A one-week challenge and success in receiving a major certification – Radhika Chittoor

I am Radhika Chittoor. I used to work as a before I took a career break. Now that I have decided to return to work, I want to tell you about one crucial week of my journey.

I took a career break in 2019. My son had just completed his tenth boards and started preparing for his Engineering entrance exams. These exams are extremely competitive and I knew the next few years would be crucial for him. That’s when I decided to take a break to help him prepare.

It was a tough decision. I had always enjoyed the thrill of deadlines and targets, and the excitement of interacting with different teams and customers. However, the break was worth it – my son did well and got into a reputed engineering college in the branch of his choice.

Now that he’s well on the path to achieving his dreams, it was time for me to get back to mine. However, I realised that if I wanted to get back into the workforce, I would need to upskill. That’s when I came across Aspire for Her and its magnetic leader, Madhura DasGupta Sinha. Their AWS SheDares program and the success stories that it generated, gave me added motivation. After some research, I identified Cloud technologies as the area where I wanted to upskill. I enrolled for this AWS program and listened to the Reinvent Keynotes of Andy Jassy.

I challenged myself to take the AWS Cloud Practitioner’s Certification Exam. I booked the exam for one week later and worked backwards to prepare.

The first day I went through the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials training material, which was interesting and novice-friendly. The next day I started on the aCloudGuru learning platform. This had a lot more material to go through. I took the sample tests on both the platforms and that’s when I realised I might actually have a shot at achieving this.

Next, I tried the sample tests at whizlabs.com and awsboy.com. The questions here were much tougher. They are designed for different use cases and you need to understand the concept really well to be able to answer. I went back to my materials to reinforce these concepts. I did as many tests as possible. After one week, I sat for the exam and cleared it. In fact, having prepared thoroughly, I thought the actual exam was quite easy.

Next on my to-do list are the GCP Digital Leader Certification, Azure Fundamentals Certification, and the Google Project Management Certification. These will give me a holistic view of the hyperscale cloud providers.

If you are considering a similar path, I encourage you to go for it. Just book the date and work backwards. Yes, the exam is tough and you need to score 70% to get the certification but it’s possible. If I can do it, you can do it too!