“Get yourself ready before contributing to industry”

December 14, 2022

A Story of Muhammad Rifqi Al Furqon, Bangkit 2022 Graduate from Informatics Engineering, Universitas Gunadarma

“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
Horace Jackson Brown, Jr., American Author

Becoming a digital talent is the dream of Muhammad Rifqi Al Furqon (21), a student at Universitas Gunadarma, majoring in Informatics Engineering. He did his best to be a ready-to-work tech talent to achieve his goal. Then, Bangkit turned out to be one of Rifqi’s stepstones toward his dream of kickstarting a career in the industry.

In Bangkit 2022, Rifqi registered for the Machine Learning path. He was eager to learn in this program because he wanted to be a Data Engineer after graduating. So, after taking 900 hours of journey in Bangkit, Rifqi successfully reaped many from this program.

When Bangkit Brought Forth a Bunch of “Cool Seniors” on Campus

On campus, Rifqi is a laboratory assistant who actively uses LinkedIn. For Rifqi, this social media plays a significant role in showing his portfolio so prospective recruiters can see his quality as a potential digital talent.

However, one day, Rifqi realized that he had to make more effort to become an excellent tech talent when he saw the LinkedIn posts of his seniors, Bangkit 2021 Graduates. His “cool seniors” posted lots of course completion certificates.

“On LinkedIn, I saw the posts of my seniors participating in Bangkit. They had a lot of course certificates from Coursera, which I knew were quite expensive. When I found out that they took these courses for free by joining Bangkit, I became interested in signing up.”

Another thing that prompted Rifqi to join Bangkit was his plan for an internship. He was aware that to be a ready-to-work intern, he needed to equip himself with industry-standard skills. Therefore, Rifqi was determined to join Bangkit 2022 because his goals were to follow in the footsteps of his “cool seniors” and become an intern with good quality.

Best Practices from Industry, Full Support from the University

When he was about to register for Bangkit, Rifqi saw that this program had three learning paths: Machine Learning, Mobile Development (Android), and Cloud Computing. Then, Rifqi chose Machine Learning because he wanted to launch a career as a Data Engineer, Data Analyst, or Data Scientist one day. So finally, after signing up for Bangkit, he was accepted into this program.

While learning for 900 hours in Bangkit, Rifqi faced a challenge. He strived to apprehend Mathematics for Machine Learning. Nevertheless, this obstacle encouraged Rifqi to examine learning material from one source and another, and he admitted that this exploration broadened his horizon.

“Although my learning process in Bangkit had one or two challenges, I was happy studying in this program because the ILT classes connected me to industry experts. The best practices from them were useful for my internship later.”

After being encouraged by industry experts with their best practices, Rifqi was supported by the university by giving him semester credit conversions. It boosted Rifqi’s spirit to make good progress in this program.

Reaped Many from Bangkit

After Bangkit, Rifqi gained a lot from this training ground. First, he became one of the Bangkit 2022 Distinction Graduates. This achievement allowed him to attend the offline event for Bangkit 2022 Graduation.

Then, Rifqi’s perseverance in Bangkit helped him obtain a TensorFlow Developer (TFD) certificate. He took this certificate while participating in the Grow with Google (GwG) Career Fair to apply for internship positions in the data field.

“The GwG Career Fair brought me together with Astra Financial. This event helped me get an internship position as a Data Engineer, who is responsible for researching how to manage metadata so that it can be automated and used by users. Insights about Python and Bash from Bangkit greatly contributed to my work.”

After various impacts that Bangkit has shed in his journey, Rifqi is determined to encourage Indonesian students to join this program and be serious in their process. There are three keys Rifqi is excited to share to be successful in becoming a Bangkit Distinction Graduate, getting global certification, and being hired as an intern.

“First, even though Bangkit let us determine our learning pace, we must still be disciplined and good at managing our time. Don’t finish assignments or courses near the deadline. Second, examine learning material from one source and another to broaden your horizons. Lastly, help your peers by answering questions on Discord because the best way of learning is teaching.”

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