I currently live and work in Nigeria, I found out about TechNation a year ago, and I’ve spent the last 6 weeks collating evidence for my application, I would love feedback on my application for the exceptional promise route, I have about 3+ years of experience as a Software Engineer (I started working as a Senior Front-End Engineer last December).
Application Category: Exceptional Promise
Personal Documents
Personal Statement up to 1000 words, I spoke about my journey from getting to use a computer for the first time, my childhood, struggles in uni, and breakthrough into tech, and startup I built with challenges faced.
CV: I listed all my experiences so far
Question: Can my CV be less than 3 pages? I don’t have up-to a 3 paged CV, also where does LinkedIn come in? I’ve found cases where people suggest LinkedIn as part of the Personal Documents Evidence
Recommendation Letters:
RL1 is from the CEO of a company I work for in Germany, it talks about my Impact on the team, what I build currently and how the UK digital sector would benefit from my talent. (1 paged)
RL2 is from the CEO of another company I currently work for in Nigeria, who happens to be on the Forbes 30 under 30, and talks majorly about my interest in innovation and entrepreneurship. (2 paged)
RL3 is from the CTO of a company that I haven’t directly worked with but the CTO can vouch for my technical abilities. (1½ page)
Question: What is the proof of credentials that is expected by the endorsing body asides from the authors’ CV? Can the author talk a little about their-self on the first paragraph or add a link to their LinkedIn profile, Likewise none of my Recommendation letter is more than 2 pages, is this fine?
Mandatory Criteria:
Evidence 1: 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.
I currently work 2 jobs and the sum of my salary places me as one of the top earners in my region as suggested by Glassdoor/Payscale
I’ve attached a screenshot of my contract letter from both companies
I have Stock options and Equity in one of the companies and I attached as one of the evidence
Question: Am I allowed to add 2 jobs so as to boost the salary? Also, can I just attach a portion of the contract that reflects the take-home salary/stock instead of the entire contract
Evidence 2: 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 Reference from Previous Company: The letter confirms my impact on the development process of the application, and my role in leading the building of the application from scratch to MVP, to Sale, It shows pictures from the Demo with attendees, Pictures of me with other engineers and news clippings about the app, also attached are some links to videos surrounding the app.
Evidence 3: Outside of your normal day-to-day job role, you led or were a significant contributor to a substantial open source project, as evidenced by compilation of code commit summaries, repo stars or similar metrics such as download statistics, where possible.
Open Source Contribution: Screenshot of 2 Repositories that I’ve contributed to with more than 200 GitHub Stars
A web3 community that I’m actively involved in, with 1000+ members, I helped in building the website for the community and I also work hand in hand with the Founder, (Screenshot from the Discord, Website Contribution on Github
An App I built alongside some Engineers from India, App was ranked app of the day on Product Hunt, and got accepted to Ycombinator. Unfortunately, I don’t have screenshots of my Github Contribution as I exited the Organisation before now. ( Can I include a link to the Product Hunt and App Demo or Screenshots from the Code I have available )
Another startup I joined as a Founding Engineer
Optional Criteria
How do I demonstrate that I have been recognised for my work outside of my immediate occupation that contributed to the advancement of the sector?
Attach links to technical articles I’ve written dated from 2019 on Medium, Hashnode and My personal Blog with a total viewing of 20,000
Letter of Support from a youth Global Organization talking of how I led the Branding and Tech team during my time there, (It’s a non-technical NGO I don’t know if this suffices)
GitHub account showing consistency in Code commit over the past 2 years
Letter of Recommendation from the COO & Co-Founder of a FinTech in London that I briefly worked for Last year, he talks about my skillset and my impact within the team, and my interest in innovation as well. ( I built a Model for the Company that’s still being used till today, attaching a Screenshot of the Figma Screen and what I built for the team along code snippet )
Question: Can I get letters written for different evidence/purposes from the same person
I’ll like to know If I stand a chance, or if there are areas to work on before sending in my application as I feel so nervy about this, any form of advice would be helpful.
I don’t think there’s any restrictions on the number of pages in CV, I think it can even be 1 page or 4 pages, I’d only advise that the shorter the better
My CV was 5pages, but when I redesigned the structure I compacted it to 2 pages
Since you have your CV as PDF, you don’t need LinkedIn link.
LoRecs, pls refer to the guide for what they expect in the letter, However links for the LinkedIn profile of your recommenders are required. It’s good that the not all your recommenders are employment related.
LinkedIn profile is sufficient
this is not stated in the guide though, but I’d advise that whoever your recommender is, they should use work email with the company website extension rather than personal email like Gmail.
The letter should be about you, however I think there is no harm if the story telling style in the letter gives a little more hints about the author to suggest they are exceptional leaders too (maybe they met you at an event where gave lecturer, and since then you became their mentee… Things like that).
The more pages the better. Someone who knows you well, especially the one who had worked with you and know your relevant achievements will have more to say about you.
You don’t want to give impression like they don’t know you well enough to recommend you.
Additional tip is for them to state the year they knew you (if it’s been long, it can add credibility to their recommendations)
I’m not sure about this. I don’t think it’s sufficient
It should be about leadership not impact, whatever evidence you provide should narrate how you led.
Even if the impact is not so pronounced my role in leading the building of the application from scratch to MVP, to Sale,
Let the letter say so much about the above, use keyword led/leadership more than impact.
News about the app when it doesn’t mention your name may not be enough.
It’d be good if you have codes to support the letter
PS: these are my thoughts based on my understanding of the guide. I may be incorrect
Personal Statement: Did you answer all the questions in the tech nation guide, why you want to come to the UK and your contribution etc?
You can provide less than pages for any evidence including CV, most importantly you dont exceed 3 pages.
If you submitting CV, you can add your linkedin URL and please make sure that Linkedin and CV submitted are in line as I have seen that contradition might be highlighted by technation.
Authors can represent themselves and how they get to know you and your work. Always refer to tech nation and ensure the letters contents are corresponding to the questions in the guide.
If the contracts are exceeding 3 pages, you have to extract what is important to your application and add it in a 3 pages evidence.
You can provide another letter from same organisation but not same person for references.
these were my comments for a quick review and im sure colleagues will advice further.
Disclaimer: we are only sharing what we know and learn from Tech Nation Guide.
This is not stated in the guide though, but I’d advise that whoever your recommender is, they should use work email with the company website extension rather than personal email like Gmail.
About this, do you mean they add their mail address to the body of the letter or I’m getting them to send the letter themselves to technation through their official mail? I might have misunderstood this message.
At the bottom (closing part) of your recommendation letter,
You are to add email, contact Tel and LinkedIn profile link of the author
So by the mail, here is what I mean.
Say your recommender 's name is Charles Tony
Working in ABC limited (whose company website address is abc.com, whereas his official mail is tony@abc.com)
I live in Nigeria, but work for 2 companies abroad with my total earnings up to 75K pounds per annum, so I’ve gone ahead to include this as part of my evidence, also should I really go ahead to include the 2 jobs or include just 1 job? ( it’s a 2 pages pdf document evidence )
I have built products for the company I worked for in the past that gained lots of traction and has quite a number of users, I can showcase news clippings, code screenshots, commits etc. ( 2 pages pdf document )
I have a reference letter from the said company talking about my impact on the product ( 1 page )
I have worked on an open source project that later got accepted to Ycombinator, (this could be a part of my Mandatory Criteria or Optional Criteria ) what do you advise?
My initial assumption was providing 3 different evidences for MC and 3 different evidences for OC, but I must have understood the guide wrongly
Hello @jide
you have to provide 10 evidences in total for all criteria (Mandatory and the 2 optional you chosen) that is in addition to Tech Nation Application + 3 Recommendation letter + CV.
Number of evidences for each criteria (Mandatory and 2 Optional) is up to you. It is not recommended though to submit 1 only for Mandatory. I would suggest at least 3 documents for each criteria.
in regards with your jobs, if the two jobs are related to the sector, adding both is great. however, if one of them is not related, then focus on the job that is related to product led business only.
Building the products only is not sufficient (I think). you have to explain the innovation factor. Was it part of your scope of work only? or did you actually innovate?
Innovation evidences are different between business applicants (founders) and Technical applicants (employees)- please refer to the guide and see the examples provided. Whatever your type of application is, it is important that you avoid your day to day task as per job description. i am advising this as i see some rejections feedback pointing out this clearly.
the Reference letter explaining your impact , can be added as evidence for optional 3 ‘‘the impact’’. you will need 2-3 other evidences for the same criteria if you will select it.
Do not depend on letters only for evidences. so the other evidences for the same should be anything else but not letters. as providing only letters are not sufficient.
I cant advise on open source as i am business applicant only.
Disclaimer; i am not an expert and only been in this journey for quite long so i am responding based on my experience in this forum and personal journey. other colleagues may have further details.
At last, please read the guide again and again. Also, read the posts in this forum.
If I get you right; I’m to have 10 pieces of evidence in total ( this includes the 3LOR, 1 CV 1 Personal Statment ) this way I’m left with 5 pieces of evidence for ( Mandatory and Optional ) correct?
Also, I’ve decided to remove one out of the 2 jobs, because it’s a venture capital company and I doubt it falls under the category of product-led companies.
The SAAS Product I built for the company, asides from building it from scratch, I also built a model that’s still been used by the company to date as part of the app features.
Also, I’ve bootstrapped a startup in the past, but it didn’t gain much traction, so I figured it might not be necessary to put this in place.
Hello @jide
evidences excluding the letters , Tech Nation form, and your CV.
Evidences are up to 10 pieces. this is without the other documents required.
