Hi everyone, so I decided to share my rejection and I would like everyone to review it if I am currently not qualified and I would like to work on the weak areas. I applied for this GT Visa because I thought I am qualified for it and based on the feedback I received from those who got ENDORSED. I applied inside the UK and I do not want to be on the Skilled worker visa route as the GT Visa gives some kind of flexibility, although the end goal for both is still the ILR. I will apply again next year based on the feedback I receive here and work on those weak things. As @Francisca_Chiedu said, I might feel I have similar evidence with those who got endorsed, but our approach might be different, which is totally right. What I just discovered is that the reviewer ignored key things and used what he/she felt is weak against me. I am going to explain after you read the Assessment panel feedback
Below is the feedback I received from TN.
Assessment panel feedback:
The applicant should not be endorsed for the Exceptional Promise visa. He has not provided compelling
or sufficient evidence to demonstrate that he has been recognized as having the potential to be a
leading talent in the digital technology sector. He has applied under Optional Criteria 2 and 3 (OC2 and
OC3).
The evidence provided from AAA, which is a school, isn’t relevant or suitable for this visa as the
organization isn’t a product-led technology company, even if he is working for them in a technical
capacity. For this reason, the reference from the CTO of AAA is also not relevant or compelling
towards meeting the threshold criteria for this visa. The salary evidence provided is as a freelancer on
Upwork/Fiverr and not suitable evidence of a salary at a full-time job at a product-led technology
company. The speaking engagement at BBB in 2020, where he was one of four speakers with
100 attendees, is also not at an event of international prestige or sufficient attendance that confirms the
applicant’s leading talent.
The academic reference is not suitable for the purposes of this visa even if it speaks of the applicant as
being a diligent and smart student. It does not relate to his work at a product-led digital technology
company. It also appears that a lot of his work experience is as a freelancer and has overlapped with
his career as an MSc student, which while creditable, isn’t suitable evidence of exceptional potential or
a sign of being at the forefront of his field. We also note that while there are numerous reference letters
that the applicant has provided, they are mostly generic and light on detail. They repeat elements of his
CV and also use similar format or words/phrases used by the applicant, which leads to more questions
than confirmatory evidence of having potential to be a leading talent. The paper the applicant wrote on
Machine Learning hasn’t been peer reviewed or published in any prestigious journal of national or
international repute.
We are unable to award the Mandatory Criteria to the applicant.
Regarding OC2, we are unable to see any recognition the applicant has received for work outside of his
main occupation that has advanced the field. Mentoring in the tech ecosystem is considered to be an
activity most tech professionals engage in and isn’t outside of their occupation, and we do not see how
the applicant advanced the field through mentoring. Further, it appears to be a one-off mentoring
engagement platform that the application has built which is yet to see heavy engagement. It is also not
a part of a structured programme with strict criteria for who can be a mentor and measuring what impact
this platform is having on mentees. The applicant’s work in the Open Source community is also
provided without any evidence of where and how he was recognized for it. We are unable to award
OC2.
Regarding OC3, the applicant has provided his work at CCC, DDD and EEE in support of
this criteria. However, we are not able to identify why his work was significant and how the significance
was measured or quantified, and what impact it had. Developing an application for “vendors and
customers” as written in the JTalk reference letter isn’t compelling evidence to satisfy this criteria which
has a higher threshold. We are unable to award OC3.
As the applicant has not met the criteria, we are unable to endorse him
Keywords:
a. AAA (is an educational technology start-up preparatory school that gets students ready for local and international universities). invested over ÂŁ200,000 in Nigeria.
b. BBB (its a financial service that provides banking solutions that enable businesses to collect payments, access loans, manage operations and ultimately grow their business).
c. CCC (a reading platform, eduTech)
d. DDD (health care, healthTech)
e. EEE (a platform to pay for utility bills, buy airtime, subscription etc)
I provided 3 LOR (2 senior members in a MAANG companies who are also a CTO in a growth startup company & a Professor in Computer, a 3-page CV, PS(submitted on TN) 10 Evidence and MC: 7, OC2: 3, OC3: 2. it means 2 of the MC is also provided for OC2. I worked directly with them as a technical partner and have shares in the company.
MC: 1,2,3,4,5, 6,7 OC2: 6,7,8, OC3: 9,10
Mandatory Criteria:
- *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.
(i) I partnered with this start-up company from the beginning to provide solutions by building a web application using the latest technologies, which led to the company’s first successful product being deployed to the market. AAA is leveraging on my technical skills, especially in machine learning to perform predictive analytics of student performance and other modules. I developed an intelligent system where it learns and adapts through experience. My technical ability led to the first successful release application for the company. The platform I led has recorded over 250 registered students so far (I added a screenshot to proof the metrics, a screenshot showing my commit history (over 400 commits) on GitHub since it’s a private repo, an email in 2020 from the CTO giving me the accolades during our yearly Executive summary of collective achievement and a news clipping from google showing the platform).
ii) I work for Unite US in United state for 6 months and its also a digital product led company. even though as a technical applicant as stated on the TN website
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Offer Letter for the Role of Technical Partner in AAA showing share and all + another Reference letter from a Lead solution architect who knows about the work.
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I added high salary of CCC and also my history of earnings (weekly payslip which is over ÂŁ1k pw) on upwork/ fiverr. I stopped working as a freelance (on those platform) in 2020 and the TN still picked on it and ignored the CCC own which is even current.
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Outside of your normal day-to-day job role, you led or were a significant contributor to a substantial open source project, as evidenced from compilation of code commit summaries, repo stars or similar metrics such as download statistics, where possible.
In 2020, I received a badge from GitHub called GitHub Arctic Code Vault Contributor for contributing to an open-source project, as shown in the screenshot below. I created an open-source project on an Electronic Voting System made for the public, which is being used. I added this evidence in my OC2 but TN said I didn’t provide any evidence and I even added a link to my repo showing the badge.
- You have received nationally or internationally recognised prizes or awards for excellence specifically in the digital technology sector
In 2022, I received an honorary award for academic excellence after completing MSc in Advanced Computing
In 2020, I received a Top-Rated Badge under Software Engineer for the companies I worked directly with. Top Rated highlights professionals of top talents who have built a strong reputation with companies by getting positive feedback from them, time after time. We represent the top 10% of talent on Upwork worldwide.
in 2016, I received the Big Data Developer Mastery Award from IBM, which was certified in 2019. Through a faculty-led student education, I demonstrated the ability to use a Big Data platform and data governance concepts to efficiently store and manage extremely large amounts of data,
using IBM BigInsights. It stated how I demonstrated an understanding of topics such as
Hadoop, Map Reduce, HBase, Big SQL, and BigSheets, in order to capture, store, and analyze
structured and unstructured data
In 2018, I received an Outstanding Achievement Award in recognition of my performance in 2018 academic session as Software Director. I added the plague.
In July 2022, I was nominated for an Honorary Doctoral Degree Award. This award is reserved for accomplished leaders of high-level status and professionals in their respective fields. I added a popular link to the conferment.
TN did not see all these listed.
- I was invited to speak at the digital technology sector event at BBB (Moniepoint), Lagos in 2020 during covid 19 pandemic. I spoke on the topic Opportunities in tech and how to get started. There were over 100 attendees who attended the online event and I spoke for about an hour. I added event flier, link and email from the management team.
TN comment: It’s not suffiecient
- (i) I created an open source project named Electronic Learning System to solve the geographical boundaries of the education sector in Africa. This open-source project is cloned by different people trying to implement it to solve learning system in their region by localizing the process. One of the people who implemented the eLearning system is an Associate Professor, in South Valley University in Egypt who reached out to me in 2020 to integrate my system. I added github link, number of starred, forked and watching.
ii) I contributed to an opensource project created by bradtraversy (popular guy on youtube who is also an open-source contributor) which is design-resources-for- developers. The repository has over 42.5k stars, 895 watching and 9.2k forks with over 340 contributors which I am among. I added necessary evidence to it such as link, PR, email accepting my merge etc.
(iii) I created an open-source project on violent crime during lockdown in the UK. I used the sample data provided by the UK police and processed the given data efficiently using Apache Spark on a cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform. it has significant likes.
I also added my Github link and dashboard showing all my contribution
TN comment: The applicant’s work in the Open Source community is also
provided without any evidence of where and how he was recognized for it.
What evidence can I provide again?
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Evidence 8 - mentoring, interest group/channel, membership and volunteer. I add necessary evidence. Its a lot and I don’t want to bore you all with my long evidence. One of the evidence is being a member/ volunteer in a community called Google Developer Group in the Northeast of England. Added screenshot of event and email from the main organizer.
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I worked as a key software engineer to develop CCC platform with over 700 current users now. I added the ARCHITECTURE DIAGRAM , link to the app and explained each component in details. I did 80% of coding and review the remaining 20% from the team I led. I added screenshot of the github repo showing my name and commit history since its private, email conversation from the CTO and idea shared through our conversation.
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I led in the development of high-impact digital products by working as an employee working for EEE. I came up with an idea to create an API endpoint to allow other digital businesses who want to use the service at a discounted rate. Publish the application on the google play store, and thousands of transactions have been recorded. I added link to documentation, github showing my name and total downloads of the app on playstore. I added few other companies I worked for to just do the mash up for the last page.
I would like to know what to do to make my application better next time. Things to work on to be able to provide compelling application.
Questions:
i) If TN ingores some evidence by not making comments, does it mean the evidence is acceptable?
ii) I provided at least 2 different evidence (like 2 different companies/organisations) for each document, why did the reviewer pick one and ignored others?
I have different doubts and the assessment feedback couldnt allow me to reason which one to tackle.
@Bankole_Jamgbadi when you were rejected last year, how many criteria were rejected?
@Victrr, @Neuron and any other technical applicant suggestions are highly welcome.
cc: @Francisca_Chiedu, @Maya @somdipdey @Yusuf_Adebanjo and all the people on this forum who I could not tag.
Cheers
