A BRADFORD College graduate who has published his second book returned to speak to current students.

Rob Jeffery delivered a talk on his journey from student to cyber security expert and author. He was 25 when in 2009 he decided to quit his career in hospitality and start a computing degree. Three years later he graduated with first class honours in Network Infrastructure Technologies and Business Computing Solutions and went on to work for global businesses and now acts as a cybersecurity consultant to large enterprise and public sector organizations.

Rob’s return to the college doubled as the launch for his latest book, called Day One: Migrating from Cisco to Juniper Networks, which he co-wrote with Martin Brown.

He said: “It is great to come back to Bradford College for the book launch and to talk to the students about my career, experiences and the industry. It is nice to come back and contribute.

“It is interesting to see how much the college has changed from when I was here. The facilities are excellent.

“Growing up I loved cooking and computers and initially went into the hospitality industry, working as a chef, a restaurant manager and running a pub. But I got fed up of working 100-hour weeks for low pay so decided to go back to education and follow my other passion, computing.

“I am from Hull but came to study at Bradford College because of the specific nature of the course and I am glad I did.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my course and am grateful to the tutors for their support so am more than happy to come back and help them when I can and give the current students the benefit of my experience.

“The main message I would give to students is that if you put in the time and effort, hard work pays off.”

Lecturer Elvir Kesedzic was thrilled to welcome his past student back to provide encouragement and a good example to his current undergraduates.

He said: “It was great having Rob back at the college. His story of how the skills he learnt on his degree supported his highly successful career in industry was an inspiration to us all. It was also fascinating to learn first-hand of the skill shortage in the cybersecurity sector. Half of all jobs in cybersecurity are currently unfilled. That is a massive skill shortage. Rob's thoughts on how our current degrees and newly validated HND in Computing (Security) plays an essential role in addressing this shortage underlined the importance of our courses to the local economy.”