What does the £200 Fit Assessment report actually contain?
The Fit Assessment is a written diagnosis of your endorsement readiness, not a leaflet or a generic checklist. It takes the documents you upload, scores them against the way the Digital Technology endorsement is actually assessed, and tells you plainly where you are strong, where you would most likely be refused, and exactly what to fix first. Everything below is a section you receive, in this order, in one branded PDF, supported by a companion XLSX evidence tracker and a live 45-minute review call.
It is deliberately built around the failure patterns that recur in real refusals: referees who are not senior enough, achievements described at team level without individual attribution, recognition that exists only inside your own employer, and evidence that falls outside the recent window. The report is organised so that each of those risks is surfaced and given an action, rather than left for you to discover after you have paid the government fees.
How is the score out of 20 and the band calculated?
The report opens with a single headline number: a score out of 20 and a readiness band that places you on a simple scale from "not ready yet" through to "strong". The score reflects how your current evidence maps to the mandatory criterion and the four optional criteria, weighted for the things assessors visibly reward — referee seniority, clear individual attribution, recency, and how product-led rather than purely service-led your experience reads.
What is the component-by-component breakdown?
The single score is only the headline. The heart of the report is the component breakdown, which scores you separately against each part of the endorsement so you can see precisely where the marks are being won and lost. This is the section applicants tell us changes how they think about their own case.
- Mandatory Criterion (MC) — how convincingly your evidence shows you are a leader or potential leader in the digital technology field, assessed on its own. It is entirely possible to pass several optional criteria and still fail here, so the MC is scored first and flagged hard if it is weak.
- Optional Criterion 1 (OC1) — innovation as a founder or senior contributor to a product-led digital technology company.
- Optional Criterion 2 (OC2) — recognition for work beyond your own occupation that contributes to the advancement of the field.
- Optional Criterion 3 (OC3) — significant technical, commercial or entrepreneurial contributions as a founder, employee or leader.
- Optional Criterion 4 (OC4) — a demonstrable track record of exceptional ability shown by academic or technical contributions.
The endorsement requires the mandatory criterion plus at least two of the four optional criteria, so the breakdown does not just score each criterion in isolation — it shows you which two optional criteria are your strongest realistic path, and which you should stop trying to force. Each component carries a short, specific written rationale, not a bare number.
Which route does the report recommend — Talent or Promise?
The report gives you a clear recommendation on whether to apply for Exceptional Talent or Exceptional Promise, with the reasoning behind it. This is not a matter of counting years; it is a judgement about how your evidence reads against the two standards, and it carries real consequences — the settlement timeline differs, at three years for those endorsed as established leaders and five years for those endorsed as potential leaders. Choosing the wrong standard is a common, avoidable reason a strong profile is presented badly, and the report is explicit about which one gives you the best chance and why.
What is the 10-document evidence plan?
The endorsement allows a maximum of 10 documents, each up to three sides of A4, with your CV and your three recommendation letters sitting outside that count. The report gives you a specific, slot-by-slot plan for those ten documents: what to place in each slot, which criterion it is there to satisfy, and why that particular artefact earns its place. Weak applications waste slots on duplicative or low-signal material; the plan is built to make every one of the ten do distinct work.
The plan is tailored to your field and your real artefacts — the evidence that carries weight for a founder is different from that for a senior engineer, a designer or a data specialist — so it names the kinds of documents that actually count for you, rather than a generic list. This is where the companion XLSX tracker earns its place: it turns the plan into a working checklist you can update as you gather each piece.
What does the letter and referee strategy cover?
Recommendation letters are one of the single most common reasons applications fail, so the report devotes a full section to them. It sets out how many letters you need (three), what makes a referee strong enough — genuine seniority, ideally at a product-led digital technology company, and independence from you — and, crucially, how the three letters should divide the work between them so they do not simply repeat one another or mirror your personal statement.
For your specific profile, the report identifies who among your realistic contacts would make the most credible referees, where your current shortlist is weak, and what each letter needs to evidence to be persuasive rather than generic. Vague, employer-internal or personal-statement-echoing letters are named as risks here, with the fix.
What is the integrity and risk register?
The report includes a plain-spoken integrity and risk register: the specific things in your current profile that an assessor could reasonably hold against you, listed so you can deal with them before you submit rather than discover them in a refusal notice. Recurring patterns it checks for include recognition that exists only inside your own employer, achievements claimed at team level without individual attribution, employer-paid or internal-only activity being offered as external recognition, and evidence that falls outside the recent window.
What does the gap analysis with actions look like?
Every weakness the report identifies is pulled together into a single prioritised gap analysis: the specific gaps between where your evidence is now and where it needs to be, each paired with a concrete action, and ordered so you know what to do first. It is written to be acted on — "commission a second referee from a product-led company", "replace the internal award with externally verifiable recognition", "move your strongest contribution into an MC-facing document" — rather than a vague encouragement to strengthen your case. If you go on to work with us, this gap analysis becomes the build plan; if you proceed alone, it is your roadmap.
Get the report that tells you the truth before you spend £766.
A written score, a full component breakdown, a route recommendation and a 45-minute walkthrough — credited to any package within 14 days.
What happens on the 45-minute review call?
The report is not handed over and abandoned. Included in the £200 is a 45-minute review call — a live walkthrough of your own report with someone who has read your evidence. You can interrogate every score, ask why a criterion was marked as it was, pressure-test the route recommendation, and turn the gap analysis into a plan you actually understand. It is the moment the written diagnosis becomes decisions: whether to proceed now or strengthen first, which route to take, and which two optional criteria to build around.
What do I download, and how?
After payment you receive two deliverables instantly, by secure personal download links that are also emailed to you:
The PDF is the readable report you keep; the XLSX tracker is the live working file that lets you manage the ten-document plan as you build it, ticking off each piece of evidence against the criterion it serves. The flow is upload first, receive a free preliminary read, then pay the £200 — you never pay before you have seen that a real assessment is possible.
Is the £200 wasted if I then buy a full package?
No. The £200 is credited in full to any package within 14 days. If the assessment shows you are ready and you choose to proceed with Done-with-you (from £2,500) or End-to-End (£4,500), the £200 comes straight off the price, so the report effectively costs nothing. It exists as a qualifier and a diagnosis first: a way to spend £200 to find out where you stand before you commit to anything larger, or before you risk the £766 in non-recoverable government fees on an application that is not ready.
Why will you not send me a sample report first?
Because the structure and the prose of the report are the product. A worked, redacted sample would simply be copied, and the value we build for paying clients would leak straight to competitors and to applicants trying to self-assemble a case. So we describe the report in full here — every section, in the order you receive it — and we prove its quality through the guarantees, the outcomes and the review call rather than by handing over a template. Once your own report is produced, you can interrogate all of it, line by line, on the 45-minute call. That is the honest version of "see it for yourself": you see your report, not a marketing mock-up.
Frequently asked questions
A written Fit Assessment report as a branded PDF and an XLSX evidence tracker, delivered by secure download links and email, plus a 45-minute review call. The report scores your profile out of 20 with a band, breaks the score down across the mandatory criterion and the four optional criteria, recommends Exceptional Talent or Exceptional Promise, sets out a 10-document evidence plan, gives letter and referee strategy, lists integrity and risk points, and ends with a prioritised gap analysis with actions.
Yes. The £200 is credited in full against any package within 14 days of your assessment, so the report effectively costs nothing if you proceed with Done-with-you, End-to-End or Concierge support.
No. We do not publish or share a sample or redacted report, because the structure and prose are the product and are easily copied. This page describes the report section by section instead, and the 45-minute review call lets you interrogate your own report in full once it is produced.
The score reflects how your evidence maps to the mandatory criterion and the four optional criteria, weighted for referee seniority, individual attribution, recency and how product-led your experience reads. It is an internal readiness indicator to show where you are strong and where you would most likely be refused — it is not a Home Office or Tech Nation score and does not guarantee any outcome.
After payment you receive the PDF and XLSX tracker instantly by secure personal download links, which are also emailed to you. The 45-minute review call is then booked at a time that suits you to walk through the findings and the action plan.
Related reading: how the £200 assessment works, our process end to end, the endorsement criteria (MC and OC1–OC4), the 10-document evidence rules, recommendation letters, services & pricing and the pain points hub.
Last updated: 6 July 2026. Fees, timelines and criteria verified against GOV.UK on 6 July 2026.