On April 9, 2008, Cisco announced a major milestone in its ongoing efforts to equip more people for successful careers in networking.
To date, Cisco has issued more than 1 million certifications to networking professionals worldwide.
Furthermore, as of April 6th, 2008 - 19,426 CCIE certificates have been awarded during the entire history of the Cisco CCIE program.
 "The continued growth of our training and certification program is indicative of the value that Cisco certifications hold in the marketplace," said Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn - General Manager of Learning@Cisco.
"By continually refreshing our certification training materials and exams as well as taking aggressive steps to safeguard exam integrity through our test-delivery partner Pearson VUE, employers are able to count on the fact that Cisco certified individuals are equipped with the most up-to-date understanding of networking technology while being able to demonstrate a valid measure of knowledge and competency to sustain their companies' competitive advantage." |
 Simultaneously this month, Cisco CEO - John Chambers expounded upon the need to expand H-1B status capability.
Within days of that statment by Chambers, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a highly unusual and very controversial emergency ruling, that automatically extended the period of stay and work authorization for all F-1 students with pending H-1B petitions (without Congressional approval or public comment). Furthermore, at their Channel Partner Summit meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii this month, Cisco issued a press release with regard to helping preempt a skills shortage among Cisco channel partners worldwide. Remarkably at the same meeting, Celia Harper Guerra - Director of Worldwide Partner Talent at Cisco gave a presentation to Cisco channel partners that showed Cisco receives 20,000 CV/Resumes per month (i.e. 240,000 per year). Additionally during that same presentation, Cisco touted that 200,000 active registered graduates of the Cisco Networking Academy are now part of the Cisco Career Connections web site. |
Do YOU find it as odd as yours truly that during the 1 millionth Cisco certification milestone, Cisco is simultaneously touting a worldwide talent shortage as well as the need to increase H-1B visas for foreign workers in the U.S.?
About Brad Reese on Cisco
Brad Reese is research manager at BradReese.Com, advancing the careers of 1 million certified individuals in the growing Cisco Career Certification Program.
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Thanks...
The Cisco certification team has made significant strides in building out the pool of certified Cisco indviduals and we appreciate the visibility. Reaching a million certified individuals was a major milestone and the team is up to the challenge of continuing to grow this program to meet Cisco's projected 12-17% growth over the next 3-5 years.
That said, this is one view of the issue our partners face. In fact, our partners often tell us finding qualified sales talent, as echoed in the IPED study featured in our press release last week, is their #1 barrier to growth. Of course #2 was finding technical talent.
So while Brad disagrees with the likes of Gartner, McKinsey, Price Waterhouse, Manpower and the US Dept. of Labor that we are dealing with a talent shortage, we will chalk that up to the success of the agressive company-wide measures we have taken over the past 18-months to help our partners preempt this issue. That said, we will continue to listen to our partners, the folks that played a critical role in making Cisco into the $30+ billion company it is today, who on a global scale have told us attracting developing and retaining talent is their #1 barrier to growth.
Qualified Sales Talent
Lang,
Is Cisco saying that they will aggressively facilitate the placement of unhappy sales talent from one Cisco partner to another Cisco partner or even Cisco itself and likewise for technical talent in order to make talent happy and advance the careers of talent?
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Addressing Channel Partner Needs
We are transforming the way partners attract, develop and retain talent, becuase it is their #1 barrier to growth. If they don't succeed...we don't succeed.
Addressing the needs of the talent itself
Lang,
Thank you for confirming that it is not the needs of the talent that Cisco will be addressing.
Interesting that YOU, Cisco (and anointed 3rd party recruiting agencies) as well as some Cisco channel partners continue to believe that artificially restricting the employment opportunities available to talent is the way to ramp-up growth!
Amazing!
As Cisco expands its efforts to artificially restrict talent employment opportunities, yours truly will be working extra hard:
Cisco Resumes
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Tick Tock...
Most would consider employment a fundemental need and the great thing about helping our partners is...we have to help connect them to talent, which is why an individual can go into our new Partner Talent Network and find employment with our partners, addressing a fundemental need. In addition, the Talent Network also provides individuals (talent) with career guidiance and if desired training options, which in most cases would also be fundamental needs.
Could it be that the advanced social networking capabilities and interactive video of our Partner Talent Network threatens those that are still recruiting and placing talent via posted text resumes? Perhaps it does, certainly wasn't the intent. Again our focus is to help our partners attract, develop and retain talent. Will that help individuals (talent)...absolutely. Will it hurt those recruiters that fail to evolve...time will tell.
Cisco arrogance on display
Lang,
If Cisco is so arrogant that restricting employment opportunities for talent is now a strategic imperative, well tick-tock indeed!
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Explain Yourself
Please explain how connecting individuals, let's say for example a recent graduate of a Cisco Networking Academy, to our channel partners is "restricting employment opportunities?" Furthermore how connecting partners to career information via interactive videos or training is any anyway anything but a positive.
If anything what we are doing is expansive. We are offering individuals the ability and opportunity to reach a broader group of companies.
The balkanization of worldwide Cisco recruiting
Gee Lang,
BradReese.Com has got quite a few Cisco Networking Academy graduates that Cisco has been ignoring:
India
Why is that?
The balkanization of worldwide Cisco recruiting has nobody at Cisco working together, for example look at the:
Cisco Talent Portals
Five fiefdoms who are at a total disconnect!
How bad is the balkanization of Cisco recruiting?
Yours truly has the CV/Resumes of Cisco Certified Network Engineers from 55 different countries and there is NOT a single resource at Cisco that can help coordinate the disbursement of those CV/Resumes from 55 different countries.
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Finally Lang, is Cisco going to aggressively facilitate the careers of unhappy sales and tech talent who wish to leave the employ of one Cisco channel partner for an employment opportunity with another Cisco channel partner or even Cisco itself?
Why not?
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Addressing and Correcting Brad...
Brad…let me address/correct your statements/questions above one at a time.
BradReese.Com has got quite a few Cisco Networking Academy graduates that Cisco has been ignoring:
First, in its 10 year history the Cisco Networking Academies have graduated more than 2 million people, meaning even if all 456 BardReese.com resumes were Networking Academy graduates you’d have less than one, one-thousandth of a percent of the total population.
Furthermore, per our announcement two weeks ago at the Partner Summit, by allowing candidates who come to the Cisco careers page to also post their resume to the Partner Talent Network Cisco is doing the exact opposite of ignoring these individuals. The fact is, Cisco may not have a need for the candidate’s skill, but its partner community might. So where at most companies the quest for employment would be over if the company didn’t have a job requiring the skills of the candidate Cisco is actually the only company in the IT industry that offers candidates additional opportunities with its partners. So to say we are ignoring these candidates is inaccurate.
The balkanization of worldwide Cisco recruiting has nobody at Cisco working together, for example look at the Cisco Talent Portals…five fiefdoms who are at a total disconnect!
Let’s start with the last thought first…five fiefdoms who are at a total disconnect…not true. We have placed links to the Partner Portals for the US, Canada and Europe so candidates can place their resume into other theater portals for consideration. In addition, all submitted resumes are available to all Cisco recruiters around the world, which also refutes the thought that no one at Cisco is working together.
Finally, as a publicly traded company, Cisco is subject to US and country-specific regulations regarding the safeguard of personal information. For example, Cisco cannot legally dump every resume of every European candidate that we have into our Partner Portals s we would be in violation of European data privacy laws which stipulate that we would have to receive the active permission of the candidates to do so. Ultimately it is a legal decision to prohibit the transmission of resumes outside of Cisco, not a "balkanization."
Yours truly has the CV/Resumes of Cisco Certified Network Engineers from 55 different countries and there is NOT a single resource at Cisco that can help coordinate the disbursement of those CV/Resumes from 55 different countries.
As stated above, all resumes submitted to Cisco are available to all Cisco recruiters around the world via our HR system. Furthermore, I crossed referenced your resumes with our database and we have many if not all, I ran out of time, of your resumes in our system already.
Finally Lang, is Cisco going to aggressively facilitate the careers of unhappy sales and tech talent who wish to leave the employ of one Cisco channel partner for an employment opportunity with another Cisco channel partner or even Cisco itself?
As I said the last time you asked this question, we are transforming the way partners attract, develop and retain talent, which means we are providing candidates with options to explore new opportunities just like Career Builder and Monster just on a more focused level and when the Partner Talent Network launches in June on a more collaborative and interactive level.
Cisco's provincial balkanization
Lang,
Glad that you believe Cisco's provincial balkanization is eased by allowing Cisco Certified Network Engineers the ability to navigate between 5 different Cisco Talent Portals.
Cisco is making steady progress and that is good!
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com