Good day,
I applied for Promise on Dec 10 last year and got a rejection today(16th January).
The feedback I received:
My opinion of the feedback:
It seems the reviewer didn’t look well into the document included for the OC2 as it had links to recorded events, also certificates, and a reference letter. Also for OC2, I provided other open-source works and even StackOverflow to make this a strong option.
For OC3, I don’t get the sales and revenue, as my work doesn’t involve this, I, however, explained how my work enabled the creation of a new product and taking it to the MVP stage and showing my contributions, also a bit confused about what went wrong here
For Mandatory, it seems the awards(AWS and Hackathon) weren’t considered as well as the talks.
Also my recommenders arent my immediate managers, but are high up in their respective companies
Looking to appeal, just want to be sure where I could have gone wrong.
My Promise Submission:
Documented Evidence for UK Global Talent Visa for endorsement by Tech Nation
- 3 INDUSTRY RECOMMENDATION LETTERS:
- Letter from CTO from a previous company I worked with.
- Letter from my current Head of Engineering for a US-based company
- Letter from CTO from my previous company, he has moved on to another company and holds the “Head of Entrepreneur Support” title
- PERSONAL STATEMENT
- PROFESSIONAL RESUME
9 pieces of evidence
MANDATORY CRITERIA: How do I demonstrate that I have been recognized as (or recognized as having the potential to be) a leading talent in the digital technology sector?
- You command a high salary or other remuneration for your services, as evidenced by commercial or employment contracts with salary information including any bonus and equity options and history of earnings.
- High Salary
- 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.
- Letter of Recommendation from my Engineering Manager at work
- You have received nationally or internationally recognized prizes or awards for excellence specifically in the digital technology sector, as evidenced by the award itself, reference letter(s) from leading industry expert(s) describing your achievement, or as evidenced by news clippings or similar evidence.
- Attached mail evidence I got from AWS for a grant scholarship I won
- Listing reason why I was chosen, my impact on the community, local and global as well as my content creation for the cloud and potential leadership in the cloud space
- Supporting evidence of a letter by AWS to my country’s embassy to allow me to visit and attend a conference all-expense paid
- You have received nationally or internationally recognized prizes or awards for excellence specifically in the digital technology sector, as evidenced by the award itself, reference letter(s) from leading industry expert(s) describing your achievement, or as evidenced by news clippings or similar evidence.
- Hackathon I participated in, in 2018, where my team came second, attached a link to the event, and award, and explained in detail what the hackathon was about.
- I attached my speaking document used in OC2 number 1
OPTIONAL CRITERIA 2: How do I demonstrate that I have been recognized for my work outside of my immediate occupation that contributed to the advancement of the sector?
- Evidence of my talks
- One physical one, showing the attendees, its relevance in the tech ecosystem, and my expertise(also attached a reference letter I got from the organizers within this document)
- Three Virtual but international talks(2 recorded with links) where I explained why I was chosen and its impact on the various countries’ tech ecosystem
- Certifications after the talks, links to talk pages(if still up), the poster of the event, and also to show the caliber of speakers
- Your Stack Overflow profile shows a significant contribution to discussions around code
- StackExchange contributions with 104k+ reach, multiple badges(Gold, Silver, bronze), and my reputation(around 1300).
- Also showed and explained my highest answer
- Open Source JavaScript Product I wrote with over 50 Github stars.
- I also included articles I wrote for a major Open Source Platform and links to my profile.
- Have up to 10 forks, and has full features for anyone to even start up their e-commerce ordering company with.
OPTIONAL CRITERIA 3: How do I demonstrate that I have made significant technical, commercial, or entrepreneurial contributions to the field as a founder, senior executive, board member, or employee of a product-led digital technology company?
- Documentation on product designs or architecture diagrams clearly showing your contribution.
- Showed my contribution towards the system design and architecture of the various products I manage(via RFC, event-driven architecture docs)
- Curation of history, contribution to documents as well as stating my overall impact in starting most of the documentation, owning it, and contributing to about 80% of most of the architectural documentation
- Letter from an employer wherever applicable. This is in addition to the required letters of endorsement and should be written by another individual;
- Reference letter from my Engineering Manager on my impact on the team and company product(Used it for an MCC)
- GitHub account that contains lines of code clearly showing your continuing contribution.
- Showed pictorial evidence of my contribution to the codebase, via, commits, and Merge Request and explained my role in the team and how it enabled overall success (All within 3 pages of the single document) (Another Git Platform)