LONG conversation with my caseworker

[JhonnyECU]

Dear all,

i am sorry to inform this but my application was refused again!

I can NOT understand my timeline:

20 may Application received in Doncaster
24 may email received from hsmp costumer team confirming receipt
25 may decision made!! interesting to know it took my caseworker less than 24 hours to read 182 pages of my application...speed reading classes anyone?
15 june (today) email received from hsmp costumer team informing a decision has been made and documents were on their way
15 june (today) spoke for 32 minutes over the phone with my caseworker

well, i had written a LOOOONG post which someway got erased somewhere in cyberspace while trying to send it to the board ...so i have to write it again...i will summarize this time:

basically, i wrote that i went to call the hsmp team immediately after i received this email earlier today.

Dear Jhonny

A decision has already been made on your application and a decision letter
has been despatched by airmail together with your documents.

after some 20 tries, a nice girl answered the phone (00441142591894), confirmed my info and gave me the bad news...my decision had been refused again!

i remained very calmed and very politely asked to be transfered to my caseworker. waited for one minute on hold and heard this nice woman's voice greeting me.

during the first 30 seconds, after introducing myself and building some positive rapport with her, i asked her to explain me the reasons why she had taken her decision. "you have only 45 points" she said.

5 age
25 work experience (they awarded me the points this time)
15 BA
0 Master (Naric does not consider my spanish masters comparable to british standars. full explanation below)
0 Significant Achievement ("my evidence was not sufficient and independent")

knowing how important this person is, i treated her as if she was an old girlfriend of mine. i kept a nice, positive, and polite tone of voice even with some inspired humour at some points!

well, the result was brilliant. she was tremendously cooperative and gave me some nice tips to include in my free review! she was also "very sorry for refusal"


regarding my NARIC problem:

on 12 april UK NARIC sent me a Comparability Information with the following info about my Master in Theory and Practice of the Creative Documentary awarded in 2003 by the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain:

Assessment: No comparability available
Additional information: This is a qualification awarded by the home university rather than a nationally awarded qualification, we are therefore unable to provide assessment for this qualification. I therefore recommend you present this qualification directly to potential employers or admitting institutions for their consideration.

During this long conversation i managed to get some answers from her and gave her some possible solutions. one of them was "what if i have someone in UK NARIC call you and explain my 'special case'?" she said "we do what naric tell us!" i said "well, then i will call naric right after this. hopefully, i get some helpful person like you"

so, dear people, it all depends if "some angel" in uk naric decides to help me or at least explain my caseworker the guidelines they work with: "UK Naric is only able to assess overseas awards which constitute national standars in the country of origin". well, that is a bit complicated in my case because according to a an email from Naric Spain (included in my application) "The masters degrees are not currently official degrees in spain (on the diplomas state "Home University degree"). However, these degrees are prestigious in the labor market"

now the question is, how can i make these people in uk naric explain this to my caseworker, since the Spanish educational system has not formally recognised "master qualifications"???

it seems like as long as i get some nice person tehre to help me, i would be fine with these further ten points!!

now, regarding the Significant Achievement documents:

this part of the conversation was revealing. she said "not too many people get the points here" i said "id like to see what kind of evidence you get from applicants" she said, almost laughing "if you saw what i receive for these points" i said "i guess you get some pictures of people standing in front of the big ben kind of evidence, right" she laughed...then she said "your evidence was quite strong, i remember. i went to double check with some of my managers" i thougth to myself"what the F... they did not even read what i wrote". how can any of you explain that she assessed my 182-pages long application in ONE day?


i wrorte a detailed cover letter for this section about all the documents provided under this section

as far as i can understand from the guidelines:

the ecuadorian short film award is:

A recognised artistic achievement (in my case by the two most important cultural institutions in Ecuador, and senior people in the field, along with the dean of my university and peers)

influential (it has been an "encouraging example" and "influential to his peers")

detailed below is a part of the Cover letter for this section:

This film award, artistic achievement, has been publicly recognised on a national level; my work has been acknowledged as “influential to his peers”(p.50) , and as “an encouraging example for his counterparts in Ecuador” (p.51) by the two most important cultural institutions in Ecuador, the “Ministry of Culture”(p.50) and the “Ecuadorian House of Culture”(p.51)

In order to support this achievement, I provided seven pieces of evidence:

1. Industry prize (Ecuadorian short film best director award)
2. Academic reference ( USFQ TV Dean)
3. Industry Reference x 3( Ministry of Culture, House of Culture, Sebastian Cordero -best filmmaker in my country- Letter)
4. Press article (El Comercio -most reputable newspaper in Ecuador)
5. Influential (Filmica)

so, if i manage to make them read about my achievement this time and someone in uk naric to help me, i would get the 70 points i need to qualify, if not i am a fried monkey!


well, friends, lets all hope this helps in any way to you.

all suggestions, critics, ideas, tips and telephones from your cousins, friends, uncles working in uk naric are MORE than welcome!!

will keep you updated

best for all

jhonny

[JhonnyECU]

Hi folks,

i forgot to mention that during this conversation i manage to get my caseworker direct telephone number and email.

last years caseworkers would get in contact with the applicants, sometimes asking for some extra info...i think that doesnt exist anymore and now we have to fight to get this contact info. i wonder what happens if the people who are waiting try to get in touch with their respective caseworkers?

wish the best for you

jhonny

[bani]

hi jhonny, sorry to hear about your second refusal. i really hope you are able to get the points through the free appeal after all the effort you have put through your application and i do feel you deserve the points you are claiming. once again your post is full of very helpful advice about communicating with your caseworker and even getting her direct contact info - i'm sure a lot of posters/readers appreciate this.

did she say why you did not get the achievement points? what is lacking?

also, i hope you are able to get NARIC to get you the 25 points, as it does sound crucial. the letter stating that the masters degrees are not considered official in spain sounds discouraging -- but they must have some entrance and graduation requirements and if you can show (to NARIC) that these are comparable to the requirements for a british masters degree, that could help. is there anyone at the spanish university or spain's naric equivalent who can give you a list of these?

that's all i can think of for now. best of luck to you, jhonny.

[JhonnyECU]

Hi Bani,

thank you for your ideas. i did not expect anything to give me problems this time... but hey, what is winning without fighting, huh?

Bani wrote:

did she say why you did not get the achievement points? what is lacking?

well, the conversation got developped like a "spaguetti", which means i would jump from subject to subject trying not to say something that would blow up in my face and trying to be so nice as possible doing a couple of psychological tricks, for her to feel what was to be in my shoes so she would give me a couple of hints.

the one thing that motivates me now, is my assumption that she did not even read all the documents i had sent. i say this because when i started to describe what my significant achievement was and which institutions and senior people have acknowledged it in my country, she said "ah that sounds good, wait, i do remember your case, you had very strong evidence..."

she also said she had some managers check on that. did she, really?

i would like to believe that since i was not going to get the points from my masters, and therefore score only 60 (even if the rest of the application was perfect) she did not pay that much attention after she assessed the Education section.

this might make sense since any of us, as caseworkers, would avoid all the hassle of reading so many pages knowing the applicant will not qualify. there have been MANY members here showing us how WRONG the caseworkers operate sometimes! not to mention the dozens of applications arriving on your desk every day!

she took one day to read 182 pages!! i wonder what happens if an applicant sends some, say, 10 pages (2 diplomas, 1 employment letter of 6 years, taxes, job offer, etc) the poor applicant might get refused in 2 minutes while the caseworker is preparing her coffee to start the day, glancing at the reference letter without a detailed job duties list, i think!

bani wrote:

also, i hope you are able to get NARIC to get you the 25 points, as it does sound crucial. the letter stating that the masters degrees are not considered official in spain sounds discouraging -- but they must have some entrance and graduation requirements and if you can show (to NARIC) that these are comparable to the requirements for a british masters degree, that could help. is there anyone at the spanish university or spain's naric equivalent who can give you a list of these?

well, this is my nice mission for these coming days. i have spain naric phone number. will call them tomorrow and also the senior officer who sent me her certificate from uk naric. my caseworker agreed that it would be sufficient "if uk naric notifies her that my spanish master could be comparable to the masters in the uk". it is ironic that my BA from Ecuador has all the possible same standards as one in the UK but not my european master!!!

any ideas from other members are MORE than welcome!!

thanks a lot for replying, i DO need all the possible help and solutions to write an intelligent, structured and powerful review letter.

best for all

jhonny

[lightbringer]

Hey Jhonny,
Sad things you are telling us about your second refusal. I guess you're probably right thinking that the caseworker didn't bother to read all your significant achievement section. You've got a pretty long and solid application, 182 pages, wow!!! And I am afraid that it could have played against you. Can you tell, how many of those 182 were related to you significant achievement section?
Anyway, as you managed to get such I nice conversation with your caseworker, may be she has realized that she was probably not objective to you (you could have become little more that a name on a paper, but a real guy, quite polite and friendly with a good english). So, in case, she just skipped your achievements, on the review you can have more luck...
But, as she said, this particular section has alway been very tricky, and not much people managed to score points on it... As far as I know, those who did often had to argue for that specific point, sending additional documents, like department chart, hierarchy etc...
I think, if you can find an exact paragraph in the caseworker guidelines consearning your achievements, and directly state in the covering letter your reasons for claiming these points and also print in CAPITAL BOLD letters that those points are crucial for your case and ask them to pay high attention to it...
So may be this will work at your free review? You are not allowed to add/remove anything, but this you can do. And off course all the best wishes to you in your NARIC adventure! I don't have any ideas at that point, you just need to be lucky and that's all. Your case shows that sometimes it is better to have your diploma NARIC-assessed before submitting docs to HO.

Please keep us updated how it goes. It seems that from all the Quests, yours is one of the most challenging!!

Hope, we drink a couple of beers in some of the London's pubs when we both struggle though it

Good Luck!

[bani]

hopefully, the letter from HSMP will give you more ideas on specific points they are looking for. so i also suggest that you wait for that before sending in your review.