I first did my research and asked the following in this forum.
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Hello everyone,
I am applying for “Exceptional talent” - I have 14 years of experience in the IT industry and 7 years as a data scientist.
The documents I have are:
- Contribution to a patent that is granted when I worked for the company as an employee- I have the link to the patent which is public and my name shows up.
- My 2 tech projects that created a commercial impact: I have a letter of recommendation from the CEO of the company who I worked with, the company is based out of UK and is a middle size company.
- My 1 tech project that created a commercial impact: I have a letter of recommendation from the President of the company who I worked with. Mid size company in Japan.
- My 1 tech project that created a commercial impact: I have a letter of recommendation from the Founder and CEO of the company who I worked with. Small size company in India
- My 1 tech project that created a commercial impact: I have a letter of recommendation from the CEO of the company who I worked with. Funded start up company in India.
- Personal statement
- LOR from my Professor under whose supervision I finished my MSc Data Science desertion that gave me distinction
- LOR from another Professor who had given me an offer on email asking me to do a Phd with him.
- Articles in the media( do not have my name anywhere) that talk about my project and the impact it caused in the country but the letter of recommendation states it clearly with the links.
- My latest salary slip in the UK which is £64.5K per year (is it worth showing?)
- My MSc Data science certificate that says distinction (will it help?)
My last designation was Senior Analytics consultant in London with a digital product company.
Do I have to show documents of the companies financial reports, I can do it from whatever is available publicly.
The contributions I made are now the IP’s of these companies so, they would not share the evidence but they shared recommendation letters. Does that work?
This is all I got. Please advise!
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I got a great feedback as below from @alexnk :
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There is a lot of room to improve based on your given information.
- I only see document #1 showing OC1, which may not be enough for a Talent route. You need to supply 2-3 on each criterion.
- The commercial impact seems to have 5 documents (#2,3,4,5,9) which could be too many for OC3. Just select the best 3 (or 4 max) to prove your OC3. And make sure that you can quantify them, and have LoR to confirm the truth of your evidence.
- I see that you have 6 LoR. This may be taking too many evidence spaces, and limiting your strength of your evidence, and so your entire application. Please be reminded that LoR is not to be used as main evidence. It is only for supporting and making the other evidence stronger.
- Article without your name, but it can be confirmed with the LoR of a trusted referer.
- Pay slip, you need to compare it to the industry benchmark. Hopfully it is 90% above the industry average. You may use Glassdoor, or anything similar to benchmark them. If it works out, it can be one of your MC.
- The think the distinction of your dissertation may fall into OC4. You need to see through yourself which OC you can really present your case to Tech Nation.
- Try to get more data for your evidence. Do not try to rely on LoR.
Caution:
- Be noted that the consultancy role does not count by Tech Nation. You need to work in a product-led company.
- Make sure that these documents happened within 5 years maximum.
In conclusion & suggestion:
Your application for the talent route will not meet the criteria and will not be enough to influence the assessor. I see that you have done a lot in your career, therefore I hope that you may be able to draw out something more to fit the mandatory criteria and 2 optional criteria. Take more time to read the guideline, see all examples, and think about what could have been your evidence that you can go and search/look/ask for.
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I felt a bit low for a while but as he mentioned that I may be able to draw something out of it.
So I did my research based on the feedback.
Finally,
It was a long and arduous journey, but I finally received my GTV (Global Talent Visa) for the UK. As I sat back to reflect on my journey, I realized how much I had accomplished to reach this point.
It all started with my work on several global projects, which left an imprint in the media world. My work was published in top 25 print media platforms, including the Times of India, Economic Times, Hindustan Times, and Money Control. Although my name was not mentioned directly, the media had taken my pictures while I presented to a national audience. I used these pictures to prove that it was indeed me alongside the CEO and president.
I also had six letters of recommendation (LORs), but I only used the best ones that suited my story. One of these LORs was from the CEO of a company based in Japan with whom I worked closely to deploy a project. He was kind enough to give me a letter that corroborated my claims.
Another project that I worked on involved writing optimized algorithms that resulted in a 99.75% reduction in computational costs to efficiently run machine learning algorithms. I specifically mentioned the project where the algorithm took 28 days to run, but I made it run in just 98 seconds. My work was appreciated across the company in the UK, and I have email evidence to support this.
Additionally, I had experience speaking at various events, which I summarized in a three-page document with hyperlinks to the events wherever required. I was also offered a PhD at MDX for my work in the ML field, and I have the email evidence from the Dean of the University to prove it.
Back in India, I had contributed to an AI/IoT/Blockchain ssytem and design patent that was granted in 2020. My name shows up in the patent document, and I took screenshots of it and attached hyperlinks to the document.
I also hyperlinked the videos that are a piece of evidence wherever possible.
Lastly, I worked for a company where I contributed to their IP, and now that company got acquired for $5 million. The CEO of the company gave me an LOR, and I linked my work that was in the public domain.
With all this evidence of my accomplishments, I was able to successfully apply for a GTV, and I am now excited to start the next chapter of my life in the UK.