Hi everyone, yesterday I got the rejection for the 2nd application. I applied on 8th March and got rejected on 19th March.
In the assessment panel feedback says:
1- “LOR2 is written by the CIO of the candidates current employer and so is not admissible against MC as set out in the terms of the tech nation guidelines”
I didn’t know that we can’t provide LOR from current company’s CIO. Is this true?
2- I provided my salary and country average salary from Glassdoor and Payscale. My salary is high above my country average (outside the UK) but reviewer converted it to pounds and says:
“The candidate claims to earn XXXk Lira/month (or £65k p.a.), which cannot be considered to represent the income of a senior engineer with exceptional talent. MC is not awarded.”
Shouldn’t the salary be compared to the country average?
After the examples on the Tech Nation Visa Guide it says
Evidence of recognition, such as Reference Letters, provided by an immediate colleague, manager, or friend are not sufficient.
Also in several MC examples it says
evidenced by reference letter(s) from leading industry expert(s) describing your work, senior global commercial executives inside the company and/or at company partners/customers, or similar evidence.
evidenced through reference letter(s) from global senior project executives
I don’t know if this means CIO cannot give a reference letter for MC but in my opinion it is worth pointing out in the review that Chief Information Officer is a senior executive at the company. Maybe they will change their mind.
Secondly for the salary did you explain or give examples of average salary in your country?
Did you share screenshots and links such as screenshots and links to Glassador or Payscale showing the average salary for your job title in your country.
You can’t just say my salary is X and it is above average. How did you prove it?
Also in my opinion the reviewer made a mistake. They should not have compared the salary in another country to UK salary but maybe you did not give them any other information so they were forced to do that.
Add some screenshot and links and add sentences like my salary is 45% higher than the average salary for salary developers Turkey, 35% higher that average salary in Istanbul according to Payscale.
Remember that the reviewer will judge your application on the information you share in your evidence. They will not open links or do a Google search to find average salary in your country so it is important that you add screenshots and add the links to pages you screenshoted any way so they can’t claim the screenshots are fake or photoshopped.
Here is the Assessment panel feedback (shortened, I was awarded OC2, MC and OC3 was not awarded):
"The candidate has presented limited evidence of public speaking; the main examples are speaking at ‘ABC’ which resulted in publication in associated magazine and “Service Mesh
Architectures In Microservices Workshop”, which do not create a compelling body of evidence to demonstrate sustained national recognition. Furthermore, no evidence of industry reach or the level of community engagement / interaction could be found.
Although the applicant’s three primary letters of reference (LOR) are from senior
experts within the financial services sector, they do not meet this criteria for several reasons: i. they are not all authored by experts of product led digital technology businesses, ii. very light on detail, or where detail is provided, examples of technical leadership are considered to be in line with competent software engineer rather than exceptional and original works of software development and iii. LOR2 is written by
the CIO of the candidates current employer and so is not admissible against MC as set out in the terms of the tech nation guidelines iv. LOR1 relates to the year 2011 and LO3 the year 2012 which pre-date the 5 year window stipulated in the Tech Nation guidance.
The candidate claims to earn xxxk Lira/month (or £xxk p.a.), which cannot be considered to represent the income of a senior engineer with exceptional talent. MC is not awarded.
OC3 - The candidate has not presented sufficient evidence to demonstrate significant and “sustained’’ technical leadership in product led digital technology business. As presented
the evidence reflects the work of competent software engineer and system architect and on the whole this evidence appears to be self authored and lacks 3rd party validation. The bonus letters for delivery of both projects are duly noted, but these rewards (<£2k) cannot be considered to reflect an engineer with exception talent. OC3 is not awarded.”
I provided 3rd LOR from current company’s CIO. I provided evidence for my salary and country average salary from Glassdoor and Payscale. My salary is high above my country average (outside the UK) but reviewer converted it to pounds. For OC3 I provided reference letter from my current manager.
I think you recommenders are not known tech leaders or expert and it appears their letters didn’t address the points stated in tech nation guide. It seems you do not have a strong public profile. If the speaking event you used is high profile then point the assessor to it. What os the list of evidence you submitted?