Stage 1 Rejection

Stage 1
1

Hello

I just received feedback on my application, and need to understand a few things. Below is the rejection reasons:

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Assessment panel feedback:

"The applicant is a competent, well remunerated and well-respected xxxxxx who has held a broad range of roles in the digital technology sector internationally.

He meets the requirements of the mandatory criteria and also the requirements of the second optional
criteria that he has selected (referring to having made significant technical contributions to the field as
an employee). However, he has not sufficiently demonstrated in this application how he meets the
requirements of the first optional criteria he has selected with respect to evidencing a proven track
record for innovation.

In terms of evidence for the optional innovation criteria, the applicant has provided two items. The first is
an employment contract for xxxx in the USA where the applicant was employed as an
xxxxxx for a period of less than xxx months in xxxx/xx. The applicant does not anywhere
say how the work he was performing contributes to the requirements of the innovation criteria. It is also
very difficult to determine what element of the company’s success can be attributed to the applicant
considering that he worked there for such a short period of time. He worked as part of a team
developing a data and analytics platform on xxx to support a xxxx solution. It is unclear how this
could be described as innovative or how the applicant’s contribution specifically led to the company
increasing revenue by xxx% and securing sponsorship. The applicant has not provided a letter of
support from any member of the xxxx team that independently verifies the quality of and innovative
elements of his work.
The second piece of evidence to support this criteria is an employment contract with xxxxx in xxxx where the applicant worked for xxx months during xxxx/xx as part of a team of solution
xxxxxxx "ensuring data processes were

met". Again, the innovation aspect of this role has not been clearly explained in the evidence provided
and again there is no letter of support or similar from a manager.
Due to these shortcomings, we are unable to endorse at this time."

I would like to understand how 2/3 of the criteria are satisfied and then going through the further details section of the feedback a “No” was received for 4 reasons - does this relate to the personal statement or the 3 criteria themselves?

Also, since the OC1 criteria were rejected because no reference letter was submitted, I have gone ahead to ask my previous line managers from the different companies for reference and was thinking this should be sufficient with previous supporting documents that were accepted for MC and OC3.

Would this be okay for a resubmission next week once the reference letters have been received?

2 Likes
2

Sorry about the outcome of your endorsement. You may need to explain the evidence you provided in more details to show how it meets the criteria for Innovation. You may not be able to add additional information during the appeal.

3

Assessor provided really detailed feedback, thanks for sharing.

  1. Did you try to apply under Talent or Promise route?
    Maybe you could appeal and ask assessor to review if your application is good enough for Promise route?

  2. Now on innovation. Do you have anything in your application personal statement, or letter where your employer says that you “designed” something in the platform? Or did you include any sample of tech specification, data model description, that you said you designed? Maybe you have screenshot from git, where some of the commit message says like “created specification for xxx, designed data entity xxx, etc”.

  3. As @Francisca_Chiedu told, could you describe detailed info what did you provide for MC, OC1 (innovation) and OC3 (impact) criteria? Maybe somewhere in documents for MC and OC3 you can find something, that could support OC1.

Best wishes,
Savva.

4

Thanks, @Francisca_Chiedu, and @Savvkin for the feedback.

I applied for the Talent route because of my number of years of experience in data and analytics - more than 14 years in IT Mgt and Technical Development roles.

I submitted a total of 10 pieces of evidence, and 3 letters of recommendation with their CV and my own in the following manner:

Evidence 1 - Online publications from 3rd party websites, GitHub commits, and product component architecture

Evidence 2 - Screenshot of employment of current role showing high salary, a screenshot of line manager reference highlighting my wealth of experience in data and AI.

Evidence 3 - screenshots of online publications on a product I contributed towards from a development perspective with screenshots of the architecture I designed for the data component of the product and Github commits showing lines of code.

Evidence 4, 5, 9, 10 - Employment offer letter showing high salary and benefits from previous employers.

Evidence 6 - Employment letter with a screenshot of an online publication of a product I worked on when with the company, with a few comments of what my contribution was.

Evidence 7 - Screenshot of the email confirming my acceptance to speak at a conference, an online publication of a product I led the implementation for a digital organization (this achievement is what led me to speak at the conference), and employment letter.

Evidence 8 - screenshot of the public viewing count of the content I present at the conference.

2 letters of recommendation from previous senior managers who are now CIOs in different organizations and the 3rd recommendation from a Product Lead at another organization I worked for in the past.

  • MC - Evidence 2 and 7 were linked for this criteria.

  • OC1 - Evidence 3 and 9

  • OC3 - Evidence 1 and 6, with letter of recommendation 3 (this letter mentioned my contribution and the impact across the organization)

Thanks

5

Your evidence was majorly around your high earnings. Do you have a response to the concerns raised on your application below “The applicant does not anywhere
say how the work he was performing contributes to the requirements of the innovation criteria. It is also
very difficult to determine what element of the company’s success can be attributed to the applicant
considering that he worked there for such a short period of time. He worked as part of a team
developing a data and analytics platform on xxx to support a xxxx solution. It is unclear how this
could be described as innovative or how the applicant’s contribution specifically led to the company
increasing revenue by xxx% and securing sponsorship”?

6

I think Ev.4,5,9,10 and probably Ev.2 are the waste of the evidences, you could join them into a single 3-pages document and have more free slots, not wasting 4 slots for 5 similar evidences towards single OC3 criteria.

I heard couple of times that for the Talent route it’s recommended to have 3 pieces per criteria, and you have only two for each OC.

For Ev.7 and Ev.8 - It looks like more like MC and/or OC2 (volunteer) from the description. Or you have been there from your company?

Try to analyze, what you have for OC1, maybe you could point expert to the Ev.1 - component architecture - it sounds like innovation. Try to highlight innovation moments in Ev.3, what exactly you did. Maybe you could point to timecodes of video from Ev.8, where you speak about some innovative features?

In addition to pointing assessor to innovations highlights of your existing evidences, maybe you could ask to review your case from the Promise perspective, if assessor think it’s weak for a Talent.

1 Like
7

@Francisca_Chiedu, I would have linked one of the recommendation letters from the CIO’s but that won’t be accepted of having direct knowledge of my contribution, and the reason why I am leaning towards submitting another fresh application with a reference letter from my direct line mgr who is knowledgeable of this particular product I worked on.

So in the next application will all the evidence previously accepted for MC and OC3, while OC1 will have the same evidence adding the missing reference letter as mentioned in the feedback (even though he has now moved to another organization as Senior Director)

8

Well said, however asking the assessor to move him to promise will ruin the application, that’s usually at their discretion which they would have done instead of a rejection. He also doesn’t qualify for promise as he has 14years of experience.

For talent, 4:3:3 or 3:4:3 or 3:3:4.

9

Hi @Savvkin
Yeah, I thought along that line of the EV’s emphasizing too much on high salary. Is it allowed to reference EV1 for both OC1 and OC3?

For EV8, the company have moved their video content, so trying to check if I get a cached copy somewhere, reason whey I provided a screenshot of the email confirming my acceptance to speak.

10

@Francisca_Chiedu, what do you mean by the ratios - 4:3:3?

11

@Francisca_Chiedu, well, this application is already rejected, you can’t ruin it even further, right?

If pointing assessor to innovative parts of the existing evidences won’t be enough, expert should know somehow that applicant is ok to be endorsed under Promise route, since only single evidence for OC1 is accepted, where 3 are required.

@J11, about same evidence for both criteria, the the Guide says:

If these are your chosen criteria then your evidence should clearly demonstrate this differentiation. Submitting the same evidence for both criteria may not be sufficient if it does not meet these different requirements.

As you can see it says may not be. I read it as it may be, but have to highlight OC1 innovation and OC3 impact clearly and separately. But I don’t know how to do it exactly, I even created a topic here: Multiple criteria, single evidence

1 Like
12

@J11, 4:3:3 means count of evidences for MC:OC:OC

2 Likes
13

Really? Where in the Tech nation guide does it state you can do that. It is at the discretion of the panel to endorse an applicant as talent or promise not the applicant telling them what to do. You can’t make a U-turn and ask to be assessed under promise during a review. Even in this case the applicant can’t be assessed under promise because he has over 5 years experience required for promise.

1 Like
14

How you spread your evidence…

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15

@Savvkin, @Francisca_Chiedu - For EV’s, what I did on my application was to combine a reference letter, employment contract, and technical development contribution as a single EV - thinking each of these can be a single piece of EV? Since 1 piece of EV can be up to 3 pages and give me an opportunity to include more content to support an EV.

16

Is this what you submitted for innovation?

17

Yes, that what I did for all the EV’s submitted, combining all types of evidence for each company\product together.

18

Maybe try OC2 in your next application. Evidence 7-8 makes sense.
I personally find OC2 to be the most objective one giving less room for an assessor to refute.

Also, one high salary demonstration evidence is same as 4.
If you trim that down, you’d have space to add a couple more evidences to hit OC2.

You’re nearly at the finish line - go for it!

1 Like
19

I think if you get Reference letters as evidence for your OC2 from supervisors/managers, your application would be much more competitive. Best of luck.

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20

Thanks @Farzad_Sunavala, that’s my plan I’ve received 2 so far for the ones missing in the feedback from the assessor, just waiting for one more so that it will be 3 EV’s with each having a reference letter for OC2.

1 Like