If you have ten people you can ask to write you a Recommendation letter, it does not mean you should ask all of them. Additionally, if you only know three people who will write you recommendation letters, that can be enough. This article will help you plan and strategize for who to ask to write you a recommendation letter and how to meet the significant recognition requirement with as little as 3 recommendation letters, based on these 4 considerations: 1) the expert’s qualifications, 2) the expert’s familiarity with your work, 3) how much the expert likes you, and 4) how much the expert likes your work.
- Expert’s Qualifications - Choose someone who has at least one or more of the following: distinguished education, awards, distinguished clients, and strong online search results.
Distinguished Education means the went to an Ivy League School, Top Design School, School with Distinguished Alumni, or a school name most people outside the industry are familiar with as being top for the industry. They need to have won some award; it does not have to be the most prestigious but there are some select criteria they need to have met to receive the award. They should have some household, instant recognition named clients in their portfolio - names that even someone who knows nothing about the industry might have heard about somewhere. They need to be all over the internet so that when someone Google’s their name, articles and photos of the person come up. The more photos that come up, the better because photos make the person real to the USCIS officer and helps establish the Expert’s qualifications; and within a minute, the officer is convinced that the expert is an expert. The expert does not need to have all of these qualifications but at least one.
- Expert’s Familiarity With Your Work
The expert has to discuss your work in the expert letter. Therefore, the expert needs to have personally worked with you, hired you for a project, or has seen a portfolio of your work and can provide an expert evaluation of your talent based on your work. They need to be able to articulate their familiarity with your work and not just state that they think you are extraordinary because you asked them to write a letter of recommendation.
- How Much the Expert Likes You
Get a recommendation letter from someone who really likes you as a person, even if they are not the most distinguished in your list of people to ask, over someone, who is the most distinguished but you don’t have a personal connection with. Why? Sometimes an expert has very high qualifications but they are really busy, they just are not that excited to write the letter, or want you to draft it and they just want to sign something. Someone who really likes you as a person, will make the time to write the letter, they will add in details that will make the letter stand out, and they will be open to revisions. This is really important because then the letter will not be a generic letter that acts as a recommendation letter but rather, become a form of evidence that will create an argument for why your application should be approved.
- How Much the Expert Likes Your Work
On the flip side, if there is an expert who you only have a professional relationship with but they really love your work, get an expert letter from that person and have the letter focus on their familiarity with your work and what they love about it, and how that makes you extraordinary. They don’t have to love you to love your work; their love for your work will motivate them to write a strong letter.
5 Top Tips for Building an Expert Letter to Get an Approval for Your O-Visa Petition
You need to submit strong expert letters that make an argument for why you are extraordinary and your O-Visa should be approved, and not that the expert thinks you are a lovely person and extraordinary just because they use the word “extraordinary”. These 5 Tops Tips will help you build a strong expert letter that will clearly establish to the officer how and why you are extraordinary and they should approve your application.
- Establish the Expert’s Qualifications
- Establish their professional familiarity with your work
- Have the expert discuss a specific project or product of yours and highlight how it showcased your extraordinary abilities
- Have the expert review something in your portfolio and provide an assessment based on their expertise within the industry.
- Have the expert highlight what technical and specific skills make you stand out compared to others in the industry, within your age group, within your country, at your level of expertise.
3 Underutilized Criteria for Establishing Extraordinary Ability in the Sciences, Education, Business, and Athletics in an O-Visa Petition
This article will help you plan in meeting at least 3 of the O-Visa criteria by using 3 of the most underutilized criteria for establishing extraordinary ability. You can build a successful petition that gets approved by showing the following: 1) Judging or Panel experience, 2) Membership in a Distinguished Association, and 3) Being an Author.
- Judging or Speaking on a Panel
The O-Visa requirement is “participation on a panel or as a judge of the work of others in the same or allied field of specialization.” Become a judge or get yourself on a panel in either a competition, presentation, or event, in something in or related to your industry. The competition, presentation or event does not have to be distinguished and attended by 1000s of people. What is important is that you are invited to be a judge or presenter because of your qualifications. As a judge, you must show that your opinion played a role in some decision. As a presenter, you must show people came to the event and that people registered or paid to attend.
- Membership in a Distinguished Association
The O-Visa requirement is “Membership in associations in the field for which classification is sought which require outstanding achievements of members, as judged by recognized national or international experts in the field.” You cannot just join any organization or association in your field. Join an organization or association where you have to submit a detailed application and there are some selection criteria you must meet before you can even apply. You have to show that not everyone can be a member of that organization or association. Additionally, have a leadership position that plays a role in some critical events or running of the association that impacts people within the industry, who are not members of the association. Alternatively, you can also show that an association reached out to you to invite you to join because of your extraordinary qualifications, and that such an invitation is very rare. You must have proof of the invitation to join, the selection criteria for membership in the association, and evidence of how the association is distinguished or plays an important role in the industry.
- Being an Author
The O-Visa requirement is “Authorship of articles in the field as shown in professional journals or other major media.” If you write articles that are published in journals, magazines, newspapers, or some other media, you can satisfy this criteria. You have to have written material. You don’t have to publish in the most distinguished journals, magazines, newspapers, etc, but show as many published articles as you can. What you have to show is that your work was published, your name must appear in the publication, the publication must be in your industry, and the publication must have a following - either through their number of members, circulation numbers, subscribers, social media likes, etc.
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