Request for Application Review - Exceptional promise

Stage 1
1

Hi guys, Please I need you guys to review my information and guide me on how I can scale through the TECHNATION Global Talent Exceptional Visa.

I have 3 recommendation letters from My CIO, Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Head IT Channels Support (Digital and Technology) and My Division Head Digital and Technology who have also been a CTO with a big bank in Nigeria and CTO to other two big banks in Nigeria with subsidiaries around the world (For one of the Mandatory requirements). These people worked with me at both FirstBank Nigeria Limited and First City Monument Bank.
My area of application is Devops Data Science and Machine Learning.
The job Role is IT Change and Release Management (Devops Release Management and MLOps).

I am going for Exceptional Promise.

For Mandatory Requirements, I have two evidence:

  1. 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.

My Divisional Head Digital and IT who have also been a CIO with a big bank in Nigeria, CTO with two big banks in Nigeria and currently running his own IT company is the Dubai with focus on financial digital products provided reference letter for me highlighting at least 6 financial digital products that me and my team used DEVOPs technology to deploy to live environment for end users. He also highlighted the Ai products we used MLOPS to deploy to the end users.

  1. You have held or hold a significant expert role participating on panels, or individually, assessing the work of others in the same field or a field of specialisation related to the digital technology sector.

I was contacted sometimes early this year by an AI consulting firm who was saddled with the responsibility of picking out 3 best Data Science / AI projects out of 7 competitors. The best 3 is to be awarded with Scholarship with further learnings in the field of AI. My job was to review their jobs via canvas and decides the best 3 work among them. I did this and submitted back my decision to the company. The evidence I am presenting is the screenshots of the top 3 jobs (codes) that I graded on the Canvas, the screenshots of all the evaluations and the feedback I sent to the company.

For OC2, I have two evidence:

  1. Your GitHub profile demonstrating active participation in a collaborative project

A company reached out to me last April and requested that I help their Data Science and Ai team train a customer predictive model. I did this with two of their staff but participated substantially. I have a GitHub screenshot of my contributions and commits for this project and will be submitting them.

  1. All contributions (for example to an Open-Source project, GitHub, or Stack Overflow profile etc.) must demonstrate a consistent and ongoing track record of contributions to the sector. Contributions which have been made solely to support the timing of your application are unacceptable.

I mined tweets from the X, pre-processed the data and made it available on Kaggle for people to download to use for learnings and research in the field of Data Science and Ai. The data is on sentiment analysis on self-driving cars. I plan to submit the screenshots of the dataset on Kaggle, the downloads made on the dataset (49) and my contributions on Kaggle through things like comments and contributions to codes. I also have some contributions to codes I made in some open-source projects on Github and will be submitting the screenshots. I will also submit the screenshots of my contributions on Github profile in 2023 and 2024 which summed up to 70 or so. Please note that most of my work are in the banking sector as a result most of the codes are not made available on open-source sites like Github or starkoverflow because of Data protection laws.

For OC4, I have two evidence:

  1. Evidence of awards received for outstanding applied work, supported by excellent academic achievement (a first-class degree or distinction);

I planned to submit my two master’s Certificates. One of them is MBA with specialization in Ai and Future automation (Distinction) and the second one is Msc in Ai and Data Science (Distinction).

  1. A letter of support from a research supervisor or other expert in your area of expertise affirming their potential world-class standard. This is in addition to the required letters of recommendation and must be written by another individual;

I planned to submit a letter of support from my supervisor who supervised my Msc project in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. The research was designed and carried out by me. I also have a letter of Support from my personal supervisor who is a senior and respected scholar with lots of publications and citations of his work supporting and emphasizing the world class of my research.

Kindly help me review these things and let me know your frank opinion if I have any chance of getting the endorsement for the Promise.
Also advise me on where you think I can improve more on the requirements to enable me to get a good chance.

Thank you.

2

First, you need to read tech nation guide again and check through the forum for example box quality evidence you can submit. What you have shared shows you don’t have sufficient evidence to meet the criteria.
For the mandatory criteria, in the first letter does the letter confirm you let the development of product? In addition to the letter best to back it up with actual evidence.
The second evidence is not compelling, besides it is a recent evidence.

Also, if you have more than five years experience you may not be eligible for exceptional promise.
OC2 you need to demonstrate a track record of contribution ?

OC4, reference letter for MSc research do not meet the criteria.

Finally, be clearer with your evidence, no point repeating tech nation guide when asking questions here as it makes it too lengthy and people may skip your post.

3

Thank you so much for your response. I greatly appreciate it.

For the mandatory requirements. For the number one item. I have two letters now—one from my CDO (Chief Digital Officer) and one from the Divisional head of technology and Digitals. They all wrote to prove that I lead a team inside a digital technology company.

For the second one that you said is recent, it happened this year around April. How old should a document be before I can use them? Please advise.

I have, less than 5 years of experience since I transitioned into DevOps and Ai. My journey started in this field in the year 2021.

For OC2, I understand that part clearly. I will suspend the application for now and work more on that.

For OC4. Thank you so much for your advice. I will also have to try to get more evidence.

Thank you so much for your contribution.