To apply for a Global Talent Visa, you usually have to get the endorsement from an endorsing body first. Tech Nation is the official Home Office designated endorsing body authorised to assess applications from candidates with digital technology-related expertise.
Thus, if you are a founder or an employee with technical or business backgrounds, including all tech sub-sectors (fintech, cyber, games, AI, etc.), Tech Nation will be your endorsing body.
An endorsing body (i.e. Tech Nation) assesses your skills, abilities and achievements as an Exceptional Talent (Leader) or an Exceptional Promise (Emerging Leader), and advises the Home Office whether you can be endorsed.
You must first apply for endorsement on the official Global Talent visa website and then also complete a Tech Nation application for assessment. In order for your application of endorsement to be valid you must submit your Tech Nation assessment form no later than 15 working days (an official deadline) after you submitted your Home Office application.
💬 Immigram notes:
“After two weeks, Tech Nation will send an email with a reminder and prolong the deadline to another 15 days, which makes it 30 days in total. However, it doesn’t matter much since Tech Nation refunds the paid fee, and the applicant can reapply. So, virtually there is no deadline.”
The Home Office will inform you if you have been endorsed by Tech Nation. If you are successful in receiving the endorsement, you can proceed to apply for the visa (Stage 2: Visa (Immigration) application).
The application for endorsement usually takes 5-8 weeks to be processed. Immigram’s clients often get the decision within 2-4 weeks, sometimes — as early as 3-4 days.
Note that the deadlines are prone to change.
If you can provide evidence of being accepted onto a current or future programme at one of the recognised UK accelerator programmes listed below, then your application is considered a "Fast Track", and you may get the decision in 3 weeks.
These accelerators are currently eligible for this Fast Track:
The endorsement application should have the following evidence:
Personal statement
As mentioned earlier, after submitting your endorsement application on the official Global Talent visa website, you will also need to complete the Tech Nation assessment form. This must include a personal statement (maximum 1000 words) explaining the contribution that you will make to the UK digital technology industry.
While writing a Personal Statement, according to Tech Nation Guidelines, a candidate for the endorsement has to answer the following questions and include the following information:
📌 Immigram recommends:
Although Tech Nation guidelines suggest the Personal Statement includes information concerning your plans for the UK digital technology sector and your personal reasons to move to the UK, the endorsee should approach the statement more creatively. For example, answering the question “What is your planned occupation in the UK?” is optional, and we never include the answer to “Which region or city of the UK are you planning to live in?”. We recommend showcasing specific examples and evidence of why you possess the characteristics of an Exceptional Talent or an Exceptional Promise. Obligatory points to be included in the Personal Statement — motivation for relocation and the potential benefits one can bring to the UK. Convince Tech Nation assessors why your achievements make you a perfect fit for the Global Talent visa criteria. For example, ‘I am applying for a Global Talent visa, and I pass the criterion of work outside of the immediate occupation because more than 500 people have completed my online course or because more than 100 people have attended my lecture.’” Emphasise the key projects, products or milestones you are using as your most exceptional cases and demonstrate your contributions and innovations with them. Also, make sure you included information on your outside occupations, and you are all set.
IMPORTANT: The Personal Statement must be submitted using the Tech Nation form and not uploaded as a separate document.
Learn more about how to write the personal statement here.
CV
According to Tech Nation, your CV should include your career experience/achievements and any relevant publication history.
📌 Immigram recommends:
CV is one of the most important documents in the application. Simple CV templates and downloading CV from LinkedIn is considered a bad practice.
IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that, in this case, your CV is not supposed to get you a job but to present you to Tech Nation as the Talent or the Promise.
Use screenshots, links, photos from conferences or other outside occupations (which is a big booster for the application), articles where necessary — everything that will help to showcase your talents or promising talents.”
Letters of recommendation
According to the Tech Nation Global Talent Visa guidelines, you need to provide three letters of recommendation.
📌 Immigram recommends:
“We at Immigram advise our clients to provide 4-5 reference letters. As we’ve learnt from working with Tech Nation, the assessors tend to diminish or disregard some letters. They sometimes say that the referee wouldn’t get the Global Talent Visa themselves. However, there’s nothing in Tech Nation’s guidelines proving this reasoning. We also advise adding General Recognition reference letters to your application signed by people who haven’t worked with you or interacted professionally. These letters proved to be a great way to show more general recognition of the applicant’s talent and potential in the industry itself.”
The letters must be from different organisations acknowledged as experts in the digital technology field.
Each referee should be a leading industry expert who knows your work.
💬 Immigram notes:
“A referee is not necessarily a senior member of the candidate’s organisation. They can hold a position of an ordinary Software Developer. If your referee is an SWE from Facebook or Google, most of the time, it’s better than a founder of a small-scale digital start-up.”
Each letter of recommendation must:
📌 Immigram recommends:
“The letters should say something that you wouldn’t be able to tell in your CV. The bad practice would be to write those letters without specific details. Best practice — to write them eloquently and praise the candidate.”
The letters must also:
Learn more about how to write the perfect recommendation letter here. For more information about who should sign the Letter — check out our other article.
Other Evidence
You can give up to 10 pieces of evidence to demonstrate you meet the Eligibility Criteria.
According to Tech Nation, you need to give both of the following:
📌 Immigram recommends:
“Use open-source contributions, mentorship projects, speeches and lectures at tech events, external activity, awards and grants (even old ones), blogs and articles. Everything that can prove the eligibility criteria can and should be attached to your application as a piece of evidence not via screenshots and links, but via concrete documental proof — signed confirmation letters, acknowledgement letters, testimonials from mentees or students.”
Read more about accepted examples of evidence here.
Who can skip the Stage 1: Endorsement application
You can apply for the visa without an endorsement if you have won an eligible award. For individuals with expertise in digital technology those awards are: ACM Prize in Computing and Turing Award. Both are awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
