UK's 15-year-old World Excel champion offered £100k job
Rebecca Rickwood, a 15-year-old pupil at Sawtry Community College in Cambridgeshire has been offered a £100,000 job at Course Academy, "after she finishes school, of course!" The promised job is based on her becoming World Champion in Microsoft Excel 2007 at a competition run by Certiport in San Diego, California. She was entered into the finals after getting 100% -- the top score in the UK -- in the Microsoft Office Specialist Excel certification exam, which was run by Prodigy Learning. In all, the five categories attracted more than 228,000 entries from 57 countries.
Nick Ferro, a director of the Bath-based training company Course Academy, said: "We have trainers who have been teaching Microsoft Excel since 1995 who would struggle to match her score, so naturally we feel [she] would be a great addition to our team."
Rebecca's victory was reported at PeterboroughToday.co.uk, The Metro and other newspapers, and BBC News.
Rebecca won $5,000, and said in a YouTube interview (below) that she intended to buy herself a new flute.
Rebecca Rickwood (in green) with other winners in the 2011 Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office
The other four World Champions were Liao Yu-Xuan, from Taiwan (PowerPoint 2007), Mizuki Terao, from Japan (Word 2007), Chen Xing of China (Excel 2010), and Clement Ng Chwin Chiat from Malaysia (Word 2010). This was the first time PowerPoint had been included in the competition, and the top three places were won by female students.
Next year's Microsoft Office world championship will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ienEA6SP7Go Rebecca Rickwood Interview
The full-sized photo of the winners is available on Flickr.