Will Huawei working experience effect?

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Hi Community,

I’m applying for exceptional promise. I worked for 4 years in China and then I came to Edinburgh University to study as a PhD student in 2022.

For the first two years (2018-2020) of my career, I worked in Huawei (in Hangzhou, China). Considering the sanctions on Huawei and international relations, I’m quite worried if this experience will affect the application for the global talent visa. What should I do with this?

If anyone has related experience or knowledge?

Many thanks,
Pei

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Hi @Pei_Mu

You should apply if you have evidence and LORs to make a strong application.

Do not mention about sanctions in the application. The TN guidelines want evidences of work in product-led digital companies: they don’t mention any limitations due to sanctions or IR so best not to include this.

Focus your application on strong evidences in global product-led digital tech company.

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Hi @pahuja ,

Many thanks for your quick reply!

Let me try to understand. Huawei is a global product-led company in my humble opinion, so I can talk about my working experience in my application, and province enough evidence. But I don’t need to say any words about sanctions or limitations. Did I understand it correctly?

Thanks again,
Pei

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@Pei_Mu That’s Correct - I would approach it that way. Stick to TN guidelines (which dont mention any exceptions to IR and sanctions), make a strong application and go for it!

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Thank you so much @pahuja !

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Hi @Pei_Mu ,
You are right to be concerned whether or not your experience at Huawei will count as “product-led”. In my opinion, it depends on the nature & impact of the work you carried out and also how it is framed in the minds of the assessors. With large OEMs, you will need to spend a lot more effort to show how impactful you were as against to a founder of a startup. It is not impossible though. Just be aware, they are looking out for the main player in any innovation you put forward, not the supporting casts.

Also, you have a Phd. If this is in some sort of expert field , some of your research work , citations and things like that may also be helpful for your application. One of the optional criteria is designed for those with proof of academic excellence.

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Hi @badesemowo ,

Many thanks for your explanation and advice. In the website, it said the academic route candidate need to accept a job offer. But I may need one or two more years to graduate.
Anyway, thank you for everything.

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I believe @badesemowo was referring to OC4 on the global talent visa.

  • they have demonstrated exceptional ability in the field by academic contributions through research published or endorsed by an expert.

This doesn’t require a job offer, just proof of contributions.

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Hi there, on top of all the useful advice above, just want to let you know that I’ve heard about the case where an applicant built their application mainly around Huawei project experiences and got endorsed 2-3 years ago. (Sorry I have no more details otherwise I’d make a connection.) I’m aware the political climate has since changed but I think you should definitely give it a shot. In general agree with everyone that you should focus more on the global innovation/impact in your work.

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