My 🇬🇧 Global Talent Experience (Developer Community Manager Edition)

I got endorsed as a Global Talent on the 26th of April 2024. It took me roughly 7 weeks to gather the documents for submission, and exactly 2 weeks after I applied, I received an endorsement letter from the UK Home Office.

My aim in writing this piece is to give a headstart into what it looks like applying for the Global Talent endorsement as a Developer Community Manager (or a DevRel person).

Some background

I am a Developer Community Manager with 4 years of experience building, and managing developer and open source communities. I started as a front-end web developer intern in 2018 and transitioned to Community Management in 2021. I’ve worked full-time for a number of international organizations (US-based) since then, written several developer-focused articles, and spoken at countless events within the tech ecosystem. Aside from my full-time job as a Community Operations Manager at Consensys, I’m an ardent volunteer and have directly contributed to programs and initiatives that have impacted over 40,000 young people, including women and children globally.

I love to teach and share what I learn, and while I haven’t fully answered my divine calling yet, I hope the coming paragraphs shines some rays of possibilities your way.

This article is split into two. The first part will detail some of the essential things you need to know about the Global Talent visa, and the second, will be showing you the requirements for the application and some of the documents I submitted to get endorsed. There may be a second part to this article, which will delve into Stage 2 of the application, but I’m not sure. I figured stage 2 needs its piece because we couldn’t find much help for persons moving with dependents online during our stage 2 application.

In a nutshell, here’s the table of content

• What is a Global Talent Visa?
• Who is eligible for a Global Talent Visa?
• What are the benefits of a Global Talent Visa?
• How much does it cost?
• What are the requirements for getting an endorsement?
• What documents did I submit as a Developer Community Manager?
• Resources

What is a Global Talent Visa?

The Global Talent visa is a UK immigration category for talented and promising individuals in academia or research, arts and culture, or the digital technology sector wishing to live and work in the UK. To be considered for entry under the Global Talent visa, you must apply to get endorsed by one of six endorsing bodies engaged by the UK Home Office. This article is limited to the digital technology category and the body responsible for providing endorsement is Technation. (I can’t advise on the others).

There are two options for applicants when applying for Global Talent

• Exceptional promise — for emerging and potential tech talents, with a maximum of 5 years experience in the tech industry
• Exceptional talent — for experts and industry leaders with over 5 years of experience in the tech industry.

The two categories are slightly similar, except that their criteria for endorsement differs also, Global talents who have exceptional promise will need to live and work in the UK for 5 years before they can qualify for the UK permanent residence (ILR), whereas for the exceptional talents, they only need to be in the UK for 3 years before they can qualify for the UK permanent residence.

Who is eligible for a Tech Nation Global Talent endorsement?

There are two categories of people who work in tech (or more). We have very technical people — programmers, cybersecurity specialists, machine learning engineers etc. We also have non-technical people who work in the business side of the tech ecosystem — Product managers, community managers, social media managers etc. These two categories of persons are eligible to apply for the Technation Global Talent visa, as long as you meet the other criteria that we’ll be discussing soon. According to the official Technation documentation (Please read this guide thoroughly), non-technical applicants from non-technical organizations are not eligible. To further explain with an example, a social media manager who manages the social media pages of a hotel is not eligible, whereas, a social media manager who manages the social media pages of Flutterwave is eligible. The difference is that, while a hotel cannot be classified as a tech company (it’s a hospitality business), Flutterwave is a tech company.

What are the benefits of a Global Talent Visa?

So many. In addition to every other benefit you get by relocating to the UK, the Global Talent Visa enable you to live and work in the UK with your family (dependents). You can run a business if you choose, it’t limitless, and you’re not tied to any employment contract. After a few years (3 for exceptional talent, and 5 for exceptional promise), you’re eligible to apply for the Indefinite Leave to Remain. Also, the moment you get endorsed by Tech Nation, your chances of getting a visa acceptance increases to 98% for you and your dependents (source: I no go lie give you). Seriously though, visa applications with a Tech Nation endorsement rarely get rejected cos they consider you a Global Talent. So if you ask me, this is one of the best visa routes to relocate to the UK as it’s super flexible.

How much does it cost?

At the time of my application, it cost £ 567 (non-refundable fee) for your initial application for endorsement. If your application to get endorsed gets rejected, you’re entitled to write an appeal, disputing their decision and clarifying with more pieces of evidence why you think they judged you in error. This appeal is completely free. If your appeal gets rejected, you’ll need to make a fresh application after 6 months, which attracts a fresh fee.

After you receive an endorsement, you’ll need to pay £217 to apply for your visa and £1035 for the IHS surcharge (per annum). If you’re travelling with dependents, each of them must pay £767 (totalling the endorsement fee and the visa fee) and the IHS surcharge for each dependent.

What are the requirements for getting an endorsement?

Aside from the eligibility criteria already explained above, you need to fulfil the mandatory criteria below

• show that you have been recognised as a leading/potential talent in the digital technology sector in the last 5 years.

You also need to provide pieces of evidence of any two of the following (Optional criteria)

• innovation as a founder of a product-led digital technology company or as an employee working on a new digital field or concept
• a proof of recognition for work beyond your occupation that contributes to the advancement of the field
• you have made significant technical, commercial or entrepreneurial contributions to the field as a founder or employee of a product-led digital technology company
• you have demonstrated exceptional ability in the field by academic contributions through research endorsed by an expert.

For each of these criteria above, you need to submit a minimum of 2 pieces of evidence (documents), alongside the following:

1. 3 recommendation letters from three different well-established individuals acknowledged as experts in the digital technology field, with detailed knowledge of your work over 12 months or more. These letters must be signed with DocuSign.
2. Your personal statement of not more than 1000 words. Your statement should tie in every single piece of evidence you’ve shared in your documents, including your recommendation letters. It’s advised to write it last.
3. Your CV.

Please always refer to this page for more clarity.

What documents did I submit as a Developer Community Manager?

When it became clear that I was going to apply for the Tech Nation Global Talent Endorsement, I started gathering my pieces of evidence. This is how I split my documents across the mandatory and optional criteria:

Mandatory Criteria

How do I demonstrate that I have been recognised as (or recognised as having the potential to be) a leading talent in the digital technology sector in the last 5 years?

I submitted 4 documents in fulfilment of this criteria. Since it is a mandatory criterion, I didn’t want to take any chances, so despite the minimum of documents being 2, I submitted 4, and they are:

• Evidence showing that I led the growth of a non-profit organization
• A reference letter from the founder of the non-profit listed above to corroborate my story.
• Evidence of high salary and bonuses (Payslips up to 6 months, + proof that this salary is above average in Nigeria and Cameroon (my country of residence)).
• Pieces of evidence showing published materials, including publications featuring my work.

Optional Criteria

For the optional criteria, I chose to provide evidence for optional criteria 2 and 3. (Remember, you’re to choose any 2 criteria from the optional category, and present a minimum of 2 pieces of evidences for each of them).

Optional Criteria 2: 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?

Here are the documents I submitted:

• Evidences showing talks and conference presentations outside work
• Evidences showing open source contributions
• Evidences proving that I’ve mentored individuals in the tech industry

As you can see, I shared 3 pieces of evidence in this category.

Optional Criteria 3: How do I demonstrate that I have made a significant technical, commercial or entrepreneurial contributions to the field as a founder, senior executive, board member or employee of a product-led digital technology company?

• Evidences showing my contributions to a product-led organization
• A reference letter from the CEO of the above-mentioned organization emphasizing my contributions to my team and the company
• My employment contract at the org above

I need to emphasize that you don’t have to arrange your documents like mine, neither do you need to submit all the documents that I shared above.

In total, I ended up submitting 10 pieces of evidences for the mandatory and optional criteria, where as the minimum is 6 (Maximum is 10). With 6 pieces of strong evidences, you’ll be fine.

Extras:

• Use Canva (A4 size) or Figma for putting your evidences together. You need to be able to play around with texts, images and margins and word documents don’t afford you such flexibility.
• Write proper descriptive titles for each of your evidences, alongside the criteria it is satisfying. For example, a good title should look like this: Mandatory Criteria: Evidence of High Salary and Bonuses. Name the documents the same way.
• Avoid too many long stories in your evidence. It’s called “evidence” for a reason. Tell your story with pictures, screenshots, and impact data. Show proof of ‘your’ work. Let your evidence tie to you. If you’re sharing the chart of a company’s growth, also show proof that you directly contributed to this growth.
• If you can, get reference letters to back up some of your claims. As you can see from my evidence above, I got 2 reference letters where they mattered to me. It’s easy for anyone to say they work at an org, but having the founder/CEO or your manager vouch for you and your impact goes a long way.
• Be patient with your referees, and recommenders. Provide a draft for some of them to facilitate the process.
• Your evidence can include email screenshots, chats, GitHub repository, stats, pictures, slack messages, social media posts, blog post screenshots, newspaper screenshots etc. Fetch those evidences.
• Ensure that the people providing you with recommendation letters occupy senior or C-level roles in the tech space. Bonus if they have an online presence and are “Google-able”. They must have worked with you, mentored you, or known you to some extent. This will ensure that the story they tell is authentic.
• Ensure your personal statement is coherent with the rest of your application. It is recommended to write it last after you’ve put all your documents together.
• Please read the Tech Nation Guide page as many times as you deem fit. I can’t count the number of times I had to read through it, and each time, I got something new. Even before I hit the final send button, I read through the guide page. It’s much better to read before submission than realise you made a mistake after you’ve submitted your application.
• If you feel you don’t have the requirements right now, then give yourself some time to get them in place. Please don’t falsify documents for your application as it’ll negatively impact your future chances of moving to the UK if you’re found out.
• Get a second eye to proofread your CV, recommendation letters, and personal statements. And if possible, get a Global talent to review your documents (They may ask for a fee)
• I think this is the point where I give a shoutout and a big thank you to my husband, who went through all my documents, provided great feedback, and even rewrote so many sections at some point. Thank you, Precious, Mrs B. A, Italo, Ada N.O, Samson and Yoma for being a valuable part of my journey. I abbreviated their names for privacy reasons, but I owe you all a truckload of thanks.
• Everything in this extra section is my personal opinion. Please feel free to use your discretion.

Resources

• Tech Nation Forum: Feast on the posts. Read posts from rejected applications. Also, read posts about accepted applications. The answers to every question you have is probably in here.
• Tech Nation Guideline Page: Adding this again for emphasis.

I wish you all the best ♥️

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