Shafay Thobani, Yet Another Self Proclaimed Youngest Microsoft Professional

[shining eyes]

The above pictured kid is Shafay Thobani, who is yet another Pakistani boy to claim as being the World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, even when Microsoft has said this officially that they don’t keep track of age for its certified professionals.

It appears that this has become a trend in Pakistan to get noticed by claiming oneself as being the world’s youngest professional in one thing or another. Probably because it can bring them fame, attention and money, that too without much efforts.

This is happening even after Shayan Anique’s episode, a self proclaimed youngest Microsoft professional, when we saw him producing communication that was forged and faked.

Unlike Shayan Anique, Shafay Thobani’s certification is legitimate, we have checked with Microsoft, but his claim of being youngest certified professional in the world could not be verified for the fact that Microsoft doesn’t count age of its professionals.

In case of Shafay Thobani, he (I mean his father or guardian) went a step ahead. They hired a PR agency, organized a press conference in a five star hotel in Karachi yesterday to announce his heroism in front of media. So instead of pulling the media, they rather contented with pushing their son to media to get him the coverage.

Jus t to mention, Shafay has a page on his website that reads: “Hire me as a Brand Ambassador”, while ProPakistani has learned that Shafay Thobani is going to become brand ambassador for a brand or two in addition to getting sponsorships from government and private sectors. Which is fine, in fact not. Let me explain.

Frankly speaking I am impressed by the skills of Shafay Thobani. Since he is legitimate certified professional at this age, which is something to be praised and lauded about. But the problem occurs when he calls himself “World’s Youngest Certified Professional”, which is a fake claim. Since Microsoft can’t verify this we are in no position to assume that he is indeed world’s youngest certified professional.

This problem will get only worse when we will see more such claims in coming days and also to mention that such claims are either cooked, not true, unverifiable and hence are falsified.

Microsoft is somewhat worried of these self proclaimed child prodigies, who keep on surfacing every other month now. Microsoft as a technology company doesn’t want to get named with these kids, who mostly fake their looks and skills (Ammar Afzal for example).

When asked if Microsoft will disown such youngest certified professionals an official told ProPakistani that they already did so by announcing that Microsoft doesn’t keep track of age for its certified professionals.

We hope that Microsoft will not ban kids from Pakistan below 18 to appear in certifications because of these self proclaimers.

 

[slapshot]

I think Microsoft should do something to save their certification program from becoming complete joke. All it takes is to get the latest dumps via sparing few bucks and anyone can be MS certified. Its certainly not fair to IT professionals who invest several years infield, its not possible to categories them both equally. I am sure that 99.9% of the time these kinds won't be able to handle real world solutions.

 

[W.11]

if thats the case how can on know arfa karim was the genuine but a self proclaimed youngest MCP?