Please share with us your professional life’s journey and at which point in your career did you aspire to enrol in this certificate?

Upon graduation, I joined Micron as a process engineer, where I learnt many valuable lessons and tools that are useful to my area of work especially, productivity improvement and quality assurance. This prompted me to pursue and enrol myself in the Graduate Certificate in Fintech Essentials. As I wanted to develop myself in the tech space and apply the knowledge gained from the courses of this graduate certificate, I recently joined a startup company, Hyperganic as an algorithmic engineer.

Has this certificate benefitted you in your career development?

This certificate definitely benefitted me in my current role as an algorithmic engineer. The knowledge and applications of different mathematical concepts and codes from the courses have broadened my perspective on how algorithms are being used today and the versatility of machine learning. Time and project management were also the valuable skills that I have acquired through my lifelong learning journey.

What were the challenges you faced when trying to complete this certificate, and how did you juggle working life with your studies?

My biggest challenge was time management. Studying while working a full-time job was definitely difficult for me to manage. I was working at a 12-hour night shift at Micron during the time when I was studying for this graduate certificate, and I had to sacrifice personal time with family and friends so that I can focus on my individual and group assignments. Although some of the lectures clashed with my working hours such that I had to make adjustments to my schedule, I would say my interest in the subjects taught in the graduate certificate kept me motivated to continue my studies.

Could you share with us some interesting facets of the certificate you enrolled?

I enjoyed the fact that this certificate has brought about new opportunities I believe I would not be presented with had I not enrolled. Furthermore, the interesting concepts and theories of fintech such as the future of bitcoin were discussed back then during my lectures, which became one of the hottest topics today. This certificate helped me in seeing the advent of such technologies.

Which aspect of this certificate do you like the most?

This certificate allowed individuals such as myself with limited financial and coding background to quickly pick up the essentials. The fintech aspect as well as machine learning and data science courses were beneficial for me in picking up the basics and becoming more proficient in these subject matters. The courses in this certificate also allowed us to work on projects that helped us to learn and apply the knowledge in different cases.

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