Do you think a 3-month tech up-skilling course is good enough for entry into ICT (FinTech, Cloud, Data etc) industry? I see alot of such programmes around (SGUS, Skillsfuture etc). Am abit skeptical.

Hello. Have personal experience in an SGUS Fintech course in NUS.

It is a 50:50 thing. You cannot just focus entirely on getting certifications only because they mean nothing if another 100 individuals possess the same qualifications as you. It only means something if you have works to show for it.

Yes, certifications do show that you possess the basic skills required to do the job, and they are one way to let future employers know that you are indeed qualified to do so. But, how would your potential employers further cement their decision to hire you if all you have are certifications?

This invites the question of if you are experienced enough, or have the practical skills to apply what you have learnt because honestly, anyone can be taking those certifications, it is another step to be applying them into projects while you are learning.

My experience was that I knew I had to apply my skillsets somehow or rather. I have had experience in Marketing. The certification was only to build a stepping stone into the Fintech industry and allowed me to gain knowledge and experience the basics. The rest was up to me - I started up my own blog writing articles relating to Fintech and Cryptocurrency, and that was what got me employed by my current employers.

You can read my story here.

Yes, the training gives the foundation for your learning and of course, you could also do some online training to complement through Coursera, eDX, Udemy , Udacity, Pluralsight, etc for basic courses. It also helps if you could get some of the certification — Cloud providers and application software providers like Amazon AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure, VMware, and Redhat provide skills certification that can be very useful.

-Gautam​​​