As an educator, you never want your students to miss out on potential opportunities, and certification helps increase skills and confidence, allowing them to grab each new opportunity with gusto.
Waqas Ali knows the true power of certification. After competing in the MOS World Championship as a teenager, Waqas has gone on to do amazing things. Read on for Waqas’s account of how certification played a key role in his education and career.
Life passes by so quickly. It’s been five years since I first participated in the 2015 MOS World Championship in Dallas. I was a teenager back then with no idea where I was going to end up these five years later. I recently graduated from the University of Hong Kong and had an amazing experience in my last year working on a project involving Machine Learning on Distributed Systems. After I graduated, I had started working at Credit Suisse as a software engineer. I’m also incredibly excited about my side project, studentbase.app, that I hope to expand and grow in the future.
Over the past five years, I have been discovering myself by interning at a variety of places ranging from a tech firm, Microsoft, to a biotech startup, Grail, and finally an investment bank, Credit Suisse. The superb MOS Championship experiences in 2015 and 2016 ignited a competitive spirit which made me participate in around 15 more hackathons and competitions during my time at University of Hong Kong. I have spent all-nighters on projects ranging from blockchain solutions for credit scoring to computer vision for finding empty spaces in learning spaces. As a computer scientist and engineer, I love real-world problem-solving and the past few years have been satisfying indeed.
For students trying to find their career path, I would suggest coming up with a mini project in whatever piques your interest and do it from start to finish. Reading up about different paths is easy but the real fun lies in going deeper. Personally, growing up I had always liked the idea of computers but when it came to choosing computer science as a career I almost rejected it because I thought all it is, is just sitting all day in front of a screen and tapping keys monotonously. My perspective changed when one day during my high school years, I came upon an undergraduate Introduction to Computer Science course (Harvard CS50). I challenged myself to get the completion certificate and went through with it. That course helped lead me on the path to my current career.
Help your students find a fulfilling and successful career. Get them started with Microsoft certifications. Learn more here.