Everyone asks this question, and the answer is frustratingly vague: it depends.
When applying for the Global Talent Visa, understanding the necessary evidence can significantly improve your chances of success.
But let me make it less vague regarding the Global Talent Visa.
The Core Documents
You’ll need a personal statement, a CV, and three recommendation letters. That part is universal across all endorsing bodies.
Applying for the Global Talent Visa requires a comprehensive understanding of your field.
Your personal statement should be one to two pages explaining what you’ve achieved, why it matters, and what you plan to do in the UK. Not your life story. Not a philosophical treatise on your field. Just clear, concrete achievements mapped to the specific criteria your endorsing body cares about.
In particular, your achievements related to the Global Talent Visa will be critical.
The CV needs to be achievement-focused rather than responsibility-focused. Nobody cares that you were “responsible for leading a team.” They care that you led a team that shipped a product used by 100,000 people or published research cited 500 times.
Recommendation letters should come from people who actually know your work. Senior people in your field, ideally. They need to speak to specific achievements and explain why those achievements matter. Generic letters praising your work ethic are worthless.
Understanding the Global Talent Visa Requirements
The Evidence Portfolio
This is where things get specific to your field and your endorsing body.
For Tech Nation, you’re proving either that you’re already a recognized leader in digital technology or that you’re an emerging leader with exceptional promise. That means showing things like products you’ve built, open source contributions, technical writing, conference talks, patents, or evidence of commercial success.
One software engineer we worked with had no awards and no formal publications. What he had was a GitHub project with 15,000 stars, three technical blog posts that each got over 100,000 views, and speaking slots at two major developer conferences. That was enough because it demonstrated both impact and recognition.
For the Royal Society or British Academy, you’re usually talking about academic research. Publications matter here, obviously. But they care about citation counts, journal impact factors, and whether your research is actually influencing your field. A PhD with two papers in top-tier journals and 300 citations can be more compelling than someone with twenty papers nobody reads.
Arts Council England wants to see your creative work and its impact. Exhibitions, performances, commissions, awards, critical reviews, audience reach. A filmmaker might show festival selections, distribution deals, and critical reception. A fashion designer might show collections, press coverage, and commercial success.
Royal Academy of Engineering looks for innovation and impact in engineering. Patents, technical leadership roles, products that solved real problems, contributions to industry standards, that sort of thing.
What Counts as Evidence
Here’s what surprises people: internal company achievements can absolutely count if you can demonstrate their significance.
Built a tool that saved your company two million pounds annually? That counts. Led the engineering team that scaled infrastructure for 10 million users? That counts. Designed an internal system that got written about in tech blogs? That definitely counts.
The key is proving the impact. Screenshots showing usage metrics. Testimonials from colleagues or clients. Media coverage. Revenue data. Anything that shows your work mattered beyond just you saying it did.
Conference presentations count, even at smaller conferences. Technical writing counts, even on Medium or your own blog if you can show the reach. Open source contributions count if the projects are actually used by others. Mentoring and community leadership can count if you’ve got evidence of the impact.
How Much Is Enough
Prospective candidates must carefully assess their qualifications for the Global Talent Visa.
Understanding how you fit the criteria for the Global Talent Visa can shape your application strategy.
There’s no magic number. We’ve seen people approved with three really strong pieces of evidence and others who needed ten moderately strong pieces.
What matters is whether you’re clearly meeting the criteria for either Exceptional Talent or Exceptional Promise. Talent means you’re already recognized as a leader. Promise means you’re on a clear trajectory to becoming one.
If you’re unsure whether what you have is enough, that’s exactly the kind of question a proper assessment answers. Most people either overestimate or underestimate their evidence. Very few guess correctly.
The Organization Matters
Having strong evidence isn’t enough if it’s presented poorly. Everything needs to be clearly mapped to the specific criteria your endorsing body uses. They shouldn’t have to hunt through your documents trying to figure out which criterion each piece of evidence addresses.
This is where most self-filed applications fall apart. Great achievements, terrible organization. The endorsers give up trying to piece it together and reject the application.
Think of your evidence portfolio like making a legal case. You’re not dumping information on someone’s desk and hoping they figure it out. You’re presenting a clear argument with supporting evidence organized by the points you’re proving.
That’s the difference between applications that get decided in three days and applications that sit in review for eight weeks before getting rejected.
Not sure if your evidence is strong enough? Book a consultation to get an honest assessment of what you have and what might be missing. Or take our free assessment for preliminary feedback on your profile.
