with the signed letter? I’m a bit confused as I’ve never used DocuSign before.
I feel the same way. I am preparing the appeal letter this week and will address all the points.
Hopefully they dont come back with further feedback and just give their approval, as I followed every guideline and provided recommended proofs that should be enough to get an approval.
Did you provide Payscale benchmarking in your evidence? If so, it does look like they haven’t checked properly! You must highlight in appeal. However they have some more feedback on MC beyond salary which seems to be the collective reason for rejection
@Isabella
I believe there may be a misunderstanding of Tech Nation’s own guidelines. The guidance specifies that an audit trail is necessary only when a document-signing platform such as DocuSign or HelloSign is used. In your case and mine, the letters were digitally signed by senior professionals on PDFs without such platforms, in line with standard industry practice and the instructions provided. Requiring audit trails in this context imposes an expectation not grounded in the published criteria.
So I don’t think you need to get them resigned unless you want to do it to avoid any issues.
If you want them to get resigned using docusign.
The person signing it needs to upload the document on docusign platform on their own account, sign it digitally using docusign, and then send it through the platform by typing your email address in the platform. Then once you receive it, to view an audit trail in DocuSign, you can access it from the Document Detail view by selecting “AUDIT TRAIL” from the Labels panel. This will open a change log, which displays details like the editor, date, entry, and changed-to details for the contract. Take a screenshot of this audit trail.
