Tech Nation

Dec 13th, 2021

Jul 24th, 2021

I didn't get an apprenticeship from this place, was supposed to do my functional skills, it didn't happen, we just done course work and was given a certificate in business related subject in return.. many people did get an apprenticeship however, I chased up with them and they had left as they were mislead and were not doing the job they were initially applying for at all, on top of that many had been treated not great. I felt this place had wasted my time in full honesty.
Feb 3rd, 2020

Jan 16th, 2019

This place is a scam. I applied for endorsement for the global talent visa and got declined for a number of absurd reasons. The recommendation letter from my CEO was focused on exemplifying my experience and contribution as recommendation letters should be. The reviewer said he didnt explain what I would be doing which I highlighted in my personal statement which is what that was for. We didnt want to overlap and deliberately kept his recommendation letter focused on me while I focused on what our business would do. They said due to this discrepancy, my statement of our future plans werent credible despite not even bothering to follow up with the CEO. The other recommendation letters described my contributions that demonstrated I had promise and the reviewer said the letters were generic and light in detail. With the limit of 3 pages, Im not sure how long and how specific in details they wanted. They explained what I did, the results of what I did and how it contributed to their business. It just didnt say exactly how I did it and kinda hard to ask CEOs of other businesses to write a full essay of exact details. It wouldnt be unfair to expect Tech Nation to follow up with these people which is why they all included emails and phone numbers as requested in their application form. I put my speaking engagements and as parts of the talk, I spoke about the security, risk, and fraud issues that our clients experienced while using our product. These are real world fraud examples that helped attendees. The reviewer wrote it had to be unrelated/outside of my occupation but most speaking engagements in the world links back to your work. I was also told despite being a lead speaker in the session, I had to be a keynote speaker. No where in the entire Tech Nation visa guide does it state your speaking engagements have to be keynotes. Actually the word keynote doesnt even appear in the entire visa guide. It states very clearly in the Tech Nation visa guide to provide financial documentation and proof of earnings to enable Tech Nation to assess the strength of your application but there is no category in the application form to include financial documentation, employment contracts, company ownership documents etc. Instead, when I included these documents in my application, they said it was irrelevant and also not compelling or sufficient. The information and process of applying provided by Tech Nation is already a mess but there is a clear disconnect from the very information they have provided in the visa guide to the information they deem acceptable. The feedback in the proforma wasnt constructive and provided no information on what would be deemed acceptable. The overall feedback seemed biased and even at times angry and hostile. I understand if there were parts I could improve on but it gave me nothing. Actually despite recommendation letters from 3 tech CEOs that demonstrated my contributions as well as being invited and having spoke at an international global tech conference plus a bunch of other supporting documents, I apparently didnt meet a SINGLE criteria for emerging tech talent. Not ONE. They just looking to take your application fee but you have to be Elon Musk creating reusable rockets to be deemed acceptable. Guess we will expand our business into Germany instead which is probably better as its at least part of the EU.Update: I just found out two days before they sent my outcome that Tech Nation will close and everyone will lose their jobs due to funding being pulled and given to Barclays Bank. Serves them right. They like to brag about how integral they were but the reality is, the only reason they were even relevant is because they had a monopoly and the UK government forced people to engage with Tech Nation. Sitting on the privilege of taxpayer funds, they close as soon as funding is pulled which shows they cant create a professional and sustainable enterprise like Y-Combinator or 500 Startups in the USA. When Barclays is the lesser of two evils, it says a lot about Tech Nation.
Feb 17th, 2023