Certified in Saudi
How Loay Abdulaziz Alayadhi launched his career in IT, thanks to Cisco Networking Academy

Loay, 26, lives and works in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where he has recently become an Associate Networking Consulting Engineer with Cisco. It's his first job in IT, and he's naturally excited at the opportunity.

From teacher to trainee
Loay started out teaching computing, but became increasingly attracted to the possibilities offered by a more technical path. "I wanted to get into networking," he comments. "So I went back to the classroom. This time it was me on the receiving end of the instruction!"

Theory into practice
Studying at his local Networking Academy was a natural choice to get up to speed, and study for his CCNA parts one and two. The experience confirmed his belief that practice, and not just theory, were what he was looking for in his new career. "The courses were great for both", he confirms.
For Loay, practice made perfect sense of the theory. As he says himself: "Despite the quality of the theoretical instruction, I never really felt confident I'd understood everything until it came to practicing in the academy lab. It was helpful for me to bring the theory and the practice together."
Could he think of an example? "Well, when we took the distance vector protocol like RIP. After the class, we configured it in a real router and saw how it worked in the real world. After that, I never forgot it, or any of our other lessons, despite the large amount of information you have to retain."

Getting it wrong to get it right
Sometimes, failure had it own lessons. "Of course, we sometimes made mistakes. But sniffing out the problems and correcting them is a great way to learn. It can be pretty funny, too!"
Loay and his instructors' approach soon paid dividends, and after sending out his CV he was rapidly snapped up by Cisco. So, after all that hard work at the NetAcad, Loay felt he could relax, right? "No way! They sent me straight to IT boot camp to prepare for my CCIE. It was no holiday, I can tell you!" he exclaims.
Does he have anything else to add? "Yes - thanks to the NetAcad team for helping me to build a confident knowledge of networking, and giving me a route into a new career. And a special thanks to Mr Mohammed Albsheti for his great teaching!"

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